COACHING SKILLSCOURSE
(Includes Conflict Coaching)

• FOUR DAY COURSE

• DATES MARCH 3rd, 4th, 17th and 18th 2012

• MAXIMUM 12 STUDENTS WITH 2 TUTORS

• OXFORD LOCATION

Call: 0800 078 7904

Email: jamie@mylifegym.com
COURSE AIMS
• To provide an appropriate level of theoretical underpinning knowledge and skills
• To provide opportunities for students to practice, observe and develop these skills in role play

COURSE CONTENT

THE FOUNDATIONS
- What is Coaching?
- Developing a Coaching Contract

CO-CREATING THE RELATIONSHIP
- Establishing trust and intimacy with clients
- Coaching Presence

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
- Active Listening
- Interventions: Reflecting back, paraphrasing, feeding back
- Tuning in and out, bracketing assumptions

FACILITATING LEARNING AND RESULTS
- Developing awareness
- Planning and Goal setting
- Managing Progress and Accountability

COURSE FORMAT

Each day will follow a similar format (10am to 5pm) commencing with thoughts and reflections on the course so far. This will be followed by a short talk from the tutors on the core theory and skills being considered that day. We will then focus the remainder of each day on role play sessions in breakout groups where students will practice what has been learnt.

COSTS AND VENUE DETAILS

FOUR FULL DAYS TRAINING £400
(10am to 5pm) DATES and TIMES:
March 3rd and 4th and 17th and 18th 2012

Ruskin College
Webb Building,
Dunstan Road,
Headington
Oxford
OX1 3LW

BOOKING FORM:

Remember as the course is limited in numbers we advise that you get in contact early to secure your place. We will be asking for a refundable (50%) deposit to secure your place with full balance being received. This is completely refundable if the course should not run for any reason. Final balance will be due by February 1st 2012.

NAME:
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ADDRESS: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

EMAIL:
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MOBILE NUMBER:
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Please make cheques payable to ‘Jamie Reed’ and post to:

My Life Gym Coaching
Whitehouse
Peppard Lane
Henley on Thames
Oxon
RG9 1NG

For online payments please email jamie@mylifegym.com for account details.

As with so many things in life being prepared for what you about to do can have a very positive impact on how well you perform. This applies both to coaching clients but also to coaches in practice. As the old saying goes. ‘Fail to prepare and you will be preparing to fail.’ No defining what we consider to be failing is a different conversation what I am concerned with in this blog is what could be considered to be good practice in coaching in relationship to coaching.

So often it has been my experience both as a practitioner and when supervising the work of practitioners that the majority of difficulties we encounter could be avoided or at the very least minimised by being better prepared as a coach.

For me Transactional Analysis offers possibly the clearest checklist for ensuring we understand and are prepared to engage in the coaching relationship. As the 3 Level description below outlines there are three areas that we need to consider when entering into a coaching relationship. These levels are administrative, professional and psychological contracting.

If we as coaches give consideration to the elements outlined in these levels and in particular consider the questions that arise from these levels we give ourselves a good chance of giving the best of ourselves as a coaches and doing the best we can by our coachees.

Contracting (3 Levels)

• Contracting is at the heart of process

• Level 1: Administrative: focus of work, frequency, purpose, payment, number of sessions, length of session

• Level 2: Professional: how will we work together, relate, what competencies and experience do they bring, how will trust and purpose be established

• Level 3: Psychological Contracting: unconscious messages about what coaching is really all about.

Key Questions:
- What are your expectations of coaching?
- How will I know if coaching is working for you?

Key Message: Time spent contracting is never wasted

COACHING SKILLS COURSE

• FOUR DAY COURSE

• DATES MARCH 18th, 19th, 25th and 26th 2011

• MAXIMUM 12 STUDENTS WITH 2 TUTORS

• CENTRAL OXFORD LOCATION

Call: 0800 078 7904

www.mylifegym.co.uk

WHO WE ARE
JAMIE REED
I have been coaching individuals and groups in different contexts for over 10 years. I am a certified in NLP Coaching (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Psychological Coaching, Sport Psychology and the Solution-Focused approach. I am a psychotherapist and counsellor with a Masters in Psychotherapy and Counselling and an Advanced Diploma in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling. In addition I am also an accredited mediator working in both the private and public sector.
I have coached employees from both the public and private sector at every level from small SMEs to directors of global organisations. I have over two and half years experience as a Case Manager for PPC Worldwide one of the UK’s largest providers of Employee Assistance Programmes. The core of this role involved managing a national and global team providing Solution Focused counselling and coaching. I was also on their team of Executive Coaches. I am Co-Director of The CH Group (www.thechgroup.co.uk) which provides Conflict Management and Mediation services. I am also a Non-Executive Director of a large family business.
Jamie’s Client Feedback:
“Jamie’s questions, guidance and coaching were very insightful.”
“Jamie’s practical and from my perspective, common sense coaching.”
“I cannot recommend Jamie enough”
“Enjoyed working with Jamie, he was authentic, credible and to the point.”

MONICA HANAWAY
I am an experienced accredited mediator, psychotherapist (1994), supervisor, business coach, stress management consultant and management and leadership trainer. I hold a number of qualifications including Masters degrees in Medical & Health Sciences, and in Psychotherapy.

I have worked for many years as a coach to senior staff in the public and private sectors and I am course leader for a new course in Existential Coaching due to start at The New School of Psychotherapy and Psychology, London, in 2011. I lecture on many aspects of psychotherapy, organisational psychology, coaching and conflict management and resolution in London and Oxford.

I am Co-Director of The CH Group (www.thechgroup.co.uk) which provides Conflict Management, Coaching, Training and Mediation. I am currently editing a book on Existential Coaching due to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2011

Monica’s client feedback:
“Monica is one of the most accurate and sensitive listeners I have worked with.”
“It was like a light bulb going on and has changed the way I work”
“Monica has such a lovely way about her and her openness and approachability really facilitated a very lively roundtable discussion”.
“She can express the most complex issues and theories in a clear and down to earth way”.

COURSE AIMS
• To provide an appropriate level of theoretical underpinning knowledge and skills
• To provide opportunities for students to practice, observe and develop these skills in role play

COURSE CONTENT
THE FOUNDATIONS
- What is Coaching?
- Developing a Coaching Contract

CO-CREATING THE RELATIONSHIP
- Establishing trust and intimacy with clients
- Coaching Presence

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
- Active Listening
- Interventions: Reflecting back, paraphrasing, feeding back
- Tuning in and out, bracketing assumptions

FACILITATING LEARNING AND RESULTS
- Developing awareness
- Planning and Goal setting
- Managing Progress and Accountability

COURSE FORMAT
Each day will follow a similar format (9am to 5pm) commencing with thoughts and reflections on the course so far. This will be followed by a short talk from the coaches on the core theory and skills being considered that day. We will then focus the remainder of each day on role play sessions in breakout groups where students will practice what has been learnt.

COSTS AND VENUE DETIALS
FOUR DAYS FULL DAYS TRAINING £400
(9am to 5pm) Two consecutive Friday and Saturdays

Oxford Quaker Meeting
43 St Giles,
Oxford
OX1 3LW
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For me it doesn’t matter what sport you are endeavouring to excel in, or to that matter what level you are competing at, the importance of establishing what your principles for achieving success is imperative. In fact the same is true if you are in the support team of physiotherapists, coaches, massage therapist or technical experts and yes performance coaches too!

Our principles are the things we believe in, that which is most important when trying to do our best. These principles can be based in physiology like being well hydrated and getting the right nutritional balance for your sport, to being well warmed. Your principles can include core basic elements of technique from within your chosen sport eg stride length as a sprinter, how you hold the putter in golf or holding your finishes in rowing. Indeed your principles can include things that create the right psychological environment for your team to excel such as collaboration, communication and discipline.

If you understand these principles you are then able to create a series of actions/behaviours that are the outcomes of these beliefs. These would be things like taking on the right amount of water and stretching before and after any performance. Or working on getting in the optimal number of strides for the 100m, checking your thumbs are inline down the shaft of your putter to drawing the handle up at the finish of your rowing stroke.

In each case the specific activities all play their part in helping us improve our performance and thus increase our chances of victory. The collective common outcome is to do what we do better- to have a better outcome.

By understanding our principles we are also able formulate our training sessions by determining what we are going to focus. This will help us ensure that we are getting the most out of each training session. These principles are also invaluable when it comes to competition because it gives us simple points of focus to control any competition nerves by giving us clear routines of what we need to do to excel.

Unfortunately however all too often if we have to sit down and consider what are principles are it can be quite difficult to articulate these points. For me this is where the importance of performance coaching comes in. This also illustrates what I call the Learning to Drive phenomenon. That we have become too skilled at our chosen sport and have lost touch with the core principles like ‘mirror, signal and manoeuvre.’ We have reached a point where much of what we do is done without conscious thought. It is only through performance coaching that we can remember what the foundations were that got us to where we are now.

If you want to find out how understanding your principles can help you excel get in touch jamie@mylifegym.com.

THE STORY SO FAR! Half way through already…

Well we are half way through the inaugural running of the Introduction to Coaching Course and Oxford University Department of Continuing Education and all seems to be going very well indeed.

We accepted a full quota of 25 students on to the course at the begining of the course, even having to turn a few away! Luckily enough though we have the new course starting in the New Year at Reading University. However having already spoken to the course administrator I know the Introduction to Coaching Course at Reading University is already more than half full so anyone looking to attend the course should sign up very soon!

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the coaching course we are exploring a different theoretical coaching approach each week. We discuss the guiding principles of this coaching approach, how these principles translate to the practice of coaching. Then we take the opportunity to practice some of these coaching skills.

We have a wonderful mix of students from a broad spectrum of professional backgrounds all bringing their own individual take on what coaching means for them. They all also have their own individual take on what they want to get out of the coaching experience from a change of career, to enhancing existing skills to considering bringing coaching into their organisation.

The phrase Neuro-Linguistic Programming encapsulates the three core principles of NLP.

The ‘Neuro’ element centralises our nervous system and our five senses as the way in which we receive our experience of the world and interpret this experience throughout our whole body.

‘Linguistic’ refers to your use of verbal and non-verbal language to describe our internal experience of the world, to give it order and meaning. According to NLP we have six different ‘languages’ or data forms that we use to do this: images, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells and internal dialogue.

While ‘Programming’ alludes to our use of strategies and programmes to run our lives and get things done.

The History of NLP

Neuro-Linguisitic Programming was originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s.

At this time Richard Bandler was a student of mathematics at the University of California where John Grinder was professor of linguistics. In addition to his studies Bandler was very interested in psychotherapy and had discovered an aptitude for modelling and detecting patterns of behaviour.

While pursuing this interest Bandler came to work with Frits Perls, the originator of the Gestalt School of Psychotherapy, and ended up editing a number of Perls’ publications. While working with Perls, Bandler discovered that not only could he model his techniques and methodologies but found that by using them in the same way that he could be as similarly effective as Perls.

Following these early successes Bandler expanded his research and modelled other renowned therapists of the time who were also achieving consistent results with clients. This included Virginia Satir, arguably the world’s leading family therapist at the time. It was at this point that Bandler met Grinder who was researching the role of linguistics in psychology. With Grinder’s input they were able to discover that Satir was consistently using a number of distinct language patterns and ways of communicating with her clients. They were then able to model these consistent elements and take them away and test these language models on other people. By doing this they were able to replicate the level of results of Satir. These findings were to become the basis for Bandler’s Masters thesis and the core of his first book, The Structure of Magic (1989).

What differentiated the work of Bandler and Grinder at the time was that they focused on the fundamental characteristics of change and the premise that the way in which people think about things seemed to have a fundamental affect on their experience of the world and themselves.

It was from here that Bandler and Grinder went on to meet and work with Dr Milton Erikson, the founder of the America Society of Clinical Hypnosis and arguably the world’s foremost hypnotherapist of the time. This relationship and modelling of practice would be fundamental to much of the later work of Bandler and Grinder in particular the creation of the Milton Model of hypnotic language patterns.

Although different people will argue the toss on these points coaching is generally defined by the following characteristics:

1) Short term: no more than 6-8 sessions. These coaching sessions can be spread out over quite a period of time say once a month. So you can end up coaching someone for 8 months but generally speaking if you haven’t sorted the issue in that time frame you can deduce a couple of things. This coaching relationship isn’t working for you, either because the coach is no good, you as the coachee arent ready to change and/or the issue you are facing is not appropriate or too profound/long term to be addressed by coaching.

2) Present and Future Focused: Coaching and the coach should differentiate themselves from psychotherapy and counselling by the focus of the questions that the coach asks you. Specifically that although the coach may ask you about your background, to put the issue you are facing into context, they shouldn’t ask you or encourage you to explore and unpack historical experiences in any depth. The focus should be about how the past is affecting you now and potentially influencing your future.
If you are working with a coach in a short term contract and they are asking about deep seated memories or traumatic events from childhood for example you should consider the potential implications.
The thinking being that we all have coping strategies in place to help us manage the impact of difficult life experiences. So if a coach goes delving around in these experiences without providing the support or alternative strategies for the coachee they can be left extremely vulnerable and potentially worse off than when they came.

Other General Assumptions:

A Young Profession: It is also far to say that compared to counselling, psychotherapy and psychiatry coaching is a relatively new profession that has grown massively in prevalence in the latter part of the last century. However the link between the skills used in all these approaches a very similar. So much so you could argue that coaching is just a euphemism for short term counselling.

No Training or Qualifications Required: Although the same is true of counselling and psychotherapy in that there is no legal requirement for accreditation this means anyone can call themselves a coach. The consequence is that, although there are a great number of excellent coaches out there, there are also a phenomenal number of ‘cowboys.’