Northern Colorado Coaches Alliance meeting 9 May 2007

Mandy Kotzman
Northern Colorado Coaches Alliance
P.O. Box 273381
Fort Collins CO  80527-3381

NCCA Meeting 9 May 2007

Present: Susan, Kristen, Mandy, Irene, Pam, Hector, Sylvia, Bill, Pete, Alice

New leadership positions (Susan did introductions):

• Susan to past president - "keeping it simple…"
• Kristen to President - "guiding us to a "new path"
• Mandy to Vice President - " making this another "creative pursuit"
• Hector to Treasurer - bringing "boundless energy"
• Steve to secretary - "awakening insights"
• Susan gave thanks to past office holders, including Holly (who we missed).
• Kristen gave thanks and flowers to Susan for her contributions as President.

Strategic Planning

Handouts from Kristen - excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint (she will send to Carl), she then ran through them, point by point.

Purpose "To contribute significantly to personal and professional development as coaches - with each other, and for the community

• When asked "what would get you here (to our meetings), the answers have been highly varied, ranging from camaraderie to business advantages

Areas of Focus - see XLS handout

• Discussion about referral nets - "value chains" - e.g. High Tech Incubator
• Also concern that some may see group as containing competition rather than support or enhancement - focused on need to build understanding of what each of us can offer, as professional links/referrals, rather than competition.
• Hector mentioned a meeting of Boulder Chamber of Commerce, where he made a contact with someone from COSCO - have a trade show coming up and have tables for $500 to showcase businesses. He wondered if we might be interested.
• Susan wondered if the NCCA would like to do a table at BIXPO, suggesting that it would be desirable to have a professional-looking table, staffed by NCCA members, each of whom could talk about both the NCCA and their own businesses. She will follow it up if we are committed - We were.

Discussion of Action Items

• Hector suggested adding the use of free services to community centres/non-profits to add to the list of actions

Outcomes

• Kristen will send handouts to Carl
• Irene posed the question of how people would find (the"pull" or "draw") the NCCA as opposed to us finding new people. We wondered about contacting some of the major coaching schools to tell them about us so that they can tell their students/graduates that we exist. And she stressed that we need to be conscious of the word of mouth, but recognized that this is more of a "push".
• Susan commented that the ICF is doing better at supporting the chapters, mentioned that their calendar of events includes ours.
• Hector suggested we might do some internet searching to find other local coaches to contact.
• Progress might be measured by checking every 6 months for

1. attendance numbers,
2. membership

Susan - Next planning meeting 15th May at La Dolce Vita

• She has speaker proposal forms that she would like filled out an circulated before meeting

Irene's Presentation "Enacting the Role of Coach: Discursive Identities in Professional Coaching Discourse"

by which she means that the role of the professional coach has many aspects, like having various hats to wear. Wearing each of these hats (identities) is revealed in the words that are spoken by the coach.

She defines 16 identities and identifies the words that are used by them.

She emphasized that this work focused only on professional coaches, recognizing that there are various other people in different roles who "coach". She was interested in how the roles were ‘enacted' - mostly in conversation. She called this the "typology of discursive identities".

Irene's study involved:

• Interviewing 16 coaches from across north America (16)
• Examining Audio transcripts of coaching conversations (12)
• Some provided both
• Coaches were 75% women, 25% men, consistent with the proportions in the professional coaching world.

Initially she generated a list of discursive identities after the interviews, based on what they "said they did", then she analyzed transcripts to see what they "really did".

See the table of Identities - Process frame, Content Frame (Coach Elicits, Coach Informs, Coach and Client co-contribute) and Relationship Frame

• Exploration facilitator - this is the image of the essence of coaching e.g. powerful questions.
• Most coaches move around on the continuum from coach elicits and coach informs, many have predilection for one or other end of spectrum.
• She saw a lot of "guides" who offer wisdom
• Practice player involves role plays, and brainstorming
• Problem solver is combination of expert and facilitator
• Supportive Partner hold who they are, remembers
• Believer holds the space for who they can be

The Daisy diagram representing the contents of the previous table

Each petal is a different identity

Only one of many may show up in any strip of conversation

Sought input of personal experiences

• Kristen - avoids the "expert" identity
• Susan - often the expert, talked of challenging, e.g. uncovering self-imposed limits
• Hector

Benefits of Research

• Determine what is happening in coaching conversations
• Compare outcomes based on different processes
• Compare discursive identities with coaching backgrounds - this question was of great interest to the group - e.g. coaches coming from backgrounds as therapists, Mum's Consultants, etc. - how are the different in the identities they tend to adopt.
• What else?

Benefits to Practitioners

• How will this help?
• Kristen - develop multidimensionality
• Peter - Did Irene measure outcomes? No, but would be a great next study now that the identities and their words have been described by this study.
• This might lead to being able to figure out what it takes to be more than just a "good" coach, how to be a "masterful coach".

Thanks all around

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