Monthly Archives: February 2024

My experience with Co-Active Coaching Fundamentals course

by

I took the Co-Active Coaching Fundamentals course after a few of my friends from one of my earlier trainings, had strongly recommended me to take it up – even though I had an ICF credential.  During the course, I was trying to map ICF competencies to some of the aspects covered as part of a Co-Active coaching session. 

The 8 Competencies of ICF include

  1. Demonstrates ethical practice
  2. Embodies a Coaching mindset
  3. Establishes and Maintains agreements
  4. Cultivate Trust and Safety
  5. Maintains Presence
  6. Listens actively
  7. Evokes awareness
  8. Facilitates client growth

A Coactive Coaching session broadly covers

  1. Designed Alliance
  2. Establish agenda / topic for the call
  3. Discover what is important for the call
  4. Client’s vision, goal, desired outcome
  5. Action/learning
  6. Request/challenge/Inquiry
  7. Accountability
  8. Acknowledgement / championing sprinkled throughout

Things unique to Co-Active Coaching

  1. Designed Alliance – This is an agreement about how we will be together and covers aspects such as confidentiality, having a beginner’s mind (being curious), be bold to experiment and fail and every one takes responsibility for learning, expectations from the coach, accountability etc  
  2. The Wheel of Life – this provides a unique model for clients which shows what balance in their life looks like and rate your level of satisfaction in eight areas of your life and identify areas where you want to focus your attention. 

3. The Co-Active model was discussed at a high level.  The four cornerstones of Co-Active model

  1. People are naturally Creative, Resourceful and Whole
  2. Dance in the Moment
  3. Focus on the Whole Person
  4. Evoke Transformation

Detailed discussion would be in the intermediate classes on Fulfilment, Balance, Process and Synergy

4. I noticed lot of emphasis was on intuition – checking on the client’s underlying mood, tone of the voice, physical sensations, what is being said / not said, what do you feel the client is aware of etc.  Intuition also finds a place in the Visible Co-Active Coaching skills in Blurting – where the coach accesses the inner knowing and blurts it out the client in the moment without any attachment.   

5. Some of the Co-Active Coaching skills include Accountability, Acknowledgement, Asking Permission, Bottom lining, Challenging, Holding the Client’s Agenda, Intrude, Meta view, Reframing to name a few

6. There were a quite a few coaching/debrief sessions in dyads and triads which helped reinforce the concepts learned

7. A quick demo and practice of Process coaching followed (got a feeling it was a bit of   Somatic coaching) – very intense coaching conversation with questions such as

  • What is happening now?
  • What are you noticing?
  • What are you sensing?
  • What is here now?

8. There was a brief discussion on Ethics  – ICF code of ethics formed the base

9. On the last day we discussed about 3 things about each participant

  • What is already working in my coaching presence (Positive qualities)

  • Where do I want to stretch and grow as a Coach

  • Name on my Being tag (Archetype)

Within 4 half days of training, it may have been difficult to talk about these aspects, it was a lot of fun to wrap up the training

Overall, it was a great 4 days to be part of. For me, it was trying to get a flavour of Co-Active Coaching from this course and hopefully will utilize some of these concepts in my coaching sessions.

******************************** xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx********************************