An Introduction to Coaching

Session 1: What is Coaching
You may have heard the term “coaching” in a variety of contexts from sports to business and education. You may have experienced coaching that was very directive with clear instructions and advice on how to move forward, or you may have gotten to know coaching as a psychological journey that’s deeply transformational.
In this session, we draw the landscape of coaching and explain how it’s similar and different to other helping by talking practices such as mentoring, teaching, consulting, or counseling and psychotherapy so that you can understand its reach and possibilities.

Session 2: Coaching Competencies
There are certain skills, characteristics, and competencies that make for an effective coach. Professional coaching bodies such as the Association for Coaching (AC), the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) have created excellent competency frameworks that set out guidelines to help developing coaches orientate themselves as they learn to work with their clients. They’re all quite similar, so in this session, we’ll introduce you to the AC’s framework, which will help you to understand what’s required to become a great coach while setting you up for your accreditation further down the line (if you choose to go down that route).

Session 3: Ethics
One of the most important aspects of being a coach is to develop sound ethics. Ethics, in our view, isn’t a set of rules or laws you have to follow as a coach, but rather a set of questions every coach asks themselves on a continuous basis in order to make good decisions on how best to work with their clients. We’ll explain why this is important and how to make difficult decisions when faced with tricky situations as you begin working with your clients. We’ll also introduce you to the “Global Code of Ethics For Coaches, Mentors, and Supervisors”.

Psychological Foundations

Session 1: Why Clients Come to Coaching – Theories of Happiness & Success
People walk into the coaching room for a variety of reasons. Some have clear goals and ideas of success: a better job or title, more money or power, a new vacation home. Some have a feeling of being ‘stuck’ and ‘just can’t take putting up’ with the low level of discomfort or displeasure in their lives. In this session, we discuss the fine line coaches walk in helping clients to become clear about what they really want, their motivations behind their goals, and how success might look throughout the course of their life. We discuss the ecology of success, the link between success and
wellbeing, and introduce several models and theories (e.g., PERMA, 6-factor, Thrive & Survive) outlining the conditions for robust mental health.

Session 2: What We Can and Can’t Do – Theories of Change
Is the sky the limit? Can we really achieve whatever we set our minds to? What is realistic and what’s not? In this session, we discuss ways to overcome things that make the attainment of goals unlikely by exploring more deeply the essence of what it means to achieve our goals and the role of intentional activities. We then delve deeply into the pitfalls of ‘faking it until you make it,’ the power behind ‘acting as if’, and Prochaska & DiClemente’s theoretical model, commonly referred to as the Stages of Change. Finally, Catherine shares powerful questions that strengthen a client’s
belief in their ability to change.

Session 3: Why and How We Do What We Do – Theories of Motivation
What is it that motivates us to make a change? What are the conditions needed to foster motivation? And how do we sustain it? In this session, we discuss theories on self-determination and the conditions needed to foster intrinsic motivation. Catherine discusses the important contributions of humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers and his theory on self-actualization, peak states, and how we cultivate the ability to recognize congruence. Finally, we focus on how to sustain motivation by tapping into the higher meaning behind a client’s goals. Using language tools and logical levels (i.e., Chunk up, down, and across), we discuss practical tips to help clients dig deeper in order to become unstuck. To end the session, Catherine offers insights into how to navigate a world filled with ups and downs by connecting with our personal reason for being, our Ikigai.

The Coaching Relationship

Session 1: Why Diversity matters in Coaching
Diversity goes beyond race and colour to include culture, values, and personality. In the context of coaching it’s crucial to appreciate how we always meet “the other” in the coaching room. In this session, you’ll learn about how to use our differences as opportunities and get an insight into generational diversity as a starting point to understand diversity.

Session 2: Creating the Coaching Relationship
We’ll start with introducing the coaching relationship and why it’s the foundation for our work. You’ll learn how coach and client relate to each other in a professional context, why it is important to recognize the different roles we may hold as a coach and how to talk openly with our clients about the way we connect and experience each other as part of this relationship.

Session 3: Creating Rapport
Given how important it is to establish a strong relationship, in this session you will learn how to create rapport with your clients. Creating trust, respect and confidentiality through empathy, curiosity, showing up authentic, bracketing your biases and giving your client your full attention and presence.

Towards an Integrated Approach to Coaching

Session 1: Understanding yourself
“Who you are is how you coach” – a saying you’ll hear from us often throughout this program. Understanding yourself is one of the most important foundations for coaching practice. It will inform the way you work and provide valuable insights into your preferred coaching style and your interactions with your clients. In this session, Jonathan introduces a number of ways in which this can be done.

Sessions 2: Creating Your Coaching Toolkit
In this session, Jonathan introduces you to a wide range of practical tools and techniques to use with your coaching clients such as the empty chair exercise, Kurt Lewine’s Force Field Analysis, Peter Hawkin’s The 13th Fairy, Agenda Mapping as well as a number of simple problem-solving and idea-generating exercises.

Sessions 3: Developing an Integrated Approach to Coaching
In this session Jonathan introduces his integrated approach to coaching and takes you through the 7 streams that feed into this model. Trialled and tested in many of the world’s largest organisations and applied with global leaders, you’ll get an insight into how this coaching approach is constructed with practical tips and pointers as to how you could develop your own integrative approach to coaching as you journey through this program.

Preparing to Coach

Session 1: Setting up the Coaching Space and How to Prepare for Your First Client
Coaches offer clients an escape from the chaotic busy world in which they live. When clients enter the coaching space, we must be ready, willing, and able to give them our undivided attention and focus. But what is the coaching space? And how do we prepare it? In this session, Chérie reminds us that as coaches we are an important element of the coaching space. Starting with our relationship with ourselves, we discuss how our presence creates a powerful beginning and opens doors for transformation. Chérie offers guidance on how to clear our minds, ground our bodies,
and prepare our physical and virtual coaching spaces. To end the session, Chérie shares a powerful personal ‘coaching prayer’ to help you prepare for your coaching client.

Session 2: Contracting and the Chemistry Session
Born out of the desire for something beyond the now, coaching is a relationship designed to bridge the gap between here and there. The effectiveness with which a coach helps a client move from what-is to what-is-possible depends on many factors. In this session, we discuss the purpose and key elements of a Chemistry session, which includes clarifying what coaching is and is not, how to assess a client’s readiness for coaching using the MMS 4 criteria (desire, willingness, belief, commitment), managing expectations, setting outcomes and, as the name suggests, whether there is chemistry between client and coach. Chérie discusses how contracting outlines the foundations of your relationship and deepens commitment and offers insight into the differences between written and verbal contracts.

Session 3: The Coaching Mindset and How to Get Clients From “I Want” to “I Have”
Is coaching something we do or something we live? Or both? In this session, we delve deeper into how a coach’s way of being is fundamental to building the bridge to a client’s wants, desires, and objectives. We discuss the anatomy of the “I want” moment, how to help clients become open to imagination and possibility, and how setting clear objectives creates and instils value for the client and the coaching process. Coaching is both what we do and who we are: an embodiment of ideals, thinking, and process for moving forward with life. Chérie offers 12 profound steps toward living the process of being a coach.

Listening

Session 1: Creating a Thinking Environment
In this first session, we’ll introduce you to the provenance and principles of the TE, illuminate different worlds of thinking, and highlight the importance of independent thinking. In the process, we’ll uncover 8 important observations and 10 components that build the foundation for a powerful coaching space.

Session 2: Levels of Listening
Why is listening so important? How well do people listen? What different kinds of listening are there and how do we apply them in a coaching setting? In this session, Linda will introduce several theoretical models of listening (Covey, Whitworth, Sharmer) as well as Rogers’s “sufficient and necessary conditions” as the
cornerstone for an effective listening environment. You’ll learn what it means to “actively” listen and the kind of skills and mindset you’ll need to listen deeply to your clients.

Session 3: Advanced Listening
Listening is an advanced art and this session will give you some insights into advanced models of listening. We’ll cover ego states in coaching as they relate to listening and delve deeper into topics such as attention, ease, equality, diversity, encouragement, and feelings. You’ll learn about Sharmer’s Levels of Listening and
hear from the founder of the Thinking Environment, Nancy Kline.

Communication

Session 1: Clean Language
When we think of language, we might immediately think of the spoken word. In the coaching space, however, communication goes well beyond what is said. Communication is a multi-sensory experience and is the conduit for creating possibility, allowing for transformation in our clients. In this session, we dissect the
dynamics of communications between coach and client. Fundamental to this is the coach’s ability to be transparent, fully present, and recognize and use the full range of communications. We discuss the definition of clean language, how we create our sense of reality, sensory representational systems, fundamental and generative states of being, and how to use words, tonality, parrot-phrasing, and body language to deepen a client’s experience.

Session 2: Irresistible Communication
In this session, we dig deeper into the three fundamentals levels of communication, building from the ground level (or presence) level to the physical level (Devon doesn’t give this level a specific name like others), where we discuss reading and the use of body language, to the linguistics level, where we learn to speak with congruency, integrity, and well-formedness. You will learn ways to adjust your message using a range of communication tools that feel irresistible to your client. It could be argued hypnosis does not exist. Some say everything is hypnosis. We discuss how to use this profound linguistics tool to focus attention and effectively drive the transformation your client is seeking. Bringing it all together, we delve deeper into the use of tonality, rhythms, and cadence and the primal, sensual nature of experience.

Session 3: Questions to Trigger Transformation
Ever wonder what happens when you ask your client a question? Probably not. Go behind the words to understand how questions are experienced and why they are powerful catalysts for change. In this session, we discuss what happens in the mind and body when a question is asked, how to notice the subtle changes of state in your client, and how to utilize this information to drive transformation. Learn how to artfully ask powerful questions, pair questions with storytelling, and slow down the process to deepen your client’s experience.

Goals

Session 1: Why Do We Need Goals?
What makes a goal achievable? Why is it important to understand how goals relate to success? In this session, David takes a step back to look at the purpose of coaching, the fundamental differences between coaching and mentoring, and their different approaches to achieving goals. He discusses where goals come from, what it means to achieve them, and the importance of linking goals to purpose. David also discusses the characteristics and categories of goals and provides tools and techniques to help clients not only set achievable goals but also to avoid the pitfalls when doing so.

Session 2: The Downsides of Goal Obsession
Working with clients to achieve goals is an important part of coaching. But can we become overly preoccupied with achieving goals? In this session, David discusses two ways to approach working with goals (inward vs outward), when is it beneficial to use each, and factors to consider with both. David discusses the importance of assessing intrinsic motivation and having a contextual awareness so that goals are not created in a vacuum. David emphasizes the importance of not getting fixated on achieving goals to the detriment of everything else. Instead, he encourages coaches to help their clients take a flexible, wider approach by shifting the focus to finding solutions.

Session 3: Using Goals in Your Development as a Coach
Have you ever experienced the awe of a powerful coaching session and then wondered how they did it? In this last session, David encourages coaches to set goals for their own coaching development and delves deeply into the concept of coaching maturity. This session is filled with information to help you become a great coach (e.g., stages of growth, levels of coaching, compassion, how to ‘free yourself from
the tyranny of the question’). David shares what it means to go from ‘coaching to clients’ to truly ‘being a coach,’ fully integrating what you do with who you are as a person.

Structure & Process

Session 1: Coaching in the Context of Our Times
Peter begins the journey with a brief history of how the modern coaching profession emerged from management and leadership training with the awareness that the most important tool was the leaders themselves: their ability to be self-aware. Peter discusses the ‘unholy trinity’ of challenges facing organizations today and the impact this has on clients. He challenges coaches to question ‘who we serve,’ by asking them not to view client issues as individual problems to be solved but as opportunities to make positive changes within the world in which we live.

Session 2: The Stages of Coaching – The CLEAR Process
Coaching is always forward-focused. But what does this mean? In this session, Peter maps out the key stages of a coaching session (using the CLEAR model) and introduces an approach he developed that enables clients to consider their future impact in the wider frame of life, or what he calls ‘future back, outside in.’ Peter discusses how systemic listening, continual contracting, and metaphorically inviting others into the coaching room (e.g., outside-in) enables clients to embody their new reality while remaining within the safety of the coaching space.

Session 3: The 4 Levels of Engagement – A Case Study
Working with a recently promoted female executive seeking to increase the efficiency of the under-performing staff she now leads; Peter presents a case study that employs a depth and process model. In this session, Peter introduces the Four Levels of Engagement Model (depth model), which aims to explore in-depth the underlying emotional triggers that create certain patterns of behavior. By going down (and back up) the levels, coaches can identify the patterns of behavior that form the basis of the stories we tell ourselves. After discovering the source of the client’s emotional trigger, Peter demonstrates how to move through the session using the CLEAR model by replacing, rehearsing, and reviewing the new pattern.

Relational Coaching

Session 1: Drawing the Landscape of Coaching Practice
Do you naturally seek solutions to problems? Or do you believe it’s more important to gain insight into a situation before looking for solutions? Do you find yourself offering support to others? Or is it challenging to push through? Do you see the cup half empty or full? In this session, Erik discusses the historical differences and similarities between the different approaches to helping conversations. Through the use of a metaphor to explore your natural ways of being, Erik shares a technique to help you identify the coaching approach best suited to you.

Session 2: The Basic Tenets of Relational Coaching & How to Find Your Coaching Style
How do authenticity, trust, and belief in yourself play a role in how effective you are as a coach? In this session, Erik encourages coaches to discover their authentic coaching style to increase their effectiveness as a coach. Fundamental to all coaching approaches is relational coaching. That is, our relationship with ourselves, our clients, and how we ‘meet’ in the coaching room. Erik discusses the tenets of relational coaching and how to work with the ‘here and now’ of what’s happening in
coaching.

Session 3: A Case Study in Relational Coaching
Working with an international female senior executive seeking to improve her relationship with her boss, Erik presents a case study in relational coaching. In this session, Erik discusses the challenges he faced in working with his client and how her emotionally volatile interactions with others in her work and personal life led to a life-changing discovery. Erik also discusses working with leadership shadows, the ‘here and now,’ and the use of metaphors.

Coaching for Performance

Session 1: Foundations and Psychological Principles
The GROW model is much more than a 4-step process coaches use to boost performance. In this first session, Jon will introduce the psychological principles that underlie both the model and practice.

Session 2: Process and Practice
PCI’s website states: “GROW is more than a coaching model loved by the coaching community. It is also a top leadership tool that works across all disciplines and cultures. With its four deceptively simple steps, GROW has proved successful all over the world. It forms the backbone of coaching in many organizations and universities globally, due to the outstanding results. It helps people to achieve success personally or as part of a team.” In this module, you’ll learn how the model works in practice and how to apply it with your clients.

Session 3: A Case Study in Coaching for Performance
In this last session, Jon will introduce you to a case study to illuminate how he’s applied the model in practice with one of his clients. He’ll talk you through the practical issues of using the GROW model and share lots of practical tips and advice on coaching for performance as well as offering you a series of questions to coach yourself.

Positive Psychology Coaching

Session 1: Foundations and Psychological Principles
What makes us happy? Is happiness something we possess or something we find? In this session, llona introduces the science of positive psychology, or what is defined as the science of optimizing human function. Highlighting topics of particular interest to coaching clients, she discusses the similarities and differences between positive psychology and coaching and shares research on how positive emotions can facilitate change in the coaching space. She also introduces research on the characteristics of happiness and ways to build it and covers topics such as FLOW, mindset, motivation, strengths, resilience, and time.

Session 2: Process and Practice
Positive Psychology is an evidence-based science that often involves conducting surveys and assessments with large groups of people. In this session, however, Ilona demonstrates how practical positive psychology interventions (PPI) can be easily integrated into the coaching space and adjusted for individual clients. Demonstrating the use of the Happiness Map (or Life Map), she explains that many people find they are happier than they think when their whole life is brought into focus. Ilona discusses the benefits and offers tips and questions for two popular areas: Coaching for Happiness and Coaching for Strengths.

Session 3: A Case Study in Positive Psychology Coaching
Having worked with individuals to provide strengths coaching for over 15 years, it became apparent that a more systemic approach is needed to optimize the strengths and functions across the team. In this session, Ilona presents a complex case involving both individual and group strength coaching. We’ll discuss the structure of the two levels of coaching, the use of peer coaching, and reactions, challenges, and feedback from the team. Ilona demonstrates and discusses how novel assessments and activities are conducted, such as the use of a strengths inventory app,
strengths stories, collective job crafting, and a strengths marketplace.

Cognitive Behavioural Coaching

Session 1: Foundations and Psychological Principles
This session will focus on the principles of the cognitive-behavioural perspective. We’ll cover key assumptions of Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC) theory, very briefly cover the history of the approach, note some key differences between CBC and CBT (therapy), and introduce common areas of application such as stress, performance anxiety, and procrastination.

Session 2: Process and Practice
In session 2 Rob will teach you about the process of how a CBC session may look like in practice, from drawing up a list of problems to applying CBC’s most commonly applied strategies such as the ABCDE model and how to work with behavioural experiments.

Session 3: Case Studies in Cognitive Behavioural Coaching
In our last session, Rob will offer practical tips and advice on working with a number of common problem areas such as perfectionism, procrastination, low confidence, performance anxiety, interpersonal disputes and being overly concerned with what other people think of us. Suggestions will be made on how to refer clients for further help and guidance if we encounter and signs indicating that the challenges a client brings to you may be too severe for CBC and may be better placed with a therapist or other mental health professional.

Kickstart Your Coaching Practice

Session 1: Getting Started & How to Get Your First Paying Client
Getting started with your coaching business doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to wait until you’ve got the perfect infrastructure in place. All you need is a phone, a computer, yourself, and a coach. We’ll talk about websites, fees, taxes, packages, and the internal resources you’ll need to succeed. You’ll also learn
about the practical steps you need to take to sign up your first paying client, regardless of what kind of person you are or who you already have in your network.

Session 2: From Creating Conversations to Creating Clients
The most important element in getting your coaching business to succeed is to create conversations. This can start simply by talking to people in your local or online community. In this session, Carolyn will teach you how to move from a simple chat with someone you know or meet to inviting them into a coaching relationship. We’ll
talk about how to overcome resistance to “selling” by developing a genuine intent to serve our clients; you’ll also be presented with very practical examples and scripts you can use to sign up clients on a regular basis.

Session 3: The Ins and Outs of an Enrollment Conversation & The Art of the Proposal
Enrolling clients consistently is not magic! Once you understand the basic principles underlying what inspires a client to commit to the coaching process, you’ll find it can be easy and fun to have these conversations. After all, you’re inviting them to make changes that could transform the rest of their lives in ways they had never imagined. In this session, you’ll be given practical advice on how to structure such a conversation and how to send in a proposal that your clients will feel compelled to say yes to.

Bringing it all together

Session 1: Finding Your Unique Coaching Style – Toward Truly Integrative Practice
“Who you are is how you coach” is something you will have heard us say often during this program. As coaches, we naturally integrate what we learn with who we are as people. In this session, Yannick will introduce different ways of integrating what you have learned to form your own unique coaching style.

Session 2: From Trainee to Professional Coach
Now that you are coming to the end of your training, we’ll discuss the value and purpose of becoming accredited as a coach, lay out the route to professional accreditation with the Association for Coaching, and talk about the various ways in which different professional coaching bodies support our industry.

Session 3: Advice for the road
Arriving at the very end of our program, we’ll take some time to celebrate your journey, acknowledge the milestone you’re about to reach, and you’ll receive some very special advice for the journey ahead from our faculty.