Coaching Researchers Join the Drive to Collaborate
By Mark Joyella

2010: Coaching's Year of Collaboration?

In February, we told you about the cooperation taking root between coaching's dominant associations, with the ICF, IAC, WABC and EMCC all putting cooperation and collaboration among their top priorities in the new year.

Now, add coaching researchers to that list.

"We've just begun the journey," said Kerryn Griffiths, who's representing the IAC in a unique partnership among coaching associations-to collaborate on coaching research.

The effort, which brings together the International Association of Coaching (IAC), International Coach Federation (ICF), Global Coaching Community (GCC) and The Institute of Coaching (IoC), aims to do two things: to inform coaches about the wide range of coaching research being done around the world, and to ensure that by sharing notes and staying in close contact-not isolation-researchers won't cover the same ground. Read story.

March Quote

"So not just any talk is conversation; not just any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge-it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates. It keeps on talking in your mind later in the day. Your mind has been moved. That reverberation afterwards is the very raising of consciousness. A conversation turns things around"

- James Hillman                                                     

Who is James Hillman?

Delivering a "Coaching Toolbox" to the Remote Villages of the World
By Mark Joyella

Pat Williams wants to build a toolbox-a basic coaching kit that could be delivered to the smallest villages in the most remote parts of the world. The toolbox, he believes, would give people in those places an enduring gift-a chance to use coaching to change their lives.

"Here's the essential coaching skills that you could use in purposeful conversation with people when you're struggling with the biggest challenges of your village," says Williams, whose nonprofit, Coaching the Global Village, aims to use coaching to "create innovative solutions to pressing global challenges."  Read more.

Start Each Day with the Coaching Headlines

Foundation for International Leadership Coaching
By Lew Stern

Our world is in a time of extraordinary challenges which create unprecedented opportunities for change. We need effective international leadership more than ever before. As leadership coaches we cannot wait for those leaders to appear.

The new non-profit Foundation for International Leadership Coaching, seeks to address a serious unmet need. Many government and international non-governmental organization leaders are uniquely situated to have positive impact on the future of our world, but have no access to sophisticated leadership coaching.
 
The Foundation for International Leadership Coaching is in the process of creating a network of senior leadership coaches around the world who are donating their time (one-half day per month) and expertise to this cause.

Beginning in July, 2010, international leaders who lack the access to, funding for, or cannot overcome political barriers to coaching, will have access to our coaching network. They will be able to anonymously request coaching referrals through our website to coaches who can best meet their needs. The Foundation has recruited a distinguished Board of Advisors with experts in many fields who have agreed to serve as resources to the coaches. Read story. 

How Coaching Works: Flow
by Margaret Moore

Watch How Coaching Works: A short (3:47 minute) video on You Tube

We released a movie titled "How Coaching Works" as a way to explain coaching, via YouTube, using an animated cartoon. This blog series aims to share the psychological underpinnings of the coach approach demonstrated in the carton and utilized by master coaches.

One key to masterful coaching is the idea of being "in flow." This happens in two ways in the coaching relationship:

1) Flow in the relationship between the coach and the client; a dance-like conversation in which both parties are fully engaged and stretched and neither is controlling the dance.

2) Flow in the relationship between the client and the client's wellness goals; in other words, finding goals which match their level of readiness and confidence while stretching their skills. Read more.

Coaching History: Cheryl Richardson - Personal Development Guru
by Vikki Brock

Cheryl Richardson, in her own words, "had been working as a tax consultant in the late 1980s, specializing in small business development, and she discovered that a lot of life planning questions and issues would come up as a result of that work." She joined Coach University in 1992 and soon afterward changed careers.

The first president of the ICF in 1996, she also appeared in the December 1996 New Age magazine story. Two years later, in December of 1998, she authored a life-coaching book that appeared on the New York Times best seller list. As she put it, "I wanted to bring coaching to the personal development arena because I knew that's where people would be most open to it." Read story.

March Coaching Question: From Emma-Louise Elsey

"Where do YOU add stress to your life?"

Read more of our reader list of brilliant coaching questions.(And submit your own!) 

Research Update: Coaching Guides Cancer Survivors to Better Health
by Mark Joyella

Most coaches would argue passionately that coaching changes lives. But does coaching save lives?

New research suggests wellness coaching may make significant strides for recovering cancer patients, putting them on track for healthier, longer lives. "We are excited about our initial results," said Dr. Mary Lou Galantino, a professor at Stockton College and Adjunct Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who was the principal investigator on the new study.

The study, published in the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, is among the first to test the efficacy of wellness coaching, a recent field of coaching based on the "growing science of coaching psychology which draws from 15 or more theories or evidence-based domains," according to the report. Read story.

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