NCCA Meeting

27 January 2005

Attending: Sue, Carl, Mandy, John, Carmen, Susan Graham, Jeff, Joan, Donna Beaman

Check-in

• Jeff: I'm completing my certification to become a Certified Professional Coach. I'm working on my marketing materials, and did a presentation to 35 people at McKee. I'm planning on speaking Boulder and Longmont. Working on my website.
• Susan: I have trained through the Fearless Living program. I have experience from working in the corporate world, Kodak in Rochester. I teach whitewater canoeing. I do as much coaching as I can, and am always looking for new clients. My goal is to do coaching full time. I'm getting a website up: www.KeepItSimpleCoaching.com
• John: Over the holiday break I stayed here and worked with NoCoNet, I'm going to be the coach for the organization. I want to help people getting back to giving to others in the group. We've removed some people from the list, and this seems to have energized the group. We find that people who get involved and contribute tend to be the ones who find jobs. I'm working on my personal balance – in "multiple personality mode" – between my technical side and coaching side. I'm excited by the Quid Pro Quo proposal. I've been talking to a person who seems to have a need for coaching to come across better in his job interviews.
• Carl: There's lots of exciting things going on in HP.  Our internal coaching network is up to 80 people worldwide and growing rapidly.  Recently we've had four separate requests for delivering internal coaching to groups of people.
• Mandy: I did some presentations at the Fort Collins Club, "Thrive in 05". Not particularly well attended, I need to think about how to get more visibility and attendance. We did the energy-drainer exercise, it was useful. I'm going to give a presentation at Mountain Crest about life coaching.
• Carmen: I've been doing Personality IQ and got licensed by the creator of it. Joan and I are going to do a focus group tomorrow on what people want in group coaching and group seminars. I got some new individual clients, and am getting ready to contact businesses around the Personality IQ.
• Donna: Our corporate office in Las Vegas has a strategic alliance with CoachVille. I work with business owners, balancing business with life.
• Sue: I got my website up: www.clearchoice-coaching.com. I created a one sheet brochure/guide that I use with people to capture all essential elements on one page. I work with a group of female leaders in Agilent who want to share their wisdom with rising female leaders, calling it Mentoring. I've been doing things with the Restorative Justice groups in Fort Collins and Loveland, this might lead to possibilities in the coaching/mediation area. I'm taking a class and writing a paper on the connection between movement and transformational learning – the mind/body connection
• Joan: The E-women Premier Network is starting to bring coaching opportunities to me, I'm hoping this will bring clients. Right now I'm one of seven coaches to provide free coaching sessions for the 1500 members. I'm doing a workshop on directing your professional career, doing research for that. I'm exploring a program called "The Power of Woman", she has experience in moving peoples' emotional energy. Idea for a workshop: "Embrace Personal Freedom and Soar to Your Success"

• Good places to do coaching: Moxie Java on Harmony, Saxby's in Loveland, Circle Moon in Loveland, Cup of Colorado by Fort Collins Pulse

Closing the Gap between Passions and Work

• People tend to focus a lot on work, and on personal goals, but struggle with tying the two together. Tools? Ideas? Resources?
• Benjamin Zander has an interesting solution to different personal styles in his marriage – two houses next to each other – a beautiful example of "the art of possibility." We like our marriage, how are we going to make it work?
• I've used the concept of "Living the Dash" (the journey between birth and death) with some clients
• What makes your heart sing? Watch the client's energy, look for engagement and excitement. Getting them into the "now". I try to get them into the feeling of it all – light or heavy? Watch peoples' bodies.
• I took a wonderful workshop with Kathy Walker, she took a video of me before and during the workshop and trained people on what to look for in my face. I got wonderful feedback from everybody in the workshop, it was a real eye-opener. It made me much more self aware, and of others' facial expressions.
• Over the phone you can pick up an awful lot that we think of as "body language", just with the voice and sounds that you hear.
• Many people are concerned about disconnects between the inside and the outside. You might be giving people an inaccurate impression of what's really going on. I find it good to get feedback on this.
• I like digging into the topic of personal passion: What's important about that? Why? At some point you find an incredible source of passion. I also like making things fun, so I can apply my energy to many different areas. And it's just a shift in perception.
• With CTI we worked on visualization, this was very powerful. Get out of the thinking and into the emotional part.
• I work with clients who are imagining a future, I ask them to describe the FEELING of it. Keep track of this for a week, and come up with a succinct sentence which describes the energy of this future situation. For people who are open to spiritual interpretations, then I talk to them about how they can anchor that energy today, and that will attract them toward this future. Imagine no separation in time, they're already there. This influences their attention.
• Abraham Hicks has a concept of breaking through the model of past-present-future, changing it instead to future-present-past. I leverage the concept in my work to help people bring the future into the present, and build upon past experiences and feelings.
• Work/life balance is often viewed as work VERSUS life. This really comes forward with people who are looking at the transition to retirement. It's powerful to instead focus on a single integrated life purpose which ties together all aspects of a person's life.
• Retirement as a concept is going through huge changes. In the past, retirement has even meant the end of life. I like working with people on the "make before break" concept, to have something which draws you toward your future.
• I'm amazed at how many people have no idea of what their passion is. I ask them what they do for fun. Or when was the last time they had fun. Or what gets them excited. I was able to help a person to realize that their job was just a necessary tool to achieve his real goals.
• How do you get the energy to do what you don't want to do? I find something I really want to do, get the sense of accomplishment from that, and then use that energy to help drive me through the other things I don't want to do. It helps put me in a positive frame of mind.
• I reverse that. If there's something I want, I use that as a reward. But I haven't leveraged that ENERGY to get me through the drudgery.
• I like to help people to combine things they like to do with the other bits. Pair them up.
• When you combine these approaches together, there's a positive sum. My definition of "balance" is when my energy sum is positive, more energy flowing in than out.
• The Navajo have a useful concept around flow rather than balance. Balance is really an illusion.
• I make a mind map. I allow myself 20 minutes to think about the pieces and how they relate to each other, and then I have a picture of the whole, and making progress on one piece seems useful.
• I think about timescale. What timescale is this operating on for you right now? Maybe I'm passionate about something, but now isn't the right time. There was an interesting article in Fast Company magazine, titled something like "The Myth of Balance." Focus fully, get engaged, jump in with both feet. This works very well for some people.

Financials and Activities – Mandy, Sue

• We've got $3,156 in the bank. Most of the money comes from the ICF.
• Sue is going to submit the end-of-year financial and activity report to the ICF. This is an ICF requirement and in our chapter by-laws, although we haven't done it before.

2004 Activity Report:

Q1	Proposal for coaching show on KRFC, local radio station with an objective of increasing the public's awareness about coaching and helping them to understand the potential impact coaching can have in people's lives. Review and support of Colorado Coaching Coalition regarding legislation. NCCA members, with the leadership of Christine Thomas and Patrick Williams, were instrumental in the successful resolution of this issue. Review of NCCA purpose, direction and activities with an objective of increasing our focus and effectiveness as an organization.
Q2	Election results and passing the torch to the new leaders. Redefining the leadership roles. Begin a "Focus on a Coach" segment at monthly meetings where an NCCA member shares what they want to about their practice, with a purpose of sharing information, expanding awareness of the coach's offerings, and/r getting feedback on initiatives they are undertaking. Discussion of community outreach opportunities associated with coaching initiatives. Presentation on small business development and key success factors.
Q3	Begin the "fun activity" as a an icebreaker for monthly meetings. Presentation from Northern Colorado Economic Development Corporation highlighting the needs of the local community and how coaching can help address the identified needs. Conducted networking program that utilized Toastmasters practices. The objective was to have members learn about each other's areas of specialty so that we can cross-refer potential clients, as well as for members to improve the delivery of their value propositions/elevator speeches. Linkage to Boulder and Denver newsletters, contacts, and announcements
Q4	Special-needs coaching panel – addressed the impact of coaching someone with Attention Deficit Disorder, Diabetes, Weight Issues, and other unique physical/mental challenges. Discussed why various resources (such as books, websites, periodicals, etc.) associated with coaching were significant to the field. Shared favorite resources and created a reference list. Participation in ICF conference in Quebec City Holiday party that included networking, good food and beautiful scenery.

ICF Credentialing Changes - Sue

• Today's discussion is about understanding. These changes are going to happen, and we need to talk about moving forward.
• Sue handed out a paper she put together to describe the changes and how they will impact us - PLEASE READ THIS
• Joan is a PCC and has offered to bring forward her information on what it took
• Pat is an MCC
• Irene is an ACC
• The ICF has told us that it's up to the chapters to determine whether people are in good faith working toward being credentialed
• As an organization, we need to make an evaluation of whether we're going to remain a chapter of the ICF and how we'll be structured. The NCCA leaders are working on putting this evaluation together.

Expansion Coaching - John

• John has created a proposal (aka "Quid Pro Quo Coaching") which would help us to each expand our number of hours of applied coaching, through relationships within the NCCA.
• The ICF has no stated limit on the amount of Quid Pro Quo coaching, unlike Pro Bono or Volunteer Coaching
• John would agree to be the moderator of this program to begin with
• Next steps: John will send out a message to the membership (via Carl), asking for people who want to get involved with this.

Future meetings

• 12:00 February 24th: Creating a Sacred Space (Ann Strong)
• 12:00 March 24th: Coaching-Related Research (Dianne Stober)

Coaching Week

• Holistic Arts Fair – We did this a few years. There was good discussion about whether we were getting our money's worth, the general feeling is not.
• That Fair targets a particular niche of the population, but they're generally more receptive to the concept of coaching. Are there other ways of reaching the local population?
• We should coordinate this kind of presence with better advertising
• Other possibilities: New West Fest, Women's Symposium (through PVH Foundation), Small Business Fair (right name?), 9News Health Fair. Joan didn't have a good experience with coaching at a booth at the New West Fest. Post News Jobs Fair was very closed to us.

Upcoming events

• Julio Olalla's presentation and workshop in Boulder: http://www.bouldercoaches.org/
• Reclaim Your Balls presentation this Saturday in Boulder: http://denver.craigslist.org/cls/57113223.html.  Call (970) 946-9361.
• Pat Williams is participating in the Career Masters Institute "Soaring To Success" conference, Denver, 23-13 April 2005.  Information at http://www.cminstitute.com/conference.html.