AoEC Autumn 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to our Autumn issue and we hope you take some time to enjoy the articles and updates. We offer the first in a series of articles written by pioneering coach Aboodi Shabi, fantastic contributions from some of our graduates plus a robust recommended reading section for this issue.

Do continue to send us your comments and suggestions and we hope that you enjoy this issue.

Challenging us to look differently at our Coaching profession – By Aboodi Shabi

Aboodi Shabi has written a series of four articles, previously published in Coaching at Work, united by the ‘theme’ of challenging us to think differently about our coaching profession. Please read the first two articles in the series, and look out for the final two in our next newsletter.

Aboodi Shabi is one of the UK's most senior coaches and a pioneer and leader in the UK and European Coaching community. He has facilitated two sell-out workshops for the AoEC on ‘The Art of Masterful Coaching’.

Leadership Coaching: Should We Coach to Cure or Coach to Prevent? By Joanita Bonnier

There are enough reasons why today’s leaders lie awake at night: economic downturn, information overload, 24/7 time demands, driving shareholders value, disengaged workforce, exhaustion etc. Although we should not hold current leaders solely responsible for the economic crisis and the pressures that are intensified by it, they are the ones who must lead their teams out of the crisis to a better and more engaging New Place.

Joanita Bonnier, a graduate of the AoEC’s Practitioner Diploma programme, reveals how these new leaders will need our experience, suggestions for alternative direction, support, coaching along the journey as they build the new people oriented, engaged organizations of the future. As we coach to prevent future problems we will, at the same time, provide a cure for the economic illnesses for long into the future.

Being Weird, Somatic Cognitive Coaching and Nick Kitchen – By Ann George

Techniques surrounding executive coaching are constantly developing to ensure effective, long lasting results. Somatic Cognitive Coaching is the latest string to executive coach Ann’s bow, providing a theoretical basis to her natural coaching style. Somatic Cognitive Coaching reveals the known, but unconscious information through the interpretation of the whole body.

Ann George, a graduate of the AoEC’s Somatic Cognitive Coaching programme, is an innovative executive coach, specialising in Emergent Knowledge and Clean Language Questioning techniques in individual coaching and group training. She has a background in NLP, and an inquisitive enthusiasm for the latest coaching techniques led her to Nick Kitchen’s Somatic Cognitive Coaching. This article follows her journey from discovery to implementation of Kitchen’s techniques.

Approaches to Coach Selection: Science or Intuition? By Alan Littlefield

Finding the right coach in a growing and diverse market can be a tough call as there is a bewildering array of possible coaches. Coaches have lots of different backgrounds – they can be ex‐executives, HR professionals, occupational psychologists, self‐help enthusiasts, management consultants and psychotherapists. Each coach will use their own blend of skills, knowledge, experience and training to create their unique coaching approach. So how can you see the perfect coach amongst the eager masses? Should your choice be based on your intuitive feel for who has the ‘chemistry’ to work with you? Or, should you scientifically analyse a set of criteria to find the perfect match?

Alan Littlefield is a graduate of the AoEC’s Psychology of Coaching Certificate and is the Lead Coach for HR solutions provider Kenexa.

Recommended Reading

101 FAQs about Coaching – By Maggie João

101 FAQs about Coaching is the result of extensive research and consultation with other coaches with different levels of experience, career paths, and nationalities. This book discusses questions and doubts about:

• Administrative issues affecting coaches
• Day to day challenges
• Issues affecting business growth

Published by AuthorHouse, available at Amazon.

Maggie João is an Executive and Life Coach accredited by the International Institute of Coaching and the Academy of Executive Coaching. She is a graduate of the AoEC’s Practitioner Diploma.

Access your Greatness: By Dr. Karl Anthony Birthistle

With strong conviction, raw simplicity and heartfelt authenticity, Karl explains how great we can become through taking charge of our life. It is the ‘rigorous logic’ and deep self-examination of his own life that serves as the well-spring for his beliefs and ideas. This is not an intellectual, cross-referenced justification or comparison with other philosophies; so you are left to draw parallels with your own life-experience and other writers on the human condition.

Access your Greatness was published last month by Ecademy Press. Click on the link below to read the full foreword, written by John Leary-Joyce.

Karl Birthistle is a graduate of the AoEC on a variety of programmes, most notably the Practitioner and Advanced Practitioner Diploma in Executive Coaching.

CIPD’s latest Coaching Climate survey report for 2011

This survey was started in 2009 to help HR professionals and coaches working with HR to deliver coaching and mentoring and to develop the evidence base on practice. They also wanted to expand and deepen the coverage of coaching beyond what was possible in their annual Learning and Talent Development survey. Now they are delivering it for the second time. Reflecting back, it is interesting to see how things have changed and how coaching is developing within organisations.