Starting with this issue, the "Hidden Dimension Insights" newsletter will include short tutorials taken from actual coaching practice. The goal is to de-mystify developmental coaching that is based on assessments (“intake”). The coaching culture being what it is, there is a misconception that evidence-based coaching is overly “cerebral.” This may be the impression for novices, but experts in this branch of coaching are acting as intuitively as any other coach.

People learn in different ways. Some learn best by doing, others need a conceptual framework to work within, especially if the approach they are learning is a new one. We have heard from some of our ambassadors, former students and colleagues that they would welcome an alternative way of learning to coach developmentally, -- one that would directly tie in with their present coaching practice. For this reason, we are developing a MENTORING PROGRAM. We welcome your input into how to achieve a flexible mix of training and mentoring at IDM, by writing to .

Through the Mentoring Program, we will mentor individual coaches who work either with individual clients or entire teams.  To add value, we will also mentor small groups of coaches working together. If you let us know that you would like to be mentored as a member of such a small group, we will send you an application through which we can pair you up with coaches having a similar interest. Please write to .

The Mentoring Program we are developing has six big advantages:

• It introduces you to “PhD level coaching”

• It helps you help clients learn more about themselves by having the mentor model it for you

• It is cost effective, since your client will pay for the assessment, and IDM will assist you in learning to use assessment outcomes to your clients’ benefit

• It helps you help clients learn more about themselves and their goals

• It helps you learn about your coaching level (otherwise hidden to you)

• It prepares you for attending Gateway, or firms up what you have learned in Gateway, the class preparing you for Program One.

In terms of marketing your coaching to clients, the Mentoring program will help you to:

• Build trust with clients at a deeper level

• Build a better ROI for your clients

• Increase the desirability (“stickiness”) and duration of your coaching services

• Attract more highly developed (mature) clients whom to work with is more gratifying.

The following three options for mentoring with IDM exist:

1. Mentoring prior to entering the Workshop or Gateway

2. Mentoring between Gateway and Program One Section A (social emotional coaching)

3. Mentoring after concluding social emotional coaching and entering cognitive  coaching in Program One Section B.

For each of these options, the alternative exists to be mentored with and without the use of assessments. (Assessments are proprietary to IDM, and are “distributed” only via the postgraduate education we offer.)

• Ambassador Group

Download a diagram by Antoinette showing the relationship of IDM to the Ambassador Group.

• Developmental Coaching in Action Series

IDM is preparing to participate in the 2005 ICF conference in San Jose in two ways, by way of:

• a Demonstration in the general conference, entitled “There is more to what your client tells you than you think: How deeper answers to client questions surface.”

• Submission of a Paper (by Otto Laske) to the Coaching Research Symposium on the philosophical basis of IDM coach education.

In the Demonstration, planned by Antoinette Dawson and Otto Laske, we will invite members from the ICF audience, to experience how coaches can learn more about clients’ developmental level through a specific kind of active listening called developmental interviewing. In the 2-hour demonstration, we will use modeling and debriefing to reinforce our teachings. The demonstration mixes topics of “mastery” with those of introducing research findings from “outside” the coaching field, namely cognitive science and developmental psychology.

 

Otto’s paper, entitled “From Coach Training to Coach Education: Building Capabilities, Not Just Skills and Knowledge,” focuses on the pedagogical relationship between the three sections of Program One (A-C). The paper explains why the three sections are sequenced in a particular order, and what one perspective contributes to the other two. IDM teaching is shown to fulfill the strivings of many adult learners, to increase the subtlety and systemic nature of their thinking.

 

The IDM program has been added to the list of quality programs in coaching at the International University of Professional Studies (IUPS). The IDM program will be featured as an opportunity within the Professional Coaching and Human Development Program.  This affiliation fits perfectly with IDM's Program Three which is geared to coaches writing a PhD thesis in developmental coaching.

 

Dr. Bruce J. Cohen of IUPS has invited Otto Laske to become IUPS Faculty. IUPS is a distance learning university whose faculty serves in a mentor capacity. Students are given credit for their background and previous studies. Each student is assigned a mentor who is compensated for overseeing the student's Academic Study Plan as set forth by the Admissions Committee. Dr. Patrick Williams of The Institute of Life Coach Training serves as Chairman of the Coaching Program.