PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED

Is there Magic in Silence?

Returning for a second year, the topic of our January event is all about exploring the use of silence in our coaching. We are all familiar with the levels of listening, how that "third level", the deeper level, occurs often when we keep silent for our coachees. This session will challenge us to take this concept further to enhance both our client's experience and our performance as a Coach.

We're delighted and hugely grateful to have two of the wonderful AoEC faculty, John Gray and Kay Young as our facilitators for this virtual workshop event. 

John and Kay have been exploring the concepts of the use of silence to help create powerful, maybe one could call magical, moments of transformation in the coaching process.

Here, John and Kay's words bring some context for what we will be exploring on the 28th January and maybe start to stir our creative curiosity:-

“Silence: the only door that opens you into the possibility, where you allow the world to find you.” (David Whyte)

Both new and experienced coaches know that silence is a key part of effective coaching.

The revised ICF coaching competencies twice refer to silence.

1 - Coaches should be able to “Create or allow space for silence, pause or reflection” so that the coach can be “fully conscious and present with the client, employing a style that is open, flexible, grounded and confident” (Competency 5).

2 - And Competency 7: “Facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor or analogy.”

From a more philosophical standpoint: for the spoken word to be heard, for thoughts to form themselves, for internal experiences and insights to be noticed by the brain, there must be an absence of noise and other distracting activities.

And from a relational perspective, we know that a trusting, ‘held’ space can itself be transformational: not the absence of something, but instead a collaborative and creative force.

So in all these ways, silence becomes not just a demonstration of competence, but also a key coaching practice, and a chance for the unknown-but-significant to arise for both coachee and coach.

Facilitated by two cheeerleaders of active silence in coaching, John and Kay will be giving us a chance to play with and experience silence in coaching in a creative and exploratory way.

Event Details