Smart Thinking
The Smart School Blog
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“Why do you always have to be different?”
You can just imagine someone saying this, can’t you? An inflection on the always to stress just how exasperating you are for being different.
But I was thinking about this today and wondering why we, here at the Smart School, always have to be different.
Why don’t we just teach GROW like so many other coaching schools – it’s easy, people know it, it’s been around since the stone age. Why don’t we just run our NLP course over 7 or 8 days and send the customers packing with a wad of certificates and no confidence? Why don’t we just teach the usual business models like SWOT and PEST to business coaches?
Why do we have to be different all the time?
I was thinking about this because in a sense we make life hard for ourselves! We have to strive harder to say why we do what we do rather than falling in line with everyone else.
But the reality is that it’s because we truly care about what we do and the impact that we have. You see, a lot of coach training courses and NLP practitioners courses (in fact, most) do what they do and teach what they teach not because it’s the right stuff, but because it’s what they have always done AND what everyone else does.
Take NLP training. Who in their right mind thinks that a skill and approach that is all about working with the unconscious mind to create life long change can be taught in 7 days flat with no real-life experience? And yet now it’s the norm! Because it works? No, because it’s what people do and it’s easier to follow the rest than to ask yourself, “does this REALLY work?”
If all NLP trainers had created their own courses in isolation, what are the chances they would all come out with the same structure, the same content and the same duration…and that it would be so improbably short a course! Zero I would suggest!
But we had to be different! When we decided to launch our Person-Centred NLP & Hypnotherapy Programme last year, we thought and thought about how best to deliver it to make it work. We knew it needed longer to ensure students practised the skills. We knew they would need support through mentoring. We knew that many things taught in NLP are just frivolous and we dropped them.
Because in the end, for us, it’s about what will make coaches and therapists who can work with real clients and be exceptional at it.
That’s our question. It’s the one that drives how we create and deliver our programmes.
Everything we do is done for a reason. That’s why it’s smart.
And that’s why we always have to be different.
Filed Under From the Director's Chair
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We talk a lot about a transformational approach to coaching here at the Smart School.
But is it just a meaningless buzzword or does it have substance? Does it actually mean something tangible?
In fact, this was a question I was asked by email just the other day. The writer was asking me whether we actually teach a different style of coaching or whether we just attach a meaningless word to coaching.
Here’s what i wrote back and I hope you find it help ful too:
“Thanks for your email – I’ll do my best to answer your question.
Firstly, by the way, it’s a great question.
Many people use the word transformational in a meaningless way and I guess it’s this that you’re questioning.
However, there is also no set concept of what transformational coaching is and so what I say here is just our interpretation.
In summary, yes we teach transformational coaching. In other words we focus on teaching coaching which isn’t just about changing behaviours or improving performance or coaching through development but rather about creating paradigm shifts.
How we do that is uniquely our approach and consists of integrating a number of key approaches to create shifts in perception AND behaviour for clients.
So we blend a strong person-centred foundation with cognitive behavioural coaching, transactional analysis coaching and NLP.
But this isn’t about using each approach discreetly. It’s about understanding the needs of the client in front of you and having a range of approaches to create change from within.
I appreciate that on the face of it, what I have written is quite sketchy but the main issue here is that we approach coaching from a point of view of helping people see themselves differently within a situation rather than simply dealing with the situation differently. And in that sense it’s transformational.”
That was my email response but afterwards I wondered if it was sufficient.
So the question is, “What does all that means in practice?”
Well, it means that instead of coaching on short term performance improvement or to overcome a specific challenge, as a transformational coach you are also coaching on how the person “shows up” in that situation in the first place. That way, if they face a similar challenge they will have new resources, new perspectives and a new sense of self to bring to the issue.
One of the key questions a transformational coach is asking is, what is it about you that makes this situation/challenge/problem an issue. And that’s not about blame – it’s about empowerment, it’s about holding yourself as responsible for the issue and its resolution.
It shifts the perception from one of a cause-and-effect problem you’ve been made to face to a problem on one’s own perception and handling. And whilst that might at first be more uncomfortable, in the end, it’s where true transformation comes from.
Filed Under Transformational Coaching|
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I recently wrote about the fact it was our fourth birthday. Shortly after I was celebrating more than I could have expected as the school received a strong of incredible professional endorsements and recognition.
Shortly after the fourth anniversary, I heard from the most prestigious of all coaching bodies, the International Coach Federation, that our coaching course had been approved! This was nine months coming and I can’t tell you how proud we were. This was a huge step which recognised what I, my trainers and, most importantly, our students knew already which is that the Smart School is providing a genuinely cutting-edge, quality programme which creates exceptional coaches.
But it didn’t stop there. We then received endorsement from the Institute of Leadership and Management, showing that our coaching programme is fully in tune with needs of the corporate world as well as that of personal coaching. After all, the fact is that people are in corporations are, well….people! They share the same need to overcoming limiting beliefs, self-doubt, unclear outcomes and so much more. The recognition from the UK’s largest awarding body for leadership and management qualifications puts us squarely in the centre of change for organisations.
Finally, reco
gnising the holistic approach we take to personal change, we were awarded recognition by the Complementary Therapists Association.
So it’s been quite a month!
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The Smart School is 4 years old this month! In August 2008, I had the idea to create my own coaching school. Just an idea and I incorporated the business the next day. The Smart School concept was born.
4 years!! I can’t believe it! I have normally got bored and started a new business by around 3 years but I’m still as excited about the Smart School as the day I first created it!
Anyway, it got me thinking about what I see happening around me. Do you mind if I celebrate for a moment?
It’s really wonderful to see so many people beginning to strike out on their own and create profitable practices. From Catherine Watkin with Selling from the Heart to Sonia Gill with Heads Up. From Nick Hardy with the Secret Shepherd to Ruth Ruth Karuna Lawson and Mandy Lagan with Foundation Tree. From Holly Worton with Tribal to Esme Witbooi over in South Africa!
This is what I never saw in my old conference business – the difference we make.
And then there are the people who are a part of the beating heart of the school: Paul Kensett, Peggy Guglielmino, Catherine Watkin and Robert Stephenson. When I first started the school, I did EVERYTHING from the bookkeeping to the training, the sales to the admin! But now I have team I can be proud of and a team in the background who you guys never see: the SEO and web guys, the admin team and phone handlers, the bookeeper and social media connector. What a difference! I get to relax……a bit 
But of course I don’t relax too much – I’m not a laurels rester-onner! And so we now have the development of some amazing programmes in Rapid Results Business Coaching, Person Centred NLP and Dynamic Youth Coaching. And 2013 will see some fascinating developments with larger transformational events.
And then finally, of course, there is you! Each one of you is making a difference in the world and sometimes in the heat of battle to survive in what is still a rough and tumble economy, I forget that. So I want to say thank you. Thank you for trusting us, thank you for sharing the experience and thank you for caring enough to make a difference.
Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, take a moment to appreciate what you do. Because I appreciate you. Thanks for being part of the journey so far.
Filed Under From the Director's Chair
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I was thinking today how people live their lives based upon the messages that they would have received from parenting.
Within coaching sessions these messages come out in the way that people self-sabotage what they set out to do and achieve.
This is almost always subconscious and automatic and through coaching we help people understand in how they might be doing this, where this comes from and, importantly, help them to move forward from some of these self defeating patterns.
A very interesting part of transformational coaching is looking at the realm of Transactional Analysis.
Many people will know the book Games People Play by Eric Berne, which brought the idea of TA to the modern world.
One part of TA it looks at the concept of injunctions.
What are these?
Simply put they are unconscious messages that we pick up on as children from our parents. Read more
Filed Under Transformational CoachingComments
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