About coaching and NLP

What is coaching and what is NLP? Find out what you
need to know here

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About Coaching and NLP

Coaching is fast becoming the favoured choice for personnel and leadership development within organisations.

It is also becoming hugely effective as a way of working to improve all aspects of life outside of work.

You will almost certainly have heard terms such as life coach, business coach, executive coach, team coach – maybe even coaches for specific issues such as weight loss, finance or retirement.

So what is this thing called coaching and why has it become so popular?

In this section of the site, you can gain a better idea of coaching including:

What coaching and NLP are.
What qualities make a great coach?
The market for coaching and NLP
Different styles of coaching
Qualifications and accreditation issues

This section of the site can only give an overview of a growing and complex skill.  There is an extensive literature about coaching and NLP and you can find many recommended books in our Book Store.

However, before you invest in a pile of books, why not dip your toe in by reading our FREE book, "The What, Who, How and Why of Coaching".


 

In their own words

Click here to see Smart School trained coaches describe their journey through the school and what it has done for them.

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Why are we called the Smart School?

SMART, of course, is the classic goal setting tool that most coaches know and when Nick created the school he wanted the people who joined it to know exactly what they could expect but also that they would create their own clear picture of the change it would bring about for them. And what better way to start than with SMART outcomes?

Over time however the school has developed a unique, innovative approach which captures the very essence of smart thinking. We don’t just repeat old methods, we think about every aspect of what we do to bring a fresh, intelligent approach to our training and our programmes.

Of course, ask any of our coaches and they would add that they made the smart choice when they chose our coaching school to take their journey!

Smart School values

At the Smart School, we believe there are certain values that are paramount for us to feel we're meeting our reason for being. It's easy for this kind of values list to be just some piece of paper left to get dusty in a drawer. But for us these values are very real.

Our key value is in providing training that actually makes a difference. We're simply not interested in training for the sake of training. That's why all our courses are over an extended period of time with real-life practice and supervision. Short courses are fine as introductions but in most cases they will soon be forgotten. We want our training to last.

This leads to other values such as our belief in the importance of hands-on training with small groups so we can really understand your needs; creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere where people feel a sense of belonging and finally constantly updating our training to keep up to date with devlopments. Our values feed into all aspects of what we do.

Our aim for our coaches

In some ways, you could say that we don't have aims for our coaches. Instead, it's the coaches who have the aims. Our aim is to help them achieve them.

And so whether that's creating a coaching business and changing their life entirely or simply developing coaching skills which work in their workplace then we aim to make sure these outcomes are met.

That's why the supervision and face-to-face support is so important. It allows us to tailor what each coach gets to ensure they can see how to move forward in the direction they want to go in.