Coaching Skills for Managers – 5 day programme

Intro
Our 5 day Coaching Skills for Managers course is a popular starting point for people wishing to take the first step on the executive coaching ladder. It is accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) at the ’Manager as Coach’ Foundation level.

The course can be delivered in its ‘pure’ format or tailored to meet clients’ specific organisational needs. These might include enabling culture change or for performance improvement.

Objectives
Course delegates will receive:

  1. A clear understanding of what it means to adopt a coaching mindset and how this can facilitate performance improvement
  2. Development of a number of key coaching skills that will enable you to have more impactful conversations with direct reports, peers and others
  3. Development of more advanced coaching approaches to help you support others in specific situations e.g. leadership
  4. An understanding of how to apply coaching approaches in the workplace – what is the place of coaching conversations at work, how do they align with the organisational culture, what behaviours are required?
  5. Support you to grow your competence and confidence as a coach through coaching demonstrations and lots of coach practice.

These are brought to life through the three main elements of the programme:

  1. Participation and learning during the 5 days of the workshop
  2. Support to help delegates practice and learn back in the work place
  3. The completion of an assignment which is based upon delegates’ practice and learning.

Programme Content
The following content is core to satisfying the certification requirements for the programme:

Coaching theory and principles – Relevant coaching concepts and models, tools and techniques.

The coaching relationship – How to create a supportive yet challenging environment that produces trust, respect and the conditions for learning and development.

Critical coaching skills – The full spectrum of coaching skills, non-directive to directive, both basic and advanced including listening, questioning, feedback, challenging, goal setting, awareness raising, etc.

The key aspects of a coaching session – How to develop the coaching session working with the client’s story, their thought processes, their emotions and the coach’s use of self.

A process for effective coaching – Good coaching process, good coaching method, the skills, experience and commitment of the coach, the coaching relationship, the coachability of the client and boundary management.

The key applications of coaching in the organisational context – Coaching for performance, coaching for leadership development, coaching for behavioural change, coaching for emotional intelligence, team coaching and coaching for culture change.

Methods of Learning
Shared learning and feedback
The workshops are at the heart of the learning experience. They provide a powerful focus for shared learning and experience and act as a springboard for the self-directed aspect of the programme. As well as learning the theory and practice of organisational coaching, delegates strongly appreciate the personal development dimension to these workshops and the support they get from each another which often continues long after the programme has been delivered. They are feedback-rich learning environments.

Coach practice/feedback sessions
These are held at each workshop and are often rated by delegates as the most important element of the total learning experience. Group members normally work in groups of 3 or 4. Course tutors rotate between the groups. Each group member alternates between the role of coach, coachee and observer and coaching sessions focus on genuine issues from the delegates’ coaching agendas, not role plays. It is through the coach practice sessions that real work issues will be worked through with benefits being felt back in the workplace by colleagues and by the organisation as a whole. This method of learning, sometimes referred to as the ‘Practicum’, has been a core aspect of our approach to developing trainers and coaches over nearly twenty years.

Coaching demonstration sessions
At every workshop, a course tutor either invites a member of the group to volunteer for a coaching demonstration session, again on a genuine issue or one of our coaching demo DVD’s is shown. This gives the group an opportunity to see the coaching method in practice. There is a review of the learning immediately following the session. These demonstrations are held just prior to the coach practice/feedback sessions to assist with preparation.

Coaching in between workshops
In between workshops, there is a requirement that delegates deliver 15 hours of peer/client coaching sessions. This is vital to building up coaching experience, competence and confidence. This also enables to coach to pass on their new skills to colleagues back in the workplace, thus creating a ‘ripple effect’.

Practicalities
The programme is generally structured around two workshops, the first a three day workshop followed by a two day workshop, run over a three month period. We can deliver the course over three workshops, the first and second being two days in length followed by a final one day workshop if required. The course comprises 35 training hours supplemented by reflective study and practice hours.

Each delegate will receive a course manual containing lots of useful information to guide them through the programme. We use a wide range of course materials including written inputs, articles, our Coach Competency Inventory (CCI), diagrams and models and coach practice feedback forms.

We would recommend that each cohort consists of a maximum of 12 delegates to build close learning networks and to allow time for each candidate to practice the models and skills covered by the programme.

Evaluation and Return on Investment
We work with clients to evaluate delegates’ perceptions of the course and its impact on their skill levels and practice back in the workplace.

Afterwards
People qualifying from this course can take an 11 day conversion course to attain the Postgraduate Certificate in Business & Executive Coaching award which is EMCC accredited at the Senior Practitioner level.

If you’d like to find out more, you can either request a call back or contact us directly.