CCI's Professional Coach Development Program Methodology -

CCI's Professional Coach Development Program Methodology -

March 15, 2018by Samantha Lee

CCI’s Professional Coach Development Program Methodology

CCI Coaching Beliefs Premise #1: Every individual is innately motivated to perceive, feel and act. Coaching with this understanding greatly […]

Samantha Lee
Samantha Lee
March 15, 2018

CCI Coaching Beliefs

Premise #1: Every individual is innately motivated to perceive, feel and act. Coaching with this understanding greatly empowers the coachee’s self-awareness and ownership/creativity in solution-generation

Premise #2: The dynamic make up of the situation greatly influences one’s decision-making and solution generation, hence understanding the factors at play that impact/affect your coachee allows you to empower them to own and tackle these factors to forward the situation using his/her current capabilities (or developing new ones)

Premise #3: Coaching is an approach that addresses and integrates a person’s intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual body, causing a shift on all levels to create a sustainable impact that can be translated into application and action

Premise #4: Coaching uncovers and unfolds inner wisdom and hidden lessons within a person to reveal solutions that are unique and useful to the client. Thus, as coaches we do not advise or tell the client what’s best for them, but instead empower them to seek their own answers

Premise #5: Coaching integrates a person’s psyche with all aspects of life. As coaches we empower clients to find the connection between who they are, who they are being, and how they behave that ripples through all domains in their life

The methodologies behind PCD

Premise: The last 13 years of training and mentoring over 150 coaches has shown us consistently the key milestones and skill sets that a newly practising coach goes through on their coaching journey. The 4 major areas of growth needs to occur in:

(i) Coaching skills: overcoming the struggle between advising and solving vs. real coaching

(ii) Coaching process: navigating a coaching session to forward a coachee

(iii) Coach-Self: being a coach who embodies change vs. being a coach in theory

(iv) Coaching confidence: comes from an integration of the above 3 and results in a level of comfort, flexibility and grace

The dynamics of the learning journey applies to everyone across the board, regardless of their life and career experience, their self-awareness or familiarity to what coaching is.

Understanding these dynamics and common stumbling blocks, a learning methodology and a training methodology has been built into the PCD program to facilitate your coaching journey, to achieve confidence and breakthroughs by the time you graduate.

(A) Our Learning methodology:

Premise Coaching is a skill set that is based in the relationship realm. The power of the interpersonal exchange is what causes change in the Coachee. This capability is not one that can be learnt through theory. It has to be integrated and realized within your intellectual, emotional and physical capability, so that you can wholly deliver an impact in your coaching.

To instill this, PCD incorporates the triple-loop learning that focuses on familiarizing you with the skill sets step-by-step whilst thoroughly supported with demonstrations:

  1. You read and understand intellectually the principle and purpose of the topic and related skill set. There might be frameworks involved, and some examples or points to consider.
  2. You bring this knowledge into a LIVE webinar where trainers will bring the topic to life through discussions and demonstrations. The key here is, we will SHOW you what it looks like – both positive and negative examples, so that you see the knowledge and skill set in action by experienced coaches
  3. You try the framework or skill set out with peers. This safe space encourages you to try without fear, to make mistakes, to learn and to get feedback. Coaching mastery is solely based on experience and exposure, which this stage encourages you kick start.
  4. You refine your skill sets in a LIVE, intimate Supervision session. A skilled, experienced, ACC coach will work with you to sharpen your application. This is done by giving feedback on what was done well, SHOW you how to do it better, and take questions you might have.

This loop repeats 6 (six!) times over the course of the 6 months. Many graduates have attributed their confidence and improvement in coaching to this method of learning.

The triple-loop learning approach is not the only way you get to experience how coaching is done.

Throughout the 6 – 9 months of the course, you will RECEIVE coaching by being coached by an experienced, certified Coach. This is to give you an experience of what it is like to be a coachee, and how it feels like to go through a change cycle. You will also get to observe real, skillful coaching take place, on you.

Our learning methodology ensures you have sufficient exposure to what coaching really looks like and feels like, which leads to increased familiarity and confidence in coaching.

(B) Our Training methodology

Mastering the Coaching process

Premise: Because coaching takes place within a ‘session’ – usually 20 to 45 minutes, the very first instinct that coaches need, is to know how to navigate in a session. Similar to when you are thrown into a pool or the sea, your instinct how how to stay afloat and where to swim to kicks in. Without this ability, a Coach will drown together with his/her coachee in the coachee’s issues, with no way to get both out.

It is on this basis that the first process you will be taught is the 5-step process to navigating a coaching session. It covers the 5 stages you need to progress through to forward a coachee into a better space, useful insight and action. This process is dynamic and not a fixed one, meaning that you will learn and sensitize to when the coachee is ready to move between the stages to get to their end point.

Mastering Coaching skills and presence

Premise: Every single coach practitioner goes through the struggle of removing themselves from the solution-forming process the client needs to go through. We are wired to advise, suggest, solve, help, impose ourselves on situations and other people as our learned way of ‘navigating and solving’ problems. It is a process that takes years to unlearn.

How much a Coach can remove their personal bias and assumptions of the coachee and his/her situation is directly correlated to how effective the coaching becomes.

The PCD program takes this journey into consideration by providing you opportunities to experience your tainted lenses and address them right from the start of the program. Through skillful demonstrations by experienced, certified Coaches, you will get to observe and experience what coaching without these lenses looks like, as a mastery level to aspire to. Knowing where you are, and where to get to charts out a path for you to work to achieving this coveted ‘coaching presence’. Through numerous peer and group coaching opportunities, as well as coaching and mentoring from your trainers, supervisors and mentors, you will find the way to operate out of your personal lenses and get more competent in stepping into a coaching state. It is in this state you will integrate the coaching skills and applications that have been taught to you, and over time you will find more ease and effectiveness in wielding coaching tools to impact your coachee with visible results.

When you are attuned to the coachee’s agenda and needs above and beyond your own, your coaching tools can now serve its purpose. The following tools taught in the PCD program are:

  • Setting up a powerful coach-client relationship
  • The CCI Change Dynamic Model
  • Pivoting
  • 11 Core Competencies (ICF)
  1. Meeting Ethical Guidelines and Professional Standards
  2. Establishing the Coaching Agreement
  3. Establishing Trust and Intimacy with the Client
  4. Coaching Presence
  5. Active Listening
  6. Powerful Questioning
  7. Direct Communication
  8. Creating Awareness
  9. Designing Actions
  10. Planning and Goal Setting
  11. Managing Progress and Accountability

Developing and integrating your ‘Coach-Self’

Premise: We all step into the coaching journey with values, strengths, weaknesses and personalities developed over many years from past experiences. Because coaching is a fluid art given that each coachee is a unique individual operating in their unique situation, an effective coach must be able to respond with relevant traits. In some cases, you ‘weakness’ might be a strength, and yet with another coachee, your strength could be your weakness.

It is therefore important for the coach to know when to deploy what trait, what personality, which style and approach that best suits the coachee. To be this sensitized to the coachee, the coach needs to suspend their ‘default’ self (and the associated perceptions, assumptions and judgements) to prevent contamination of the coaching space. A coachee steps into this suspended space in the coaching in hopes of discovering more of who they are. This cannot happen effectively if they are imposed upon. This ability to ‘suspend’… is a skill set of the ‘Coach-Self’.

The ‘Coach-Self’ is a part of you that you develop over time to be empathic, allowing, embracing, empowering, compassionate, tough and clear as a mirror all at once. It is the magic that empowers the success of the coaching relationship. This ‘Coach-Self’ is not formed from your past. It is trained up and practiced frequently.

The ‘Coach-Self’ is not removed from who you are. It is not meant to serve as a split-identity. Instead, it is a new set of clothes you learn to wear, and over time, when you integrate this ‘Coach-Self’ with your innate talent and values, it will give rise to your signature coaching style and presence.