A new website just launched in December will inspire local business leaders to make a positive start to the New Year. To mark the occasion, Oxfordshire’s business leaders are being invited to take a free place at The Keys to Team Success event which focuses on team performance, well-being and organisational success. Hosted at the newly refurbished Oxford Hawkwell House hotel, this event will be the first in a series of mini-conferences throughout 2011 to share ideas and best practices on creating successful teams.

Providing business leaders and senior HR professionals with practical ideas for supporting their teams to meet the challenges ahead and showcasing the partnership model of working between internal and external consultants and coaches, these events are designed to feature both the art and science of team development.

Dr John McGurk Senior Policy Advisor for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) will present the opening address and share latest CIPD research and ideas on partnership model which is becoming increasingly popular as organisations seek to reduce consulting costs whilst at the same time ensuring access to expert external support that genuinely adds value.

Dr John McGurk commented:

“Organisations are searching for value in the current environment but value isn’t just about taking out costs. It’s also about benefitting from the best of research and practice in which being able to get extra support with a registered psychologist in Calgary is very important. Sometime that resides outside the organisation. Partnering with organisations with expertise in areas like the delivery of e- learning, team diagnostics, coaching and leadership development can help organisations get added value from pinched budgets and thus greater impact. External providers supporting internal resource is a symbiotic relationship which helps build organisational capability. That is exactly what this event is about as it blends the best of practice, research and technology on how teams deliver now and in the future.”

The keynote session provided by Professor David Lane from the Professional Development Foundation which specialises in work based learning and Dr Michael Cavanagh from the University of Sydney Coaching Psychology Unit. David and Michael will showcase ideas for improving team performance through effective team conversations and creating positive organisational stories.

Concluding with posters, refreshments and networking, both clients and suppliers of team development services will share their stories. Leaders attending the event will benefit from practical ideas and tips for working effectively with their teams and be able to learn from each other as well as from leading academics, researchers and practitioners in the area of team development.

Invitations are being sent out to local business leaders and HR professionals this week.

The Keys to Team Success event will cost £175 plus VAT. If you would like to nominate a business leader from the Oxfordshire area to receive an invitation for a free place or to reserve your own place, early booking is recommended at www.oxfordteamdevelopment.co.uk.

LinkedIn is rapidly becoming a powerful network for developing contacts and generating new business as well as staying in touch with professional contacts and colleagues. Lauriate Ltd is now using LinkedIn to complement the professional development options for Team Sociomapping Service Providers and Programme Co-ordinators. The new LinkedIn forum is also a great way to stay in touch with news and upcoming developments for Team Sociomapping and Team Profile Analyzer.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3068619

With the UK still firmly in the grip of economic recession, HR buyers are looking at ways to ensure that every penny spent on coaching programmes delivers tangible return on investment. Team Sociomapping® offers a process for measuring the impact of executive and team coaching as well as providing organisations with a way of measuring impact on team performance. Major projects are currently underway in the UK within local and central government as well as in the private sector.

Team Sociomapping® is an innovative suite of tools based on a unique methodology for visualising complex systems and is ideally suited to the coaching environment as a means of stimulating and supporting coaching dialogue as well as evaluating coaching impact on team dynamics. This toolkit has been packaged for use in the coaching and organisational development sectors to support a range of Team Development needs and it is now possible for appropriately qualified & experienced coaches to use this powerful toolkit to support Team Coaching.

Members of the UK Team Sociomapping® Provider Network now includes, Leading Edge Coaching, The Academy Of Executive Coaching, Zeal Solutions, The Professional Development foundation (PDF), Stephenson Consulting, CFM Consulting, Intuition Discovery and Development & Prosperity in Business.

Richard Clarke from the Academy of Executive Coaching said:-

“We initially used the Sociomapping system internally and found it to be a revolutionary and unique toolkit ideally suited to support dialogue in team coaching conversations.” “The AoEC has now become a UK Sociomapping Provider so from January 2010 we will be supplying Team Sociomapping analysis to our clients as part of an integrated Team Coaching service”

Lauriate Ltd is the UK distributor for Team Sociomapping®. For more information go to www.sociomap.co.uk or contact pauline.willis@lauriate.com +44 (0) 1865 784388

Lauriate will have an exhibition stand focusing on Team Sociomapping and TPA.

On Thursday 14th January there will be a workshop on TPA.
Workshop
Advanced analysis of team profiles using Team Profile Analyzer (TPA)
P Willis, Lauriate Ltd, T Srb, QED Group a.s., R Kurz, Saville Consulting UK Ltd

On Thursday 14th January there will be a development paper on using Sociomapping in the Mars flight simulation.
Development paper
Using Sociomapping of crew communication and cooperation as a tool for team performance management in the ground based experiment simulating manned flight to Mars
T Srb, QED Group a.s.

Further information can be found on the BPS website www.bps.org.uk/dop2010/dop2010_home.cfm

Further information on Team Sociomapping and TPA can be found on our website at www.sociomap.co.uk

At the 1st International Meeting of Coaches in Prague hosted by the Czech Coaching Association CAKO coaches from across the globe were brought together for three days of presentations, workshops and dialogue to foster the sharing of knowledge and ideas. The climate was of respectful international collaboration amongst coaches from different professional backgrounds and approaches to coaching.

Everywhere you look these days you see the term coaching. Coaching took off as a niche in the personal development industry in the 1980’s. Since then a number of organisations providing specialist coach training and development services have been at the forefront of a rapidly growing industry. One of the themes highlighted at the CAKO IMC was the fact that expertise in the practice of coaching is drawn from a number of different traditional areas of practice. As this is the case it is important to ensure that practitioners are appropriately qualified both in coaching practice and have relevant training or qualifications in related domains of practice. Discussions and a presentation by leading UK Coaching Psychologist Pauline Willis highlighted that the Business and Psychological underpinnings of coaching are key areas which are gaining popularity and importance. Increasingly advanced coach training programmes are looking to traditional disciplines such as psychology, organisational development and management for tools and techniques that will increase the depth and power of the coaching relationship.

The open and collaborative climate set in the Czech Republic though the 1st IMC is a fitting precursor to a major event due to be held in Dublin 2008. The Global Convention on Coaching or GCC as it is known, has been brought together to support the mutual exploration of the future of the coaching industry by all stakeholders in coaching. Difficult questions such as ‘what does the specialist domain of knowledge for coaching consist of?’ and ‘what training and qualifications are really needed for a practitioner to set out shop as a ‘professional’ coach?’ will be covered through the process of dialogue and scenario development.

One of the leaders of this initiative speaking at the Czech conference was Australian Psychologist and co-editor of the ICPR, Dr Michael Cavanagh. At the end of three days of sharing and dialogue, Michael extended a warm invitation for all coaches and other stakeholders in coaching, from all backgrounds and all countries, to come forward and take a place in a global consultation process that will continue in the spirit of openness and collaboration that was modelled in the Czech Republic in September 2007. Support for the GCC has been strong across the coaching community with a number of prominent names stepping forward to take part in the working groups that form the operational engine of the convention.

Participation in the open consultation in the lead up to a convention event to be held in Dublin in July 2008 is open to everyone who has an interest in any aspect of coaching as a domain of practice. The consultation leading up to the convention over the next six months is taking place online, so participation is free and easy if you have computer access. If you are interested in taking part you can complete the online application form at
www.coachingconvention.org

As part of an MSc Occupational Psychology at City University, London, I am currently working on a dissertation that seeks to improve current knowledge about the relationship between the effectiveness of managerial (i.e. executive) coaching and the work environment.

I am inviting people who experienced coaching whilst working in a managerial role to complete an on-line questionnaire. The questionnaire takes approximately 10 minutes to fill in, and it is completed via a survey dedicated website which guarantees complete anonymity.

If you received coaching, I would be grateful if you would spare some time to complete the questionnaire. I would also appreciate if you would forward this message to your colleagues who have participated in coaching.

As a member of the British Psychological society, I am bound by strict ethical guidelines.

All answers are confidential & anonymous, and are for research purposes only. In the final report only aggregated results will be reported, which means that no-one can be personally identified by their answers. Participation is voluntary, and you can withdraw from the questionnaire at any time.

If you decide that you can take part, thank you so much, I am extremely grateful for your input.

The questionnaire can be accessed here
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=789862690885

So that I can meet my project deadline, I would appreciate if you would complete the questionnaire by 25 October, 2006.

Should you have any questions or comments please contact me at LJStewart@mail.com.

Once again, thank you so much for your assistance and for your participation in my research. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards
Lorna Stewart

Earlier this year, and in conjunction with ‘firecracker’ films a Channel 4 production company we launched a research project to capture ‘celebratory stories’ and cautionary tales.

Many thanks to everyone who has generously shared their experiences so far. We have collected some interesting stories. As this has proven to be a valuable way of collecting information from the clients perspective we have decided to keep the research element of this project going.

So if you are a client of coaching or mentoring services and would like to share your experiences of the coaching process please do let us know.

All responses will be treatest with the strictest confidence and only grouped summary data will reported unless you give your explicit permission for us to share your story as ‘case study’. We are planning to select ‘indicative’ case studies to share with coaches and mentors to support continuing professional development. Research results will be written up and submitted to publications such as the International Coaching Psychology Review and Coaching at Work magazine and all participants will be sent a copy of the research findings if they are interested in seeing them.

Coaching at Work (CAW) magazine features viewpoint on the importance of managing the boundary between coaching and psychology

Coaching at Work magazine published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK targets HR professionals with an interest in coaching and mentoring focuses on topical issues facing both organisations and practitioners.

Lauriate director Pauline Willis presents her viewpoint on boundary issues between coaching and psychology in the April 2006 issue of Coaching at Work magazine published by the CIPD. The article titled Labelling Boundaries can be accessed by clicking here (325KB PDF).

Firecracker productions are professional filmmakers who are making a documentary for Channel 4 and are eager to hear both celebratory stories and cautionary tales from people who have worked with either a life or business coach.

The filmmakers are seeking to create a documentary that will inform both coaches and their prospective clients about what to expect in terms of responsible professional coaching practice.

A questionnaire has been developed to capture both celebratory stories and cautionary tales about coaching from the client perspective which should achieve the aim of supporting the filmmakers in finding people who are willing to take part in the documentary, as well as collecting valid and reliable research data about the issues being explored. We are hoping that a broad range people who have both positive and negative experiences of coaching will participate.

If you have purchased coaching services and would like to be interviewed as part of the documentary your details will be passed on to the film producers who will make decisions about which stories to feature. If, however, you want to participate in this survey for the purposes of providing research information only, then all of the details provided will be treated with strictest confidence.

The questionnaire is in 4 parts which cover:-

• Information about your coach and coaching programme
• Impact of the coaching on your life or business along with ‘the full story’ in your own words
• Additional background information that will support analysis and reporting
• Participant contact details

If you are interested in sharing your Celebratory Story or Cautionary Tale for the purpose of taking part in the filming, you should complete the questionnaire by January 31st at the very latest.

Interested?
Go to https://members.lauriate.com/Survey/
to tell us about your Celebratory Story or Cautionary Tale

The next reporting date for the EMCC Coaching & Mentoring Standards Project is June 15th at the 3rd Annual Standards Workshop to be held in Oxford. The EMCC will now be collecting data in preparation for this next important industry wide event until May 31st, so if you have not yet taken part in this consultatative research process you now have another opportunity to do.

Existing project participants also now have the opportunity to review and modify previous responses, or to be upgraded to the next level of involvement.

To give you an idea of what is involved, there are 200 ‘core’ standards and these relate to competencies that are ‘core’ to all types of coaching and mentoring practice. Everyone who participates in the project is given a username and password that allows them to go online and rate these standards via an online ‘questionnaire’.

For those who are interested in going to the next level, this would involve rating an additional 200 statements relative to your area of practice. These additional statements and indicators cover specialised areas that touch upon a range of professional domains, these include leadership development, systems thinking, psychological models and artistic and creative skills.

If you would like to take part in this consultative research project contact pauline.willis@lauriate.com