Centre for Housing and Support – training and conferences

Chris will be delivering training for the Centre for Housing and Support in March, and holding workshops at two of their conferences.

You can find out about the winter conferences in their Conference brochure.

CHS Winter Conference 2012 – North edition (Leeds) Conferences – 1st Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

CHS Winter Conference 2012 – South edition (Cheltenham) Conferences – 22nd Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

The training is part of CHS series of national seminars:

Coaching Skills for Support Staff Seminar (Worcester) Seminars – 5th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Using coaching skills as a manager seminar (Worcester) Seminars – 6th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Coaching Skills for Support Staff Seminar (London) Seminars – 8th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Using coaching skills as a manager seminar (London) Seminars – 9th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Coaching Skills for Support Staff Seminar (Manchester) Seminars – 13th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Using coaching skills as a manager seminar (Manchester) Seminars – 14th Mar 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm

Christmas Coaching Offer

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from Creative Difference!

To make the season more merry, our Christmas Offer is 25% off all coaching booked to begin before the end of January 2012.

Have a look at our page on executive coaching and give us a call for a free telephone taster session on 07515 759 587.

 

For face to face coaching, offer extends only to London area.

Coaching; professional vs personal

One theme that I have noticed while coaching senior managers is the thin boundary between professional and personal at work.  I don’t mean that these managers are blurring the boundary, but that the coaching relationship has uncovered the impact of the personal on performance at work.

What surprised me was the depth of this connection and how useful it was to be able to compare patterns of behaviour in work, with patterns outside of work.  Influences included parents, siblings, partners, religion and loss.  The way these patterns and the emotions they engendered influenced work should not have been a surprise to me – a fundamental of my coaching is that it deals with the whole person, because it is the whole person who goes to work.  It was the strength with which these influenced affected daily behaviour that was surprising, and the need to recognise those influences and take action to move beyond them.

I can only liken this to seeing an osteopath (something I did recently).  Working with the underlying structure, the osteopath clicks something back into place, freeing the whole body to move and feel better.  In the same way, freeing up the personal helps the professional perform smoothly.

Coming Unstuck

After two years working as a consultant, I reached a restless period.  Work wound down for the summer, nothing much was happening, a sense of dissatisfaction grew.

Somehow Wile.E.Coyote  had spread glue on my road.  Fortunately I had registered for a Diploma course with the Academy of Executive Coaching, and this involved being coached myself.

On the first session of the course I was disconnected and my mind was spinning.  I splurged everything I was feeling to my coach for the day and a weight lifted.  I began to travel forwards again.  Drive returned and I got back to marketing and getting coaching work, to clearing out the shed at the bottom or our garden and making other changes.  I just took 20 minutes clearing the debris to begin this process.

I’ve noticed similar things for friends and colleagues – it often takes an event to begin to unstick things.  This might be a coaching session, it might be taking practical steps to clear out a room, or it might be just getting some distance on a weekend break trip.  Physical clearing, emotional clearing or distance.

I attended a conference yesterday that had a model that made some sense of this for “serial achievers” – a person’s drive to learn and move forwards falls off into a period of stability until  there is restlessness.  A period of incubation follows, during which they may be searching or reflecting, which ends with an epiphany as the person realises where they want to go next.  Drive returns and the person sets off in a new direction.  This happens in cycles and different cycles may be going on in different spheres of the person’s life.

Being restless or stuck is ok, if uncomfortable.  That’s the time to look for a catalyst that might release that stuckness.