Coach Express

by Kurt Stewart

My first “assignment” after joining the management team earlier this year was to read The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey Jr., which I thought said everything about what ICA stands for.

In the book, Covey shows that, where there is trust, built on what he calls the 4 cores of Credibility, (integrity,intent,capabilities and results), the speed at which things move will increase and the cost of conducting business will decrease. When working with organizations, Covey asks clients the following three questions:

• How would you describe a low-trust organization?
• How would you describe a high-trust organization?
• Which description best represents your organization?

As I read through the list of behaviours that describe a high-trust organization, I was struck with how the criteria matched my view of ICA. Being a newcomer to the group, my perspective on ICA as an organization is still fresh. So I thought it would be interesting to reflect this back to our team in one of our “trust exercises” - team building exercises that are a regular part of our meetings. This was my way of acknowledging what I believe to be our greatest asset: a group of people who are consciously creating high trust to move us all - management, trainers and our ever-growing group of students and alumni - forward.

Here is the list of “high-trust” behaviours that Covey highlights:

• Information is shared openly
• Mistakes are tolerated and encouraged as a way of learning
• The culture is innovative and creative
• People are loyal to those who are absent
• People talk straight and confront real issues
• There is real communication and collaboration
• People share credit abundantly
• There are few “meetings after meetings”
• Transparency is a practical value
• People are candid and authentic
• There is high degree of accountability
• There is a palpable vitality and energy - people feel the positive momentum

Anyone who has ever worked in a “low-trust” organization will know what that looks like: no transparency, people are afraid to speak openly, information is withheld and there is little collaboration between individuals and groups.

So like all good coaches, we at ICA have to keep asking ourselves: are we walkin’ the talk here? How, as a company, are these behaviours showing up? And is our community of students experiencing them at an every day, practical level as they train to become coaches?  Thanks to all the student feedback we get, I think I can answer yes to that last question. It’s what Covey calls the “trust dividend” - a benefit that comes from acting with integrity, good intent, capabilities and - importantly for our students - results. The results we see every year as more and more of our graduates go out into the world and make a difference.

Now as ICA grows and begins to offer training in other languages and cultures the challenge is to keep trying to add to that list of high trust behaviours. Going forward, we will need to continue building trust across cultures in China, Latin America and Europe.  It’s an exciting challenge and with the support of our great multi-cultural community of students, we trust we’ll meet it.

Kurt Stewart

by Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland

I have recently been thinking about the notion of being a leader and I feel as though the role is more about providing a service to all employees and customers at the company than anything else. Many books I have read over the years often talk about the leader as being the visionary, the person who holds the light high above so all can see when at times it may seem dark, and the path forward uncertain. Although this holds meaning for me, it is the stuff between the lines that I could never relate to. There are examples of leaders being great figures who were to be admired,  and for some, even worshipped. I think this perception has also been supported by the media, as we see leaders being heroes, with great wealth and status.

The short answer for me is that Leadership is all about being a provider of a service. Just as everyone at International Coach Academy has a role to provide a service, my role differs only in that I am here to provide a service to employees and customers. My role is to support people in what they do. Certainly, leaders are also the holders of the vision and many other skills. (more…)

By Robyn Logan
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to be a guest on Tom Floyd’s “insight on Coaching” Internet radio show. I was joined by Larry Magid, Derrick Sorles and Dave Taylor with Tom Floyd as the impeccable host

We discussed the growth of web 2.0 technologies and the principles and philosophies behind them. Tom sent me the full transcript of the show which I will link to below, and you can also listen to it here:

	Dowwnload Full Transcript
	Listen to Audio Recording

I would also like to share with you the discussion we had at the end about the role of web 2.0 technologies in business and coaching. (more…)

Can you relate to any of the following statements?

- You have committed yourself to your current profession for many years, but you are starting to think more and more about going out on your own
- You know you’d make a good coach, you’re just not sure about the business side of things
- You are the sort of person that others naturally come to for advice and support, you always have been.

If the answer is ‘Yes’, then we invite you to join a special ‘Become a Coach’ teleconference.

Teleconference: Wednesday, 20th February at 8.30pm NY EST

Register now –> http://tinyurl.com/28auub

Please scroll down the list to find the capital city closest to you.

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By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland

On the 29th December 2007 my family and I embarked on a new journey. We packed up all our worldly goods and moved to Shanghai. We spent the first few weeks travelling and staying in serviced apartments. The time came when we all strongly felt the need to find a place of our own to call ‘home’.

So the hunt for an apartment began and eventually we found the ‘perfect’ place for us to live. We have all settled into it remarkably well, enjoying exploring the new space and designing the layout of each room. It was at this point of our journey that I started to notice that being in a new space and a new country gave me some distance to observe myself. This may sound like a rather unusual thing to say. The reason why I say it is because we live so close to our behaviours and patterns of life that we are inseparable from them and therefore cannot always ’see’ what we do.

Moving to a new place is a little like placing your life under the microscope or magnifying it. When you place your patterns of behaviour into a new context they automatically change. The context in and of itself creates the change.

But let me give you an example of what I mean and it is not an example based on a business activity but an everyday domestic activity.

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By Robyn Logan

Yesterday will forever be known as “Apology Day” in Australian history. On this day, Wednesday 15th of February 2008, the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia stood up in parliament and delivered a public apology to the indigenous people of this country. Much of the content of Kevin Rudd’s apology was directed towards acknowledging the wrongs done to the “stolen generation” by previous governments. These are people who were affected by various government policies and laws that saw up to 100,000 Aboriginal children taken forcibly from their families between 1910 and 1975 and placed in Church or state institutions. Most were under 5 years old and many went on to experience terrible abuse in their new homes.

The indigenous people of Australia have requested an apology for a long time. For many Australians it represents the first crucial step to real reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and a fresh opportunity to work together towards finding pragmatic solutions for the material disparities currently experienced by indigenous communities. Yet former Prime Minister John Howard steadfastly refused to issue a formal apology during his more than 11 years at the helm. The closest he ever came was to express “deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations”.

Yesterday’s apology went much much further than that. Kevin Rudd did two key things. First, he acknowledged that atrocious events actually took place and that the physical and emotional damage to those involved was profound and lasting, not just to them but to the wider indigenous community. The second thing he did was to repeatedly and clearly say three simple words “I am sorry”.

Here is an excerpt from his speech:

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By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland

This article first appeared in the WABC, Business Coaching Worldwide ezine, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2006.

I am sometimes surprised to learn that coaches are failing to gather a range of information from their clients prior to the commencement of the coaching process. In the absence of such information, how is it possible to calculate ROI?

In the early 70’s, Donald Kirkpatrick introduced a model for evaluating the benefits of training. This same model is used today by training and human resources departments to evaluate the ROI of coaching. The model has four levels:

1. Reaction: How well did the client like the coaching?
2. Learning: What principles, facts and techniques did the client learn?
3. Behaviour: What changes in job behaviour resulted from the coaching?
4. Results: What were the quantitative results of the coaching in terms of reduced costs, improved performance, improved efficiency, etc?

Each level in the model requires information form both the client and the organization. In order to be of value, the information must be gathered before, during and after the coaching process. (more…)

With Alex Mandossian and Lou D’Alo

Those of you who are familiar with ICA trainer Lou D’Alo will not be surprised to see that he has hooked up with undisputed teleseminar heavyweight champ Alex Mandossian.

Inspired by what he learned in Alex’s Teleseminar Secrets course, Lou rapidly built a bustling coaching business using teleseminars and joint ventures as virtually his only marketing strategies and now teaches his clients and subscribers to do the same.

Now, Alex has agreed to do a one-time private and exclusive call with Lou especially for coaches. Because you’re part of the ICA community, you’re invited as a VIP guest.

This will be a content-rich 90 minutes especially for coaches, including a Q&A session where Alex will answer as many of your most important questions as possible.

You’ll learn the time-tested teleseminar secrets that will fill your client roster, build an endless stream of potential new clients, establish yourself as an authority, and create multiple passive streams of revenue - all from the comfort of your home.

For details of the event register here

In our weekly management meetings at International Coach Academy we spend the first 15 minutes of our meeting participating in an activity to develop greater trust in our team. We recognise that to achieve our goals we need to work effectively as a team and trust is one of our values. We also take it in turns to chair the meetings. This week it was my turn and part of being the chair is that you also facilitate the trust activity. I wanted to share this activity with you. (more…)

By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland
(CEO)

One of the reasons that coaching is such an interesting field is that it draws from a wide range of theories, philosophies and disciplines to create a unique professional practice. If coaching were a plant, it would be an exotic, variegated hybrid! Coaching is more than just the sum of its parts, however. While coaching has a theoretical history in adult learning theory, psychology, management theory, sociology and spirituality, it has also operated as a unique field for over 30 years now. Throughout that time, has developed its own theoretical framework.

At ICA we believe that coaching is its own unique field and should be studied as such. We think that, while coaches may bring skills and ideas with them from former fields and professions, no one field or profession has any greater claim to expertise in coaching than another. Having said that, however, as part of your understanding of coaching, it is useful to know a bit about its history and the theories it shares with other fields and disciplines.

Over the next few weeks I will be highlighting the theories that we believe inform coaching. To begin lets look at Adult Learning Theory.

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