Continuing your Professional Development as a Coach in 2021

A woodcutter strained to saw down a tree.  A young man who was watching asked “What are you doing?”

“Are you blind?” the woodcutter replied. “I’m cutting down this tree.”

The young man was unabashed. “You look exhausted! Take a break. Sharpen your saw.”

The woodcutter explained to the young man that he had been sawing for hours and did not have time to take a break.

The young man pushed back… “If you sharpen the saw, you would cut down the tree much faster.”

The woodcutter said “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw. Don’t you see I’m too busy?”

Recently, Liz and I were discussing the first time we both came across this short fable, and how it made us reflect upon the importance of continuing to pause and take the time to ‘sharpen our saw’ as coaches.

This year, more than ever, we have truly experienced the realities of being coaches in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) and this has brought into sharp contrast the need for us to keep fit for purpose. Without space to recover and grow, we will be coaching from a place of reactivity.

Self-care is one way we do this; the other is our ongoing personal development process.  

At the end of 2020, you may now naturally be pausing and considering how you will ‘sharpen your saw’ next year. To support you and our Alumni, we want to share some resources and options for your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) with us in 2021. 

Our annual gathering / CPD event in 2021

Please save the date for our next Annual Gathering (Alumni CPD event): 16 July 2021.

The day is currently taking shape based on feedback, and we are excited about what will be on offer; more information will follow early next year.

This will again be a virtual event as a result of the success and impact of this year’s day together — and hosting it online will also ensure that our alumni who are not based in London can join us. 

Deepen your professional development and accreditation as a Coach

You may be considering your next development route as a professional coach, This may include:

• deepening your coaching practice to work transformationally as a coach
• achieving the EMCC Global EIA Certification as a Practitioner or Senior Practitioner
• journeying with a strong peer group

We will be continuing to offer our advanced blended and fully online transformational coach training courses – just visit the coach training section of our website for more information. 

Watch a Free Online CPD session

Since our inception, we have been delivering free webinars on a variety of coaching and mindfulness topics and we will continue to do this during 2021.

A list of next year’s programme of webinars will be available on our website by the end of December. Here are some our favourite key topics that you may wish to visit over this period to support your CPD and coaching practice:   

Self as Instrument

Working with Metaphors in a Coaching Conversation

 Working with Emotions

Embodied Coaching

Creative Methods in Coaching

Coaching Outdoors

Online Coaching

Imposter Syndrome

Coaching Confidence

Join a Coaching Supervision Group

Our Supervision Groups run virtually and face-to-face in London. You can find out more about these here.

We hope that with the above offering we will continue to support you in 2021, and we look forward to continuing our journey into coaching together.