Our Postgraduate Certificate in Coaching and Development - a participant's view

In this guest post, Nicola Williams - a recent participant on our Postgraduate Certificate in Coaching and Development programme - shares her experience of the course.

Having just completed the ILM Level 7 with The Performance Coach, I was eager to continue to develop my skills and experience as a coach. In discussion with The Performance Coach tutors, I realised that by doing the Postgraduate Certificate programme I could obtain both an academic qualification and a recognised accreditation from the EMCC. I was also attracted to the programme as it is the first year of a three year Masters in Coaching at University of Portsmouth, should I decide to continue my development.

The Postgraduate Certificate programme comprised of three two-day residential workshops, two 4,000 word assignments, four group supervision sessions (by videoconference), a coaching observation, and submission of a portfolio of evidence of 30 hours of coaching practice. As I had already completed the ILM Level 7, I was credited for this prior learning which meant I did not repeat the first two-day workshop. 

Before I started, I had a one-to-one with a tutor to discuss my learning outcomes and clarify the requirements and practicalities. They were always on hand throughout the programme to answer questions or anxieties!   

I was a bit nervous about joining a group of coaches who I thought may have bonded already in the previous workshop. However, these fears were immediately allayed as others had also transferred from other programmes and everyone was so open, friendly and supportive of each other. 

The workshops were fantastic - delivered in a wonderful country house location, by experts in each topic covered, and a perfect mix of theory and practice. The energy was high – fun, challenging, incredibly supportive and positive. This environment enabled me to push myself to try out new ideas and techniques, with very honest and constructive feedback from the other participants and tutors. In between workshops, the group supervision sessions helped to embed the learning through high quality facilitation. 

The assignments also gave me a great opportunity to research two areas of coaching in much more detail and those reports have been useful information for my workplace too.

The programme increased my confidence, particularly in coaching senior leaders and raised my awareness of my strengths and coaching style. I regularly use many of the tools, models and techniques from the programme in my coaching practice.  The programme continued to reinforce my passion for coaching and now I can’t wait for the Post Graduate Diploma to start!

Nicola Williams

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Coaching and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP): an introduction

On 20 May at 2pm, we will be hosting our next free coaching webinar on the topic of coaching and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). This is the first of a two-part series aimed at coaches who are studying with us or as continuing professional development (CPD) for experienced practitioners. The webinar will be delivered by two of our faculty, Damion Wonfor and Janey Bell, both experienced executive coaches and coach trainers.

Over the past five years, Damion and Janey have had many conversations regarding NLP and its use within coaching. These conversations between them, with their peers and clients have usually focused on three specific areas:

• The skepticism that exists regarding its validity as a coaching approach
• The confusion from coaches trained in NLP around how to use this without being "too directive" in the relationship
• The insight the tools bring to both coachees and coaches.

As with any approach utilised by a coach, it is the coach's intention for using it, their training and the relationship established with the coachee that are important factors in the success of the NLP intervention. NLP provides a coach with a powerful set of principles and approaches which maximise their self awareness, flexibility in the moment and ability to enable their clients to make shifts in their behaviour and performance. 

During these webinars, Damion and Janey will share their practical experiences of how and when they have used an NLP approach in their coaching and the impact on their clients and themselves as coach practitioners. They will also share a few practical tools / tips.

You can sign up to attend the free webinar here.

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Forthcoming free webinar - completing your EMCC Practitioner Portfolio

The Performance Coach want to ensure we provide our participants with as much support as possible to enable them to achieve the EMCC Practitioner Award; as part of this we want to offer you the chance to hear from our Chief Examiner, Sandra Goddard, who writes a guest blog below. This will be of particular interest to participants on our executive coaching courses.

For more of Sandra’s thoughts and advice on completing the portfolio, you can watch her free webinar on 21 May 2013 at 2pm. The webinar has been designed to offer you an opportunity to reflect on your own learning journey as a coach to date and consider the various ways how you may best relay this in your submission in order to meet the required criteria and gain added value beyond this point (personally and/or professionally.

As individuals, most of us will have undertaken some form of accredited learning at various points in our lives.  Whatever the end accomplishment, whether it be a school test, music exam, learning to drive, specialist qualification etc – each have their own definitive range of criteria and required limits for a ‘pass’.

Thinking about my own life experience, I’ve accrued a number of accredited achievements along the way. In my case they span school exams, driving licence, girl guide badges in my (much) younger years to a diverse range of far more technical and specialist credentials across my professional career. And yet as I write, reliving ‘in the moment’ many of these, what strikes me is the recollection of the final assessment as being a ‘task’ to get through rather than a demonstrable critique of theory-practice, reflective self-appraisal and, in fact, celebration of my learning and what I’d gained over the period. I realise that what was missing for me was an appraisal of the understanding and application gained from the actual ‘experience’ of learning. I also accept that my likely ‘mindset’ at that point in time influenced this outcome and a key part of this was my responsibility to make it happen. My own journey in becoming an accredited executive and team coach (in 2004) and the way in which I both viewed and approached the formal written assessments turned this around for me.

As specified in your Portfolio Guide, the EMCC Practitioner accreditation has stringent criteria as you would expect.  And, in doing so it actively encourages and promotes ‘positioning’ your submission as a critical review and consolidation for future application in current or new roles, for example, as internal or external coaches; as ‘managers/leaders as Coach’.

As Chief Examiner internally, I am keen that as participants on the EMCC Practitioner programme, you:

• appreciate your portfolio completion as a practical and integral programme component
• capitalise on your time investment (given work, family and personal commitments)
• gain personal ‘added value’.

The aim of this webinar is to:

• supplement details provided in your Portfolio Guide
• clarify the intent and meaning of various key elements of the assessment
• highlight how the programme coverage meets the required assessment criteria
• help you to harness what you have gained on your journey throughout the programme
• share some examples of how others have utilised their work roles and contexts

The intention is that you will feel more encouraged about this aspect of the programme and, also, recognise how this can add positively to your ongoing developmental journey as a Coach.

For more of Sandra’s thoughts and advice on completing the portfolio, you can watch her free webinar on 21 May. The webinar has been designed to offer you an opportunity to:

• reflect on your own learning journey as a Coach to date
• consider the various ways how you may best relay this in your submission in order to
• meet the required criteria
• provide you with added value beyond this point (personally and/or professionally).

You can register for Sandra's webinar here. If you are attending the webinar we suggest that you prepare some questions in advance which you will be able to pose (via chat facility) during the session.

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Some interesting findings on stress, health and wellbeing

A quick post this, but we thought we'd share some interesting findings from a recent Towers Watson Study confirming that stress, health and wellbeing schemes are a key focus for organisations. 

The Tower Watson research shows that among businesses which measured well-being, 98 per cent felt that stress was an issue for their workforce, with a similar percentage - 97 per cent- believing work-life balance was also a problem.

You can read more about the research findings on the CIPD website . 

We have been supporting organisations for some time in developing leadership behaviour and capability (style, emotional intelligence and resilience) to enhance team and organisational wellbeing. We see the leader's role as a critical intervention to promote wellbeing in the workplace and this is of course is a particular challenge in the current context, where leaders and their teams must cope with unprecedented demands and pressures.

If you are interested in discussing any of this further with us, don't hesitate to contact us today.

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A CPD workshop on our team and leadership diagnostic tools - would this be of interest?

We are considering running a continuing professional development (CPD) workshop to certificate attendees on our team and leadership diagnostic tools - we'd love it if you could let us know if this is something that would be of interest to you (just email your thoughts to Damion Wonfor).

The tools in question are our 360 degree feedback tools, our team climate survey and our team and executive team performance accelerator tools (you can find out all about these on the resources section of our site). The intention of the workshop would be:

• provide participants with training to interpret, administer and facilitate 1-2-1 and team sessions using these tools
• provide some additional coach training on using tools during coaching. 

If this CPD workshop would be something that would interest you, just email Damion Wonfor at damion@theperformancecoach.com with your thoughts / questions.

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If you would like to receive more content from The Performance Coach, including blog posts like this one and a host of other coaching and leadership development resources, you can

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Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any queries about how we can help your organisation, or read about our free coaching consultations and sessions here.