ICF International Coaching Week: What we took away from Connect. Reflect. Expand
Understanding Intuition, Scaling Organizational Coaching, and a deep dive into Group Coaching
It’s ICF International Coaching Week 2023 this week, and we were excited to participate in ICF Australasia’s ‘Connect. Reflect. Expand‘ conference in Sydney yesterday.
It was a packed afternoon, with three incredible speakers: Sarah Nanclares, Chris Rowell and Joel Pearson.
If you missed the event, don’t worry, we wrote this post for you!
1. Internal Coaching is the best kept secret in business - Sarah Nanclares
Sarah spoke about how Canva’s Internal Coaching team leverages transformational coaching to build a great culture. Which in turn acts as an engine for the business’ growth.
Here’s Sarah’s advice on how to start an internal coaching program at any organisation.
As a first step, test appetite for the program with the c-level leadership. If there’s no appetite, then you likely won’t be able to go very far with the program.
Find an executive level sponsor who will be the champion for the program especially in those executive meetings where you can’t be present.
Start small, for example in a single team. Show success with there and then scale up to a group or org. This will help focus your efforts and show more value than if you spread your efforts in the beginning.
2. Group coaching is a magical tool to generate self-compassion - Chris Rowell
Chris took us through a deep dive of how he applies group coaching as an executive coach and leadership development consultant.
Often, people in leadership positions feel like they are alone. When in fact they are not. Group coaching is an effective way to build self-compassion, because it demonstrates and reinforces to participants the fact that they are not alone, even as a leader.
If you are seeking group coaching for your teams, check out Chris’ work with Performance Frontiers. We loved the Once Upon Align game that Chris uses as a starting point for group coaching sessions!
3. Intuition is the learned productive use of unconscious information - Joel Pearson
Joel’s research into the science behind intuition was a fascinating subject to unpack. Intuition is often described as that feeling of ‘knowing something, but not knowing how you got there’ which makes for a fuzzy and ‘unscientific‘ definition.
But not anymore. Joel’s definition of ‘Learned productive use of unconscious information to help us make better decisions or perform physical actions’ has defined it far more clearly. It has made intuition measurable, which is necessary for scientific discourse.
Everyone has the potential to tap into their intuition because listening to your intuition is a skill that you can grow.
Use Joel’s SMILE checklist to decide when it is appropriate to listen to your intuition:
Self-awareness of emotions:
Strong emotions will mask as intuition. Check in to see whether you are reacting to emotion, or whether it is truly intuition.Mastery of the subject matter or activity:
Novices will not have an intuition that is trustworthy. You need mastery over the subject for that. You can however, practice intuition and grow it.Instinct / Impulse:
Instinct is a biological reaction and is not the same as intuition. Don’t be fooled by it.Low Probabilities:
Humans don't understand probabilities very well, so there may be a tendency to rely on intuition when we should really just be doing the math.Environment:
Context informs our learning, so if you are out of the context where you learned something, then you should be aware that your intuition may not be as reliable.
Find out more about Joel’s work through the Future Minds Lab.
To wrap up ICF International Coaching Week 2023, we will be speaking at an online event with Meenakshi Iyer tomorrow. The topic is The Role and Impact of Technology in Amplifying the Power of Coaching. We would love to see you there!