Seven Reasons Therapists Move Into Coaching
Lately we’ve had many therapists join our programs. They already have a well-developed skill set, which they want to transition into the world of coaching. The therapists joining the Global Coaching Institute bring acute insights and contagious passion to their new profession. Given that I used to be a therapist, I’m curious why so many […]
Coaching Leaders to Become Boundary Riders
Leadership by definition requires the ability to navigate at the edge of a system, to scan the external environment for new opportunities and internally understand the people and resources one is charged with leading. It is a balancing act. Leaders who pull it off have the capacity to be part of the system and […]
Discovering Your Signature Presence
We’ve spoken in previous posts about the importance of understanding your own true nature and becoming more authentically who you are in the world. For coaches, this is critical to effective business success. Knowing who you are, your unique drivers and gifts, your coaching style, and anti-style, provide insight into your signature presence. Leaders and […]
The Coach As An Instrument of Change
At the Global Coaching Institute we firmly believe that the coach is an instrument of change. The way you show up. The way you know yourself. The way you hold yourself. And the way you engage with others is central to supporting their growth. Becoming a coach is a powerful path of personal growth […]
Diversity Awareness: Activism or Coaching?
Many years ago at one of the International Coaching Conferences, I had a great conversation with then International Chair of the ICF Damian Glodvarg. We were discussing diversity at the time and the coach’s role in raising issues of racism in an organisation, when it was not on the client’s radar. My concern was that […]
Why Masterful Coaching Looks Simple
Have you ever watched a truly masterful coach in action? They make it look effortless!! Masterful coaches surrender to their coaching practice. They embody the role and in doing so have made it their own. Their practice can appear so seamless that it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what they’re doing. […]
Why Bridging Diverse Work Styles is so Challenging
Each of us has a way of being in the world that reflects our personality. If you are a leader this will manifest as your leadership style. If you are a coach, understanding your client’s learning and workstyle will inform your coaching approach. Even the seemingly simplest orientation, such as whether we are more task-oriented […]
What are Coaching Metaskills and Why Are They Essential?
Excellence in every profession is based on two things: skills and metaskills. Coaching is no different. Skills are capabilities you need to perform your role. Without them you wouldn’t last long. Core coaching skills are things like: deep listening focused questioning giving feedback Having a strong mastery of these coaching skills is crucial. However, […]
The Masterful Application of Coaching Metaskills
One of the hallmarks of truly masterful coaches is the depth of their metaskills. It’s not simply a matter of what they do, but how they do it that is exceptional. They bring an agility to the coaching conversation that matches the client and the situation precisely. As a coach, certain ‘feeling attitudes’ permeate our […]
Five Signs You’re Coaching As A Change Agent
Are you coaching as a dynamic change agent with your clients, or marking time? There are five signs, we’ve come to recognise in coaches who are powerful change agents. 1. Being Awake To The Deep Vision Change agents help others connect with their deepest visions. They hold a space for people to believe in and […]
Developing Precision in Coaching
At the Global Coaching Institute we believe one of the markers of an advanced coach is their precision. What do we mean by that? Imagine you’re a patient about to undergo surgery. Do you want your surgeon to open you up and go rummaging around for a problem? No. You want to know that your […]
Masters of Change
These days leaders need to be masters of change, capable of both inner agility and leading others on transformational journeys. The role of an executive coach is to help leaders build these capabilities. They support leaders to understand the dynamics of change from the inside-out. Process-oriented coaches and change agents bring unique expertise to understanding […]
Coaching the Undiscussables
Tracking the Conversational Flow In any executive coaching conversation, process-oriented coaches track where the leader’s attention naturally goes. We pay attention to the leader’s apparent comfort zone or for specific signs of agitation and discomfort. It usually indicates an opportunity for growth. The same applies when facilitating or coaching leadership teams. We pay attention to […]
Developing Precision in Coaching
With the coaching marketplace becoming increasingly sophisticated, coaches and organizational consultants need to articulate how they add value for their clients. At the Global Coaching Institute we believe one important marker of an advanced coach is their precision. Here’s what we mean by that: Coaching with Precision Imagine you are a patient about to have […]
Coaching with Precision in a Time-Poor World
Having coaching precision allows one to work with speed. And if there’s one thing that most organisational leaders are short on these days its time. It’s not that you want to push clients to results, it’s just that you don’t want to waste time coaching toward dead-ends. Here are three essential practices for coaching with […]
The Breath-Takingly Powerful Coach
For anyone who wants to stand out in the coaching marketplace, a key question is: What differentiates a good coach and a breath-takingly powerful coach? At the Global Coaching Institute we know there are a few important secrets to exceptional coaching. Precision leads to Mastery One of the characteristics that makes our graduates stand out, […]
Orange Kombi Dreaming: The Journey To Become A Coach
One of our Australian students, Lisa Klug, wrote to us about the outer and inner journeys she embarked on as a GCI student and now graduate. With her permission we share her story with you – as an illustration of the breakthroughs process-oriented coaches achieve as a direct result of their capacity to work with […]
Coaching is Situational
Imagine a CEO who is new to an industry sector, yet charged with providing strategic insight and direction. Or an aspirational leader who doesn’t have a firm grasp on organisational politics. Both these leaders need to orient themselves – and quickly – to how their sector and organisations work. Being able to read one’s environment […]
Choosing the Right Coach Training
I’m happy to introduce this guest post by Enric Arola, who joined our coaching intensive in Portland, Oregon, USA. Enric and his team at In-Movement have invited us to deliver our ICF accredited coach training programs in Barcelona. How to choose the coach training program that’s right for you Coaching is a discipline deeply rooted in […]
Lessons From South Africa on Systemic Coaching
I’m writing this post from South Africa – a country I first visited shortly after the Soweto Student Uprising; a key moment in the fight against Apartheid. As a young 17-year old leaving Australia for the first time, I found myself in a society so different from my own that my senses were alert to […]
Becoming a Coach: Stop Being the Expert
In earlier posts I have written about a central tenet of coaching which states the client is whole, capable and resourceful. Nothing brings this home quite so much as working with senior executives who hold levels of organisational and industry insight that few coaches could hope to match. The gift of being outranked by an executive’s […]
The Unequal Risks of Transparency in a Discriminating World
With renewed debate in Australia about gay marriage, I am reminded of it’s impact on individuals, as well as the mainstream’s inability to appreciate diversity in sexual orientation. I wrote this piece about the intersection of discrimination and mental health a little while ago. I’m posting it again here because sadly we haven’t yet learnt […]
“Why Can’t They Think More Strategically?” – Power and Goal Orientation
Have you ever complained that your staff aren’t strategic enough? Have you ever wondered why those who report to you seem slow to see the bigger picture or are unable to cut through the minutiae and constant operational demands? People in positions of power tend to be goal-oriented. Research confirms that people with high power […]
Stay Awake To The Sub-text
Listening as a coach isn’t always about taking everything your client tells you as verbatim. In adopting a process oriented approach to coaching, we are called to pay attention to what is happening in the moment. It’s not just the content of the client’s narrative that is rich, but also the subtext. The client may […]
Coaching With Emergence & A Systems Perspective
At GCI we are all about working with emergence, but what exactly do we mean by that? Emergence is a characteristic of nature It’s about what’s already beginning to happen. Emergence is about new growth, as well as understanding what has had its time and is beginning to die back. Sometimes these tendencies are so […]
What’s the Difference Between Therapy and Coaching?
As regular readers know, a significant number of our coaching students are psychologists, social workers or therapists expanding their service offering to coaching. But what exactly is the difference? At GCI we work intensively with therapists, many of whom are at the top of their game, and equally committed to becoming highly skilled coaches. This […]
Taking the Next Steps
Do you have a dream you would like to bring into the world? Do you have an idea you want to make real? Recently I was asked to speak and demonstrate coaching at an International Processwork Online Community meeting. I was delighted to coach Catharine MacDonald on her vision: to support IT sector organisations benefit from […]
History is Not in the Past
As coaches, being aware of the many influences that shape our clients’ lives is critical. These influences include social and historical experiences that aren’t apparent at first glance. Along with several of our graduates, Vicki and I are preparing for a trip to Greece for a process-oriented seminar called Worldwork. These seminars are organized every couple […]
The Drive to Become a Coach: A Personal Story
Lately Vicki and I have had requests to share more about how we entered the world of coaching. Here’s the path I took, and Vicki’s story will follow shortly. My own trajectory into coaching began as an occupational therapist specialising in psychological injury in the workplace. You could say fate positioned me at the intersection […]
Coaching The DNA of Organisations
Edgar Schein, author of the ground-breaking text ‘Organisational Culture and Leadership’ is fondly known as the grandfather of organisational development. Over the years Schein began to think and speak in terms of the DNA of an organisation, or its cultural genome. He argued that we can’t simply transplant notions of how to improve culture from […]
Process-Oriented Coaching
As coaches we are consistently called to debunk the trap of being an expert. Of course being an expert is seductive; it strokes our egos. But we are called to put our egos and expertise aside. We are here to honor our clients’ inherent wisdom, as it’s revealed through their emerging process; a dynamic, changing and shifting event. […]
Taking Coaching to the Streets
Since the Women’s Marches in cities across the USA and around the world I have been heartened and inspired by all the women and men taking to the streets to advocate for their vision of a just and inclusive world. The images on social media brought me to tears. The spirit and resilience of those […]
Being Our Role Models
Who are your role models? What do you love most about them? How have they inspired you? One of my role models is my former high school principal, John Tindley, an approachable and progressive leader who was out and about in the school yard chatting with us on a regular basis. However, what comes to […]
What Lens are You Looking Through?
Have you ever considered your origins and the way they’ve influenced your approach to life and your work? I began my professional life as an Occupational Therapist, so when I connected this morning with a group of OTs who have all become coaches it was like coming home. We spoke a language we all immediately […]
The Coaching & Transformation Roadmap
Coaches are miners who go to work each day armed with acute observation skills and powerful questions. We work with respect with our clients to reveal their interior worlds; the thoughts, feelings, mindsets and motivations that underpin their decisions and inspire their capabilities. We are privy to our clients’ aspirations.We learn about the worlds they […]
What Do You Really Want?
When Vicki and I first launched the Global Coaching Institute we debated for quite a time about whether we should offer advanced or foundational coach training programs. We went back and forward but no solution really satisfied us. And so the conversations went round and round. You know the feeling! We were caught in a false polarity. False polarities […]
Addressing the Amygdala Hijack
During my early career as a therapist rehabilitating people after brain injuries and stroke, I became fascinated by the workings of the brain. These years taught me a lot about what happens when things start going haywire. It’s an understanding I still value as a coach… Leaders need to be able to think clearly. We expect them to […]
Coaching, Flea Markets and Identity
Recently I went to the Camberwell market in Melbourne. It’s a fabulous place, full of old discarded bric-a-brac, furniture, records and clothing deemed to be of little value to the original owner. The same items can prove to be treasure for those who discover them. All it takes is a little imagination and know-how to […]
Coaching For Change
Building coaching cultures in organisations is increasingly being recognised as a way to optimise staff engagement and buy-in. Over the past few years we’ve been training leaders and managers to use a coaching approach to help their workforce adjust and navigate rapidly changing environments. Rather than endlessly explaining organisational change or blindly reassuring employees, leaders […]
Thriving In Disruptive Environments
We are living in an era of disruption, in which rapid technological change demands a radical rethink of the ways we do business and how we live our lives. Are you open to new opportunities and able to harness the potential within unexpected events? Are you an early adopter or do you regard the […]
Welcoming the New Year
The New Year naturally lends itself to thoughts of what you want for the year and possibly years ahead. Without a doubt the person who’s had the most influence on us when it comes to visioning is Robert Fritz. Fritz argues that most people limit themselves when it comes to visioning. They focus on what […]
The Push and Pull of Change
The events and motivations that bring clients, whether individuals or teams to coaching can be thought of as either a push or pull force. At the Global Coaching Institute we use the terms attractors and disturbances to describe those forces that provide the impetus to action. Let’s define these terms: Attractors Attractors appear as visions, dreams or […]
