2020 Conference - Programme

Every person and every organisation is and will increasingly be impacted by climate change, either directly or indirectly. How will these impacts (environmental, social, and economic) manifest? Do we really understand the scale and speed with which these shifts will take place? How can coaches best support themselves and their clients, in preparing for and also influencing this New Reality?

We can no longer ignore the unequivocal, scientific data that underpins the current climate and ecological crisis. Dr Emily Grossman will share the what, the why and the who of the planetary status – a reality that is worsening daily and one that in her view, requires radical intervention. Her findings have re-defined her own world view and a sense of purpose. She will share the facts (endorsed by 99% of climate scientists and experts) that refute any denial, scepticism and misinformation - so we can decide how best to prepare ourselves, and the coaching profession, to fulfil our role in this emerging New Reality.

Dr Grossman won’t offer solutions or invoke us to take radical, political action. She will however challenge us about our role on the planet, how we best show up, how we share our strengths and powers, how we as coaches might align with our intrinsic purpose to best serve the planet, humanity, our clients and each other.

Are you ready for the growth of team coaching?

This experiential, interactive and practical session will help you to better understand what organisations, training providers and coaches want and need from team coaching. You will have the opportunity to share best practice, learn from each other, experience a team coaching approach ‘in action’, learning some useful tools and techniques and reflect on how you can contribute to the future of this important growth area of coaching.

After this session, participants will:

1. Be clear on the latest team coaching research and current thinking from thought leaders in the discipline, including the challenges and opportunities of professionalisation.
2. Have had an opportunity to reflect on what benefit team coaching could be to their organisation or practice and what they might need to do differently to take advantage of the opportunities.
3. Have learnt some new models, tools and techniques that can be used when working with teams.

We need to stop tinkering at the edges of the current epidemic of work-related stress, burnout and ill health and recognise that this is not about individual failings, an interpretation perpetuated by the medical model, but rather the result of a systems failure on a global scale, being acted out in workplaces around the world. What questions do we need to be asking ourselves, our colleagues and our business systems? How can we put the human being as a key stakeholder at the heart of things and develop ways of working well together, of collaborating for the good of all, including the bottom line of the business and the planet.

After this session, participants will:

1. Understand what presence is, why it matters and how to get it and the coach’s role in supporting leaders.
2. Have direct experience of the three key factors of presence and the three key leadership properties that emerge from presence.
3. See these in the context of workplace wellbeing and success, and leadership that creates a culture where everyone matters, which is fit for the evolving needs of the 21st century.

Digital coaching solutions such as ‘coachbots’ are already on the market and available free on your smartphone, however will the increased reliance of artificial intelligence (AI) mean a fast demise of the human coaching profession and its supportive industries?

In this fun and highly interactive session, you will learn about the opportunities, challenges and how AI will have an impact on you and your work and how you need to prepare for the future – now.

After this session, participants will:

1. Have enhanced their knowledge about artificial intelligence and understand its capabilities – now, and what is expected for the future.
2. Understand the opportunities for and threats to the human coaching profession and their supportive industries.
3. Have learnt about new digital and technology tools and strategies to choose to add to their coaching delivery.

In this session, you’re going to learn about virtual reality and how it can take coaching to a whole new level. Ever wanted to give your clients hands-on training in a risk-free space? You will see how coach Bill Britten is using virtual reality for coaching and what the benefits are for the coach and the coachee.
The immersive nature of virtual reality means that coaching goes beyond the cognitive and intellectual, into the realm of experiential and emotional, where deep learning takes place. As Confucius said 500 years BC “I hear, I forget; I see, I remember; I do, I understand”. Using virtual reality doesn’t just improve the retention of skills - it makes clients more confident in using the skills they gain. And perhaps most importantly, it gives them a safe place to practise.

In this session, participants will:

1. Learn how humans and artificial intelligence can work as a team to build confidence, increase skills, capacity and performance to meet a new reality.
2. Learn the benefits of using technology for the coach and the coachee.
3. See practical demonstrations of how this technology can be used and when to use it.
4. Understand the logistics and what’s involved from a technical perspective - and how to structure the coaching session when using this type of technology.
5. Be less anxious about disruptive tech.

In a coaching session, we are almost always in the unknown. We experience tensions between holding the client’s agenda, the organisation’s agenda and the potential intrusion of our own values and beliefs.

Our own assumptions and guesses may distract us. We balance concerns about presence in the moment, noticing what’s going on for us and assessing what in our responses might be of use to the client. In this session, we explore the dance of unknowing.

During this interactive session participants will:

1. Identify how a coach might demonstrate honesty, vulnerability, transparency and self-disclosure in a session with a client.
2. Understand the balance between the coach’s own values and serving the client’s agenda.
3. Gain insight into vulnerability and willingness to be in un-knowing in own current practice and identify ways to develop future practice.

Coaching is THE skillset for our rapidly changing decade. As organisations set ambitious targets to reduce carbon, and individuals report concern and a desire to act on climate change, coaching has never had a more compelling role to play. The Climate Change Coaches will share their cogent model of how coaching can influence systems to change by building individual and collective resilience and capability. Charly will explain how useful a coaching approach of non-judgement can be in a polarised world, not forcing an agenda. You will learn how business and public sector are responding to climate change, and how to keep your coaching practice relevant in the 2020s. This interactive session will give you practical coaching skills from the team that pioneered coaching in climate change in the UK.

After this session, participants will:

1. Make a clear connection between coaching, behaviour change, change management and threats like climate change.
2. Recognise the importance of resilience, purpose and identity in our ability to manage change well.
3. Understand how organisations are changing and how coaches can stay relevant.
4. Learn which coaching skills are most useful in this context and be able to use them straight away.

Visit the drop-in open Hub to:

• Meet the UK ICF Board
• Learn about the ICF Foundation
• Find out about Credentialing
• Have any questions answered
• Explore the revised ICF Core Competencies

Are you aware of the impact that clutter, in all its forms, has on your life? What if you could release some significant invisible value in an enjoyable and stimulating way? What would that be worth to you?

In this interactive session, we will explore how you can begin to unlock productive space for yourself and your clients by taking a fresh look at some of the clutter you are currently blind to. Come prepared to be honest and to bravely tackle those engrained habits to create a new reality.

After this session, participants will:

1. Have a greater awareness of the clutter in their lives.
2. Begin to question how they can de-clutter and the value this will bring to them.
3. A tool, to be used by themselves and their clients, and an action plan to start reducing the clutter.

The story begins with two Headteachers who connected through the power of coaching and spotted an opportunity to lead their schools using this life-changing approach. You will learn how they spread a low cost, high impact coaching culture across their town and how this is now spreading across the North of England. Investment in staff and pupils has had a positive impact on wellbeing, as well as helping to discover future leaders in education.

After this session, participants will:

1. Have an understanding of how to develop and sustain a low cost, high impact coaching culture across schools/organisations.
2. Understand the challenges facing colleagues in education and how coaching is helping to overcome these.
3. How coaching is positively impacting, directly and indirectly, on our young people in schools and the importance of this in shaping future generations.

The art of extraordinary communication requires our embodied presence. We will begin this session with simple qigong exercises that are designed to invigorate your body while calming and focusing your mind. Qigong, (chi kung), sometimes known as Taoist yoga, is the basis of martial arts, Tai Chi and, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, (TCM), is considered the highest healing art. In today’s world, qigong offers a complete programme to develop our physical, emotional and psychological power centres. Qigong forms are simple, enjoyable and inspiring to perform and suitable to all regardless of age and fitness levels.

You will learn specifically three movements that centre, energise and bring us into awareness and provide us with embodied tools to facilitate optimum presence and high levels of communication. The session concludes with a relaxing sound bath during which magnificent gongs are played to relax and rejuvenate you from the cellular level up.

From this session, participants will learn embodied self-care strategies that they can use in their lives and share with their clients.

TBA…watch this space

Life and work are chaotic and disjointed for so many people. We are on the precipice of entering into something different. People are looking for the edge to cut through the busyness that impacts performance, health and well-being of individuals, teams and entire organisations.

As coaches we can’t afford to be passengers in the maelstrom. When we work in true alignment with our head, heart and gut, we consciously change ourselves, our world and the worlds of our clients.

Knowing who you truly are, requires a blend of spaciousness and practical tools and techniques. Be braver, show up as your full self, learn how to help people and organisations thrive, cutting through the busyness, by working in full alignment with their own truth, delivering ROI by measuring everyone’s motivation and neuro-agility.

Packed with inspiration, practical tools, techniques, 15 physical and mental brain fitness exercises, you’ll know how to:

• Align with your own head, heart and gut
• Recognise and measure 9 energy-boosting motivators
• Boost 6 drivers that improve agile performance, health and well-being for yourself and your clients.

After this session, participants will:

1. Feel more confident and aligned with their true self.
2. Know how to reduce chaos by recognising, measuring and improving the 9 energy-boosting motivators of themselves, individuals and teams.
3. Understand neuro-agility and know how to improve people’s unique neurological design and 6 drivers that enhance agility, health and well-being.

In this highly experiential session, we will look at the notion of resilience - not as endurance, but as a set of practices that can support us – and our coaching clients - in maintaining well-being in our daily lives and in meeting the challenges ahead.

Participants will leave with increased awareness of the importance of resilience, and some clear pointers to new habits and practices to establish and maintain resilience and to be ready for whatever lies ahead, both for themselves and for their coachees.

After this session, participants will:

1. Have a deeper understanding of resilience and what it means for them individually and for their clients.
2. Have increased their self-awareness of personal strengths and vulnerabilities.
3. Have identified good habits to build resilience (and the habits that undermine resilience).

Corporates in the UK recognise the need for Diversity and Inclusion, however the coaching industry is ill equipped to support organisations in this endeavour. This challenge undermines the growth of coaching as a field of expertise. Dr Jonathan explains the inclusive challenges facing coaches and how this limits the development of coaching competencies. In this interactive session, Dr Jonathan draws upon his years of studying professions and occupational groups, explaining why an inclusive approach is essential for the growth of the coaching in the 21st century.

Following this session, you will understand:

• The urgent need for coaches to develop an inclusive lens in their practice.
• Why the dominant Diversity & Inclusion narrative is outdated.
• How to use pragmatic definitions of Diversity & Inclusion appropriate to their coaching practice.
• Why coaching is struggling to establish itself as a professional occupation.
• How to use an evidence based approach to establish their own compelling ‘business case’ for diversity.

Coaching has a critical role to play in supporting health and well-being across society. We need to further evolve coaching services to enable coachees to cope with their intricate lives. Fraser will share his experience of working across 30 countries, inspiring organisations and coaches to think differently and address new paradigms. He draws lessons from coaching Hong Kong leaders through the recent Protest, an invention of a coaching technology and why he had to challenge his own thinking on how we support coaches, what it means to be truly coachee-centered: and why and how we must move coaching to a new future-proof approach.

Following this session, you will understand:

• Urgent need for niche expertise and radical approach to coach collaboration.
• New marketing approaches, key differentiators and top tips for a thriving coaching business.
• Why and how to integrate internal and external coaching.
• Why and how Coaching Technology platforms are essential for future strategy.
• Coach development considerations (beyond ICF qualification) for ICF and coach training providers.
• How to future-proof a coaching service.

How can jazz inspire us coaches and leaders to enhance our impact?

Today’s environment is characterised by complex situations, with many unknowns and happening at rapid speeds. Playing by the notes does not cut it nowadays. People have to be flexible, dynamic and inclusive – all this is reflected in jazz.

The session provides impulses for coaches, leaders and organisations. If you are involved in development you will be inspired by this new “jazzy mindset”.

After this session, participants will:

1. Be inspired. The provided jazz metaphor gives the participants a new and integral perspective on personal and organisational development.
2. Reflect. The presented jazzy concept delivers four concrete perspectives with thought-provoking questions to reflect on either their own coaching practice for coaches, or their own personal or professional issues for participants interested in the coaching profession.
3. Take action. The introduced integral jazzy coaching model provides concrete action steps to take right now after the UKICF conference to put the jazzy mindset into practice!

This interactive workshop will use techniques from improvised comedy to enable you to enhance your presence, spontaneity and adaptability as a coach. You will leave with practical, creative and engaging tools for use with individuals and teams. Your clients will gain fresh insights for adapting to uncertainty, creative problem-solving and collaboration. ‘Play’ is associated with enhanced well-being, motivation, creativity and flow. These fun yet challenging exercises will help you access powerful learning for yourself and clients.

After this session, participants will:

1. Understand a number of core improv concepts, including ‘yes, and’ and have practised and reflected on their applicability to your own practice.
2. Have experienced both the fun and the fear of being in the moment, adapting and responding spontaneously.
3. Have practical tools to take away to use within a 1:1 or team coaching environment or for your own personal development.

A Lively interactive debate and exchange of views on The New Reality with subject matter experts from the Economy, Technology, Futurology, and the World of Work.