November 13, 2007
The countdown has started for me for the graduation in December along with my wife, Prabha!! I am sure there are few cases of a husband and wife graduating together particularly at the age we are!!Feels great!!
We will then be eligible to call ourselves CERTIFIED Life Caoches!!
We hope to start another phase soon after that event!!ICF certification!! Will explore what we need to do to get there!! Look forward to it!!
October 24, 2007
After attending the last of the eleven supervised coaching sessions, where I was an observer, my particpation in the ICA was entering the final phase!! Having completed all the submissions and attending all the classes, I am now ready for graduation in December!!
A great feeling indeed!!While this marks the end of one phase of my journey in the ICA, it also marks the beginning of a new phase in ICA where I would start exploring ways in which I could use my presence in useful and lucrative ways!! That process of exploration will start soon and I look forward to it!!
October 12, 2007
My sixth and final supervised coaching sessions took place on October 4 , 2007. This was in the ninth supervised coaching class lead by Karen. My client turned up promptly, as always, and presented her issues as we got started. She had responded to the coaching preparation form and the Values and Wheel of Life worksheets prior to the session and so it made it easy for us to make progress in the session with very effective use of avalable time!! The prior preparation actually helped us to complete our laser session a few minutes ahead of time and we celebrated the completion of our sessions at the conclusion of the session!!
Karen asked the client to give her feedback before she left and then gave her own feedback. She asked me to acknowledge how the session went and mentioned that she would complete the supervised caoching assessement form, along with her overall assessment, and suggested that it be forwarded to the ICA.
The tenth and final session of the supervised coaching was held on October 11, 2007. There were 3 sessions in this class and in the nd, each one of the students was asked to do some reflection, to make our participation in these classes complete!! We were also requested to pass on our testimonials to the ICA ,based on our reflections, to Karen, in the ICA Discussion Board.
It was a great way of drawing the sessions to a close and all of us thoroughly enjoyed and benefitted immensely from the supervised coaching sessions, in particular, and the participation in all the programmes of the ICA: classes, community of practice, assignments, etc., in general.
September 28, 2007
I had my fourth and fifth supervised coaching sessions, respectively. in the sixth and eighth supervised coaching sessions! In the seventh session, I was an active observer!!
My client came on time and we had our 15 minute laser sessions. Her main issues in both the sessions were that she was not able to work on her research paper and model for the ICA and seemed to procrastinate it!!I challenged her to complete them before we end the last and sixth session on Oct 4 and mentioned that I would give her any support she may need while doing that. Our sessions seemed to have gone well since, based on the feedback that I got from Karen, I had covered all the core competencies of ICF during the sessions!! I felt great about it. What was most satisfying was the good response from the client herself at the end of each of the sessions!!
August 25, 2007
My name is Dr.S.Chandrasekhar and I have been coaching and counseling for the past 4 years.Most of my coaching till date has been face to face and I discovered, for the first time, thanks to the exposure at the International Coach Academy,that a telephonic coaching session could also be equally, if not more, effective!!
Interestingly, there are some clients who prefer face to face counseling or coaching and are not willing to make the effort to even try out the tepehonic option!! I respect their feelings on this, and devote a considerable portion of my time to face to face counseling.These are mainly clients who come for treatment for various mental illnesses like clinical depression, schizophrenia,drug(alcohol,smoking and drugs)de addiction,and various stress related ailments.After their treatment,and sometimes during the treatment, the Psychiatrist with whom I am associated, refers the clients to me.In a sense, I have not had the need to make the effort to search for clients during the past 4 years thanks to the clinical set up in which I currently operate!
The coaching model and Power Tool that I use in my coaching process has been spelt out in detail in this blog and the various steps that I have taken to upgrade my skills, have also been outined below in the various sections.The biggest asset that I have in the present clinical set up is the number of clients who come on a regular basis to the Psychiatrist, who then get referred to me for counseling or caoching.There are days in which I coach as much as 8 clients, some of them new and most of them on a repeat. basis for as much as 25 or 30 sessions. One may ask whether this amount of coaching gets tiring.Interestingly, I find that it does not!!
My niche coaching areas are
Relationship coaching including Marital and Pre Marital issues
Geriatric coaching
Coaching on stress related issues
Executive Coaching for small and medium enterprises
August 24, 2007
I participated in this session on 23 August, 2007, as a listener.There were 3 coaching sessions and the coaches had their clients selected from the class!! There was a lot of learning from each of the coaching sessions.
One of the things that was particularly useful was the observation made by our supervisor in the session, Karen Cappello.She mentioned that if any of the laser sessions came to a successful completion before the allotted 15 minutes, we could wrap up the session at an appropriate time, and do not have to wait till the 15 minutes are over!!
My next supervised coaching session is on August 30 and this would be followed by an oral exam.I am looking forward to that session with the same client I had in my second supervised coaching session.
August 18, 2007
The seventh and last of the Train the Trainer sessions was convened on August 14 at 9.00PM,EST, which corresponded to 6.30AM, August 15, Chennai (India)time. It was great to get connected to the group after a lapse of 2 weeks and we got an opportunity to share the classes by Marco, Dana and Risah. Jane could not do her class because she fell ill and was in the process of rescheduling her class!!
There was a lot of sharing during the class. We ended the session by thanking the mentors, Bron(who could not make it to the class that day)and Karen, and each of the students who gave the required support throughout the sessions.We hope that the group continues to stay connected at regular intervals ,to keep the network active and vibrant.
compass4executives 