Get Smart!

The Smart School of Coaching ended the year on a real high! To celebrate the creation of so many great coaches this year we took over the whole of Jazz After Dark in Soho and had an unforgettable evening.

It was wonderful to see so many people brought together under a common banner and to see coaches who started training when the company first formed and long since qualified meeting coaches who had only just begun their own journey.

For me personally it was a great feeling to be at the centre of something so real and so rooted in the values of genuine learning, the excitement of supporting people and belief in the power of change. Every one of the coaches at the party started their path to becoming a coach with these qualities in place. They are the very essence of what coaching is all about. Belief in change, in growth and in reaching potential.

Congratulations to all the coaches who qualified this year! Thank you for choosing the Smart School to help you get where you want to go and I look forward to sharing an amazing year in 2010!

As part of the London Coaches group, Nick Bolton, founder of the Smart School, will be taking a group session for coaches who want to build their practice.

It’s key that if you train to be a life coach you also understand how to start securing clients. It’s no good if you become a coach and then never get to coach anyone!

So on November 25th, Nick will explore what you need to do to gain clients, how to take targeted action that makes a difference and what barriers the coaches present feel they have and what they can do about them.

Nick is passionate about coach training and believes that anyone who puts the time, money and efforts in to train as a coach should be able to change their own life and results as a consequence.

If you want to come along to the meeting, head along to www.london-coaches.org and book a place.

We’ve recently introduced a free consulatation process to train as a coach with the Smart School and it’s going down a storm. Read more…

By popular demand, I’ve added this private email to my Smart coaches to this blog. One of my coaches thought it should go out to all coaches! So here it is….

“Hi guys,

I’ve had conversations with a few of you recently in which you express frustration at clients who seem to have a good first session or introductory chat and then go AWOL, never to be seen again.

Well, I just wanted to pick up on that and give you a few pointers. Read more…

For the first time since our beginning, we’ve taken two new intakes of coaches in one month. I’d like to welcome all our new coaches who have embarked on a great journey. That we have two intakes of great people who will take our coaching diploma is really testament to the strength of the course, the attraction of the new bursary and to our existing coaches who are spreading the word that something different is happening at the Smart School.

What’s that difference? Well, I guess fundamentally that we are genuinely training people to become amazing life coaches, business coaches and executive coaches. That we deliver our promise to create better coaches. That the support is genuine. As one of our coaches said, we are the Ronseal of coaching schools – we do what we say on the tin!

With sixteen new coaches joining the Smart School in November we’re set to end the year on a real high. Our coaches will join us for an amzing night of awards, Xmas dinner and live music.

If you want to train to be a life coach too and gain the most comprehensive coaching diploma available, then talk to us about our bursary. You could start your journey to train as a life coach as early as January!

The Smart School Bursary Programme has proved so successful in helping people afford coach training that we’ve awarded it its very own plaque! Many of our great new students might otherwise not have become coaches.

The Smart School Bursary Programme started life only a short while ago as a one off funded programme to support one intake of coaches.

But it has been so succesful that we have taken ownership of it and have created a bursary that can now support anyone who wants to train as a coach, who is paying for themselves rather than being sponsored by a company and who can demonstrate commitment to the coaching journey.

We have supported over 20 new coaches to gain access to the bursary in the last month and it’s a real pleasure to know that we can make a difference with it. We have some brilliant people undertaking coach training who might not have got the chance without the bursary.

If you’re interested and want to become a coach, make sure you take advantage of the bursary while it is available. We really don’t know how long we will maintain the bursary – it all depends on the funding available from our corporate work. So, please don’t miss out – train as a coach whilst the bursary is there to help you! Go to the bursary page now.

Before we start, do you all have a pen and paper.

Can you draw a triangle with a pointy bit at the top.  Then about 1/3 of the way own that triangle draw a horizontal line cutting straight through that triangle

All done that?  OK Good – we’ll come back to that

What is a goal?

It’s a description.

A goal is a description of the change that someone wants to happen.  That’s all it is – it describes clearly the change that someone wants to affect in their life.

More importantly, it’s also the tip of an iceberg.  A goal when expressed is the result of the values, beliefs and motivations that lead to it.  And all this lies beneath the water.  Usually subconsciously.

So, back to your triangle you drew.  That’s your goal triangle.  Keep it in mind as a visual aid as we go through and perhaps even make notes next to and in the relevant parts.

Now put a little boat on the waterline facing the iceberg.  It’s not going to hit it, it’s not going to sink!!  That’s you the coach in there and you’re on an exploration trip.  The iceberg is your client.

If you imagine the goal iceberg for a moment where the visible part is the bit you define (whether with SMART, ExACT, NLP well-formed outcomes or any other goal setting tool) then beneath the waterline is a massive amount of information that is hidden.

It’s the coach’s job to surface whatever hidden information helps in getting the client to the goal.

You don’t need to upend the iceberg to see it all – you only need to bring to light that which helps the coaching outcome which is the change the client wants. Read more…

The London Coaches Group is a free not-for-profit group set up by the Smart School’s founder, Nick Bolton.

As membership increases and we near 200 coaches from across London, it’s about time the group gained a nice, shiny new logo! And here it is!

If you’re a coach and you want to network with other coaches, learn about continual professional development for coaches or gain insight into how to build a coaching practice, this is the place to be.

If you want to become a coach and you want to find out how to train as a life coach or business coach, then join up too! The more the merrier and you’ll meet some great coaches who can tell you what their journey has been.

Join London Coaches today and let’s make a vibrant coaching community.

At the Smart School, we really love coaching! You’d expect that wouldn’t you from a a school of coaching.

But for us, it’s not just a skill to learn, it’s a vocation, a passion, it’s about who you are.

That’s why we’re so pleased to sponsor a group whose mission it is to spread coaching far and wide.  We now sponsor “Coaching Matters”, a new not-for-profit group with four main aims:

1. To provide subsidised coaching to its members using diploma level coaches trained by the Smart School.  No money comes to the Smart School from this!
2. To give life skills and coaching tools for everyday use to its members in lively meetings and fun events
3. To help people discover how they can become a life coach
4. To enable members to access the Smart School’s bursary to train as life coach or executive coach

At the moment, Coaching Matters will be based in London but we hope to support them to go nationally in time.

This is going to be a rewarding and enjoyable partnership to be involved in as we help those who want to become a coach learn what is out there and decide whether coach training is the right thing.

We passionately believe in what coaching does and we hope that Coaching Matters will touch the lives of many people in many ways.

To find out ore about Coaching Matters, go to www.coaching-matters.org.uk

Business Opportunity Show

This year we’re delighted to exhibiting at the Business Opportunity Show in Olympia on 26th and 27th November.

Why not come along for free!

It’s a great chance to come and meet us informally, say hello, see some of the team and have a chat about how coaching can work for you as a business.

So if you are thinking to train as a coach, why not come and meet us.

Click the image above to be taken to book free tickets to the show.

See you there!