Coaching and supervision

Co-active appreciative coaching is about

• believing in the client's own resourcefulness, wholeness and creativity
  
  
• believing in the client's potential to become more of who they are
  
  
• focusing on the best experiences of the past, bringing those into the present and creating the client's desired future
  
  
• developing appropriate strategies to do this
  
  
• creating awareness and options
  
  
• shifting limiting beliefs and embracing new life-giving beliefs to support the change
  
  
• ongoing learning and personal development
  
  

Benefits of coaching

• A strengthened sense of self - being more in touch with your own strengths and what’s important to you, having increased confidence and being comfortable with yourself and your way of thinking, feeling and behaving
  
  
• Developing inner resources – finding your personal strengths that offer resilience and a drive to move towards your desired future
  
  
• Tools to understand your patterns of communication and enable more authentic connection and communication
  
  
• Motivation to achieve goals that are wholesome and balanced
  
  
• Aligning your values to choices about your personal and professional living

Learning

Coaching is learning. My passion is enabling learning in its richest sense –for me learning is transformational and is what brings people to a greater sense of who they are and what gifts and strengths they can own themselves and offer to others. The philosophy of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) helps me to focus on what goes well in people – what excites them and makes them feel most alive. I use TA in my coaching as a powerful framework for people to understand themselves and their interpersonal dynamics and to discover new options and make choices that lead to fulfilled, dynamic and authentic lives. Kolb’s Learning Cycle informs my way of enabling learning –people have Experience of something, they Reflect on it and make some sense of it by Conceptualising what happened. This then leads them to choose to Experiment with doing it differently and this leads to the next new Experience.

People with whom I work

I have been privileged to work with people from a great diversity of backgrounds, both in South Africa, London and Ireland. I am energized by building connection with people, whether they are from large corporates or work as rural community health care workers. The spark that draws me to work with people is their desire to grow, their willingness to be authentic and open and prepared to claim their responsibility in shaping their futures. I work with self-motivated people who want to discover more about themselves and also impact the communities in which they live and work. My clients have a connection with their spiritual selves, however they might express that and are open to learn practices of mindfulness and other techniques, that enable them to be more and more in touch with themselves and fully present in each moment.

Style and process of coaching

I combine co-active coaching, appreciative coaching and Transactional Analysis in my coaching. I believe that each client is creative, resourceful and whole and that together we co-create a powerful process that enables clients to make their desired change. I seek to create a trusting space and building a connection with clients which provides safety for their exploration and learning. There is a continuum between supporting and challenging the client – the magic comes in making the most appropriate choices each moment. I hold the space and the client’s goal – the client explores their best experiences of their past, brings those into the present and then creates a vision for their desired future when their core values and strengths will be more and more present. I hold an openness and curiosity for what will emerge, without any pre-conceived ideas of what should be. I am comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing quite what might happen in each session and hold the “unsettledness” that sometimes accompanies new awareness and learning in clients. After a free introductory session where there is an opportunity for us to find out a bit about each other and design how we will work together, clients usually book a series of 6 to 12 sessions at mutually agreed intervals. I work from my studio in Rondebosch, Cape Town as well as travel to suitable public spaces across Cape Town. I also work on Skype.

Coach Supervision

Supervision is the most important aspect of a coach's continuing professional development. It maintains professional and ethical standards and supports personal growth. The supervisor is able to take a meta-perspective on all the parties involved and so bring perspective and see blind spots.

Supervision supports the ongoing psychological work of a coach, provides time for regular reflection, uses models to understand the process and enables new options. It is a major part of ensuring a positive and useful experience for the client.

In the rapidly growing coaching industry, knowing that the coach they hire is in regular supervision, is becoming one of the most important criteria for companies hiring coaches.

I offer a 30 minute complementary session for you to experience the value of supervision. After this, coaches usually have monthly supervision sessions.

Professional Coach Training

I am a coach trainer for Coaching Development in South Africa

We offer ICF accredited coach training programmes as both inhouse and public programmes