International Coach Academy

Robyn Logan

Last week Merci Miglino and I hosted calls with 6 of our amazing coaches to celebrate International Coaching Week. We covered a range of topics and the coaches shared freely on topics such as – How they came to coaching / How they chose their niche or specialty / How they chose their client group, how they attract clients and more.

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Sarah Creek, Simplicity Coach

Sarah was originally from Montreal and now lives in Alberta, Canada. Sarah came to coaching after working for 14 years as an Interior designer. She would often notice in her work that more often than not, an “outside” change was not fully what her clients were after. Sometimes a new paint job or new furniture didn’t quite cut it. The change they were looking for was an “inside” one.

After graduating from ICA Sarah set up Pure Simple Change and now works with visionary women who want to unlock their greatness.

Ange Anderson, Responsibility Coach

Ange is from Australia and at the time of this recording was working in a remote Aboriginal community north of Brisbane. Ange came to coaching after being made redundant from a company she loved. It turns out that event was one of those life changing moments. The company paid for her to do a positive psychology course and it was during that program that she realised coaching was her next pathway. Whilst still studying as a coach Ange set up her business “OwnYourShitGirl.com” and currently coaches women who are already kicking goals but just need that little bit of help to get to the next level.

Siddharth Arora, Sales Coach

Sid is originally from India and now lives in Hong Kong, having previously worked in India, Singapore, Japan and Australia.  Sid came to coaching from his experience as a client in the corporate sector. The benefit he received from coaching made him  want to share and contribute to the growth and development of others. After graduating form ICA he has now blended coaching with his love of sales and is currently working as a Sales Coach.

Gerdi Verwoert is a Certified Professional Coach and Mountain Seeker Extraordinaire. She left 20+ years in the corporate world behind, and moved to the mountains where she now coaches people who want to live life on their own terms. Gerdi uses blends coaching, and hiking as a metaphor, for life and life’s challenges. Read More

Julia Griffin, Diversity Coach

Julia is based in the United Kingdom and is a current student of International Coach Academy’s Advanced Coach Program. As a communicator, relationship-builder, creative and technologically savvy person, Julia provides training and coaching with a focus on equality, diversity and inclusion. Read More

Mindy J Kaleta, Life Coach

The post Interview With ICA Coaches – Why Coaching? What Niche? Client attraction and more appeared first on International Coach Academy.

Rossella knows how to leverage her skills as a business development and project manager, transformational coach, and mentor to promote professional coaching and its value in the workplace.

Employed in a fast-growing company in the private banking insurance sector as a successful Business Developer and Project Manager, Rossella wanted more for herself and her family. She wanted to learn and to leave a legacy of helping people in a very big way. Coaching internationally for organizations and individuals in the workplace was just what she was looking for.

In 2013 Rossella Pin, PCC co-founded AIM (the Italian Association for Mentoring), and went on to Co-Found and now serves as Vice President of EMCC Italy, an Italian not-for-profit association that promotes the credibility and quality of professional coaching and mentoring in Italy and encourages national and international exchanges between professionals.

Merci: Hi, I’m delighted today to be with Rossella Pin, who I’ve actually met in her home country of Italy, a beautiful, beautiful country. Welcome, Rossella.

Rossella: Hi, Merci nice to see you again.

Merci: Okay, well Rossella is a certified coach and graduate of ICA and is also a PCC. Good for you!

Rossella: Yeah, thank you.

Merci: And she’s one of only a handful of coaches in Italy who have earned their PCC and I’m curious, how did you come to coaching?

Rossella: Actually, that’s an interesting question and I have many, many people asking me that. And when I think about my life, actually, it seems that coaching has always been there.

Merci: [agrees]

Rossella: And I’ve been really lucky because, from the very beginning of my career, I was introduced to coaching via courses I took in London.

Merci: [agrees]

Rossella: But I was mainly using coaching as a technique to help people facing changes in their daily work life.

Merci: Yeah, change is a big topic for coaching, isn’t it?

Rossella: Absolutely. Yeah. And I have a passion for change, I really love changing. I like to change everything in my life, in my house … well I like to change everything except my husband.

Merci: No, no, or your children, well, maybe…

Rossella: No, no, no. [laughing]

Merci: I think it’s great when people can see coaching already in the profession we are doing. And build on that.

Rossella: You see people changing. When they understand themselves, the change is really positive. It’s an opportunity for them also to learn and grow, and that’s when the magic happens.

Merci: Yeah, the magic.

Rossella: Yeah.

Merci: Okay. Who do you coach now? What are your clients like?

Rossella: My clients are mainly people who are starting something. So I’ve become a professional in “how to survive with your first year”. So the first year of your university, the first year of your new family, the first year of your work … my coaching is about how to survive to your first year. And I could write a book I think on that!

Merci: I think you should, a first-year coach I think that’s wonderful. First year of your marriage, first year of your retirement, first year as an expat.

Rossella: Yeah, yeah.

Merci: Oh, my goodness. I love it, I love it. I think that’s really, really fun. See the niches we find ourselves in!

Rossella: So that’s what all my clients have in common. They are facing the first year, so, all the changes, are probably why I like transformational coaching because when you are in the first year of something you really need to change the way you live, without really throwing everything off your life.

Merci: Yeah.

Rossella: And keep just what serves you now.

Merci: Wow, I love it. Alright. So in ICA do remember the assessments?

Rossella: Yeah.

Merci: We create our own coaching model, and we create a power tool for coaching. Tell me a little bit about what your assessments were. And how it was for you to create them?

Rossella: Okay, so, it’s been like a little process, actually, during my studies. I looked at the tools I was using in my coaching practice. And there were some common things, like trust, aim, intuition, and action. So these were the tools I was always using. And the assessments came from that.

Merci: Yeah.

Rossella: My coaching model is called “the aim coaching model”. And it’s a process that guides you through the transformation process. It is made of two parts, it starts from creating a safe environment. You need to trust yourself and your vision, be healthy, and have energy, and support systems around you. Then you go into yourself and I took the symbol of the Vitruvian man and where you get the awareness about what you want to do. Then you go to your heart and find what you know, what you’re going to do.

Merci: Yeah.

Rossella: And you get your inspiration from your values and move into action because actually, it’s when you take that first move that the magic happens.

Merci: Yeah.

Rossella: So that’s the process.

Merci: I think that’s my favorite part of training at ICA, and we are used to thinking about kind of things, “What am I doing? And what is it about this that I can keep doing?

Merci: So for our final question, if you could tell the world one thing about coaching, what would it be?

Rossella: Coaching is magic [laughing]. Actually when I decided to become a professional coach I decided to study professionally with ICA and my passion has become my profession. Actually, it is not my profession it’s my whole life that has changed and now I really have the life I want. My story is now my best marketing and selling story. So I would say to the world: start coaching, find the right course, become part of this amazing coaching community at ICA, and use your story as your best marketing tool.

Merci: Beautifully said I can’t even add anything to that. Thank you again for joining me Rossella. And good luck with all you are doing.

Rossella: Thank you. Thank you very much, Merci. Ciao.

Merci: Ciao.

Website: http://www.rossellapin.com

Portfolio: https://coachcampus.com/Rossella-Pin

Download a coach training module & listen to recordings of live teleclasses.

The post ICA Coach Rossella Pin is a “First Year” Coach appeared first on International Coach Academy.

Lynne Elder is passionate about enabling women to reach their full potential and experience the freedom, excitement and personal fulfilment that a successful career or business delivers.

As a marketing coach and speaker, Lynne specialises in helping professional women build a thriving practice or career by leveraging their personal brand.

A 2012 graduate of ICA, Lynne now blends her extensive marketing expertise and coaching skills to help executive and small business clients build powerful personal brands that result in success, whether inside an organization or as an entrepreneur.

As a former quality director for Hertz Europe and Hertz UK and marketing director for The Concorde Initiative Ltd Lynne has extensive of experience in brand identity and credibility, brand differentiation marketing and sales strategy and marketing communications planning.

With a special focus on women – the result of her experience of being personally inspired by the inner strength of women around the globe and humbled by their resilience in sometimes dreadful circumstances.

Merci: Hi. I’m talking with Lynne Elder from Swansea South Wales in the U.K. and I’m here in New York. How are you today?

Lynne: Hi, Merci. I’m fine thanks, nice to see you.

Merci: Great. Nice to reconnect with our alumni. Lynne graduated from ICA in 2012. So, tell us a little bit about how you came to coaching.

Lynne: [agrees] Well, I started off in business over 35 years ago. After a successful career in marketing and operations and then in culture change.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: I set up my own business consultancy. So, I ran that successfully for a number of years and then I decided I really like to focus on coaching specifically, executive coaching. So I then realized actually I wanted to be probably qualified in coaching and that’s when I find the ICA.

Merci: Oh, great.

Lynne: Here I am.

Merci: Great. So, are you executive coaching now?

Lynne: Well, I’m not. And there’s an interesting tale behind that.

Merci: Oh, let’s hear it.

Lynne: Well I mean executive coaching seemed to be a natural thing for me to do because I had so many years in business and while I was in business I used to coaching style management. Now, it probably wasn’t called coaching way back then but that’s exactly what it was. So it made sense when I found I was going to become a coach to focus on executive coaching. But you know as I went through the classes with the ICA I noticed something that actually made me change my focus. And as I was, you know, interacting this all the fellow students on the classes, I could hear that they were going to be really, really excellent coaches but there was a pattern that I was picking up which was a lot of them were really quite confused and lacking in knowledge as to how to actually market themselves and build the practice and they really go from, you know, one extreme of the spectrum which is not having the knowledge to market through to the other extreme which was actually sometimes a bit of reluctance to get into marketing that almost marketing and charging for their services was a little bit alien to them.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And as I went through my class I thought, you know, all these wonderful coaches aren’t there. They’re fantastic at coaching but struggling to build a good coaching practice because their marketing is letting them done.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: So, then I came to do my research paper Merci and I did my research paper on marketing a coaching practice.

Merci: Oh, great.

Lynne: And as I was gathering all of the information actually the statistics kind of confirmed while I was picking up.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: Which was sort of all of the coaches out there in the world a [inaudible] don’t make a good living.

Merci: Right.

Lynne: And it’s largely done to the research show a lack of marketing. So, I put all of that in my little brain and I thought, you know, what I think I really want to do and speak to my own passion is not executive coaching. It is actually to help my fellow coaches develop good coaching practices.

Merci: Oh, wow!

Lynne: So, that they’re able to work in their passion.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And help more people and in that way I’m fulfilled.

Merci: Oh, my goodness that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful and as a business coach myself who runs business express for ICA, you’re so astute, you kick this up, your background, you’re now, you know, you had two places to go, you know executive coach on marketing and you marry the two in a way and you found this beautiful blend and that’s your coaching niche and your research paper done for your ICA requirement really help to do and what a great way to use an assessment to do something that would really serve you going forward.

Merci: Yeah.  Really. Oh, it’s delightful to hear you’ve made such a journey.

Lynne: Thank you.

Merci: Yeah.  Well, I’ve got to ask you this. I asked all our Day in a Life of coach guest this question. You could tell the world one thing about coaching line, what would it be?

Lynne: [agrees] Well, coaching for me is enabling someone to maximize their potential.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: It’s to really go inside themselves and work on what makes them [inaudible]

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: How they can best use their own talents and their innate ability.

Merci: [agrees]

Lynne: And the key is that they find this out for themselves. So, you know, from the years in business I now that consultant, outsiders can come in and can help accompany our staff attain but to really get it in to the [inaudible] and has to be self-driven and coaching is just fantastic for that.

Merci: Yeah.  Oh, good point. Well, you know, thanks for spending this time with us. Quickly how do people get a hold of you?

Lynne: Well, I have websites which is She’s Smart Marketing because I practice what I preach.

Merci: Okay.  [laughing]

Lynne: So, my niche is women female coaches.

Merci: Okay.  All right.

Lynne: So, She’s Smart Marketing.code@UK is my website.

Merci: Love the name.

Lynne: And I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter.

Merci: All right.  Well, thank you. Have a great I guess sunny day there in Swansea and thank you again for talking with us.

Lynne: All right.  You’re very welcome, Merci. Nice to see you again.

Merci: Bye-bye.

Lynne speaks regularly on such topics as The Power of Personal Branding for Employers and Employees, You ARE Your Brand for Solo Professionals and Nail Your Niche, The Key Marketing Step for Coaches & SoloPros.

Website: www.SheSmart.co.uk/

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post Former Quality Director for Herz Europe Brings Her Branding Expertise to Coaching appeared first on International Coach Academy.

ICA Coach Sarah Jack has the unique perspective of an executive who has experienced many of the challenges facing leaders today, combined with graduate and post-graduate studies in behavioral change and motivation.

Merci: Hi, I’m Merci Miglino, and welcome to another Day in the Life of a Coach.  I’m here with Sarah Jack, an ICA graduate which earn a credential of ACC from the ICF.  And she lives really close to me, welcome, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi, Merci, it’s great to be here.

Merci: Wow.  I met Sarah twice, not just once which is great.  In ICA, we don’t know whose get the opportunity to meet her students and grads.  And I learned a lot about her, first of all, she has an exactly the background, she does executive coaching now.  She has a really interesting background in change, in motivation.  So tell us, Sarah, how you came to be a coach?

Sarah: Well, I think the other students from ICA say this but there is something about us that I think we all probably been coaching all of our lives.  And I have always been interested in what makes people improves themselves, improves their lives, make them happier, make them more successful.  And I really wanted to do that, so that’s what brought me to coaching.

Merci: Okay.  So what did you do before coaching?  Our students sometimes have the most interesting backgrounds and I just love to ask that question.

Sarah: Yes.  So I spent over 20 years in the magazine publishing business and worked for one of the biggest publishers in the United States, and it was really, really fabulous, I was surrounded by smart, creative people.  And so the interesting thing is throughout that entire time, what I was doing at work was really often helping the people around me get out of their own way, become unstuck, and I would do that for myself too.  So I just always sort of been on this coaching path.

Merci: Yeah, sounds very exciting.  So now, what is your coaching niche, what are you doing now?

Sarah: I’m an executive coach, so we worked with the senior real estate executives in the company or live life of our managers, just about bringing out the leadership in every single one of us.  We all have it, and so it’s really about increasing that awareness, getting people focused and motivated and achieving what they need to achieve.

Merci: [agrees] so what’s the biggest challenge in executive coaching if anything?

Sarah: You know, the very first part of raising people’s awareness, whether that’s using feedback instruments, you know, 360 reviews or some sort of other survey, or just the observations of the coach, that can —- that can be a struggle for some people, it sometimes is very uncomfortable.

Merci: Yeah.

Sarah: But once the eyes are open, you know, the work gets really interesting and really fruitful, so…

Merci: Yes, yeah, it pays off.

Sarah: Yes, yeah.

Merci: Okay.  Great.  So at ICA, we do couple of assessments, we create our own coaching model, we create a power tool, and we do some research.  So tell us a little bit about what yours looked like.

Sarah: Well, I have always been interested in looking at people strengths, I’m very interested in the school positive psychology, and kind of a behavioral techniques, and so I started exploring that.  And so the exercises at ICA, doing the research paper, thinking about my own power tool and my own model will just help me evaluate where I’m coming from and what I know.  And it was great to have to dig in and read about a resource material.  And so the process itself was very enlightening…

Merci: Yeah.

Sarah: …it was very really important informing my own coaching approach.

Merci: Yes, the process, how interesting, you know, I don’t know, I was thinking that, you know, when you think of assessment sometimes, and something you have to do.

Sarah: Yeah.

Merci: And incomplete and there’s always a deadline.  But the process of learning, you know,, I think that’s, you know, what makes a great coach, so good for you if you’re enjoying the process.  So my final question, Sarah, has to do with —- if you could tell the world one thing about coaching, what would it be?

Sarah: Well, number one includes done right, if the coach is really sticking to the fundamentals of coaching, coaching really works.

Merci: [agrees]

Sarah: So if the coach is doing what the coach is supposed to do and we, coachee, is playing effort into it, I mean, that’s what happened, it’s a really, really effective way of improving whatever it is we’re trying to improve.  And I am a huge believer, I just think it’s a really, really great way to push yourselves forward.

Merci: Yeah.  Wow, that’s beautiful.  You know, it’s finding something that’s striking me the day, we often think we come to coaching sometimes as a second career.  And we might imagine that everything up to that point is not useful.  But what I heard throughout your answers is that everything we are, executive, working in a magazine, running an ICF chapter in New Jersey, being part of the, you know, direction in that —- in that area, all come to bear in the coaching relationship, it’s very interesting.

Sarah: Definitely, I think, you know, we’re all on a journey, and it all adds up, I mean, you learn something every step of the way, and so, you know, I always bring that to my clients too, you know, they maybe stuck in a moment.  And when we take a step back, and we look at everything they’ve learned up to that point, there’s a lot of good information there.  And often they can find their only answers easily by just thinking about that, so…

Merci: Yeah, yeah, great.  Well, thanks for spending some time with us today, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you, Merci.

Merci: All right.  Bye.

Sarah: Bye.

As a 19-year veteran of marketing for such magazine as Time Inc. and People, ICA Coach Sarah Jack leverages her understanding of leadership development at global coaching firm COACH A, which serves clients in more than 2,000 corporations worldwide.

website:

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post Former Magazine Marketing Director Brings Lessons Learned in the Deadline-Driven Publishing World to Executive Coaching appeared first on International Coach Academy.

Samar Naim works in organization and people development for a government organization in Dubai. She is also a certified coach with International Coach Academy. In this interview, she talks to ICA Training Director, Merci Miglino about her SELFISH coaching model.

0:36 – Coaching came to Samar as a calling

Merci: Hi! I’m delighted to welcome Samar all the way from the UAE. Welcome, Samar.

Samar: Thank you. Thank you.

Merci: So you are one of our ICA coaches, tell me what have you been doing since you graduated?

Samar: I’ve been coaching. [laughter]

Merci: [laughter] That’s great. What year did you graduate?

Samar Naim: I graduated last year 2014, in June, I believe.

Merci: Okay, great. So how did you get into coaching? What brought you into the field?

Samar: Yes, I really believe that coaching came to me as a calling. I was going through this transitional phase of really wanting to develop myself. But this time, I didn’t want anything that would help me develop as a professional only but as a person too so, there was coaching. It didn’t take me long to decide on going ahead with it. I think it took me around a week from the first time I coached someone at ICA.

Merci: Oh, wow. That’s amazing. You’re really a quick decider, I’d say. Has it been something that’s enriched you both personally and professionally?

Samar: Very much so, Very much so.

Merci: Great. What were you doing prior to coaching? Did you have a profession or a field that you were in?

Samar Naim: I’m still in the profession that I was in before coaching. I work as a people and organization development specialist at a government department. It specializes in protocol and that’s what I’m doing until now.

Merci: Does coaching help you there?

Samar: Very much so, in the sense that I’ve been included as part of the performance appraisal process – the before, between, and after. That’s why I started putting coaching into play when it comes to my job, my kind of job. But I also do it after working hours as personal, individual coaching.

Merci: Yeah. Because I could hear your desire for something that would expand the entirety of who you are. You know, seeing it in your work. It’s great – people skills and then helping people do it one on one. Terrific. Wonderful. Alright so, we do some interesting things here at the ICA when we’re students, don’t we? We do our coaching model; we create our own coaching model and maybe a power tool and a research paper. Pick one or two of those and tell me how you came to do them and what they were about.

Samar: Well basically all of them are very similar because they hold one theme that I am so, for. I’m about being whole, being multi-dimensional,   embracing the whole of you, every layer, every side, every you. So If you look at my coaching model it’s based on the acronym – SELFISH. Now when I first thought of ‘selfish’ I was really worried about how people might take it. But then again I thought about what coaching is about. Coaching is about embracing diversity, reframing your perspective, and releasing judgments. So having that in mind I went ahead with my selfish model and it’s made up of the seven letters in ‘S-E-L-F-I-S-H. The first four are actually the process and then the last three are more of the philosophy of life.

‘S’ is for like sharing the story of the client.

Merci:  ‘ISH’ … [laughing]

Samar: Yeah …[laughing]

Merci: I like the ‘ISH’ you had …

Samar: It’s about really instilling what you learned from the ‘SELF’ process into you. And internalizing it and then the ‘S’ is showing yourself the ‘selfie’, right? Showing the ‘selfie’ to yourself and showing it to the world. Really enjoying and celebrating the results. And then ‘H’ is all about hailing that happiness and keeping and maintaining that happiness for yourself. So that’s my coaching model.

Merci: Wow. I love it! How bold to call it selfish. How bold, I love it! Yeah, because it’s a different perspective.

Merci: Yeah, It’s so interesting because, you know, we put such a negative perspective on selfishness, and when you look at it as self-care, as self-enlightenment, self-awareness. Wow! That’s all about the “ISH”. I like that. Alright.

Samar: [laughter]

Merci: You know I’m dying to hear what you would say, what is the one thing you would like to tell people today about coaching?

Samar: Coaching is an inter-disciplinary practice that’s very rewarding. It’s a journey of just being, a journey of flowing. It’s a partnership of self-discovery and maximizing your potential. I, very much invite everyone to try at least the discovery session to get to see what their goal is. Where they want to head.

Samar: Yes. That’s what I see about coaching.

Merci: That’s well said. So who are you coaching these days? Before we complete our call, tell me a little bit about who your clients are.

Samar: I’m coaching other coaches right now. I have two other coaches that I am coaching. And I usually coach people on life and executive issues. So I had some clients that belong to the corporate world and had some stress or work-life balance issues. I had also some clients who just wanted general life issues. And I usually get my clients through referrals –  that’s a powerful tool, let me say.

Merci: Yeah, yeah. Good for you.

Samar: Yes, yes.

Merci: It really works.

Samar: For my power tool, I chose not an either/or perspective at all. I just chose an and/or perspective.

Merci: Oh, okay.

Samar: I try to use consistency and/or randomness and it’s not about finding the balance or about choosing any of them. It’s about finding the right blend that serves you in a certain situation. And is very much in line with the yin-yang philosophy, like seemingly contrary factors are in fact natural dualities. They interact, one dominates more than the other but at the end of the day, they’re all part of you.

Merci: Right, right. You know, interacting dualities. I love it. What a great way to look at it. I remember reading that one too. Thank you so much.

Samar found coaching as part of her continuous search for development programs that speak to her values and her belief that people are creative and resourceful and really know what they want and need. She now coaches executives and other leaders.

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/samarnaim

Portfolio: https://coachcampus.com/coach/Samar-Naim

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post Samar Naim on Why She Tells Her Clients to Be SELFISH appeared first on International Coach Academy.

Having overcome significant health challenges, ICA Coach Tom Seaman’s journey is nothing short of inspirational, demonstrating how we can rise from the depths of despair to a life full of hope, triumph, and joy.

Everyone's best coach is their own intuition. Listen it trust it and follow it and you'll be on the right path...

0:57 Entrepreneurs in Health education business heading for MA in Psychology

After a series of failed treatments and years of chronic pain, ICA Coach Tom Seaman took the bull by the horns and dedicated himself to a variety of symptom management techniques including coaching that greatly improved his quality of life and is helping him to do the same for others.

In 2015, Tom published his book, Diagnosis Dystonia: Navigating the Journey. This combination autobiography, self help, education book provides treatment options, coping strategies, skills for daily living, and tools for dealing with the physical and mental challenges of life with a chronic health condition.

Website: www.diagnosisdystonia.com

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post ICA Coach Tom Seaman Turns Physical Adversity into Healthy Action appeared first on International Coach Academy.

Sumbo Ndi is on a mission to inspire, motivate and empower others to achieve success and improve performance. As a young girl, Sumbo believed that if you put your whole heart into something, believed you could achieve it, and if you were willing to take laser focus action, then you could attain your goals. She is now an empowerment coach who has developed her own coaching model “Clarify to Succeed” to help others achieve their goals. Sumbo coaches people and organizations from all over the world including Australia, China, Hong Kong, Kenya, Singapore, Egypt and Greece!

(0:36) Sumbo graduated from ICA and enrolled in the Learning Leader course.

You are not a copy, you are unique and the truth about who you are is inside you. You need to find it, believe it, work it and become it. [Click to Tweet!]

Merci: Hi, I’m Merci Miglino, and welcome to Day in a Life of a Coach. Today I’m talking with Sumbo Ndi in Adelaide, Australia. Welcome Sumbo.

Sumbo: Thank you, Merci.

Merci: So Sumbo is a graduate of International Coach Academy in 2013, and she’s also currently in our learning leader course which is all about taking that coach approach into group work or training, or presenting. And it’s been a delight to have you there.

Sumbo: Thank you.

Merci: So let’s see now. Clarify to Succeed is your coaching business. And you are an empowerment coach.

Sumbo: Yes.

Merci: So tell me a little bit about who you work with.

Sumbo: I work with women who are at the stage of taking the next step in their lives, whether it is in their personal lives or in their career. Because with the help of a coach, she can get all the confident, the strategies and the partnership and the co-creation that can happen with the help of a coach. Actually take that move into the next stage of what they want to achieve.

Merci: Yeah, wow, sounds great. How did you come to coaching?

Sumbo: Well, coaching, before I actually took the step to enroll and go through the training, I’ve had a lot of thinking about, for few years because I go to a point where I started thinking, you know, about, you know, is there more that I can do? I like, you know, talking to people, encouraging people and mentoring. And I was just beginning to think that I always enjoy that time of encouraging someone, imparting someone, I feel really in my zone, if you know what I mean?

Merci: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Sumbo: So I started thinking more about, “Okay, is there something I can do around this?” In my own personal, you know, way of doing things. So I started thinking of maybe there could be ways I can develop like processes of doing things. Because as a scientist, I think in that way of having step by step processes of how to achieve something. So I started thinking about, “Okay if I want to achieve something, how do I go through it?” I need to first of all think of, “Okay, what do I really want to achieve?” So I have that in mind. Then I can walk back. So is there a way I can put, you know, a step by step? So I was sort of, in that you know, firm of mind at that time and I started you know, really searching and really seeking and looking within myself to know what was the next step. And I also, you know, was praying in that time, seeking direction. Because I believe, you know, I can pray to God for direction and I’ll get it. So in that time, as well, then one night, I was, you know, in that time of praying, so I had this dream about, you know, creating materials and work shelves and delivering it in different places. Teaching people how to live to their potentials and I’m like, “Oh! Oh, my goodness…

Merci: [laughing]

Sumbo: …how can I do that?” [laughing]

Merci: Well, wow, that’s amazing.

Sumbo: So I started researching about how can you do this, how can you do this? So one day, I stumbled on the website of a guy who apparently was a graduate of ICA. And I saw what he was doing and I go, “That was it, that’s exactly what I want to do.” So I followed the link in that site to ICA. Because in that time I’ve been researching different, you know, coach training institutions. And I was so confused as to which it where you’re going even start. But you know, seeing this guy’s website, just you know, give me that – yeah, that was it. And then I went – I see a website, I look at everything, so what other graduates have done. So I thought, “Yeah, that’s the place.” So I thought to myself last year, I said, “This is the year for my coach training.” And I actually took the step to do that. Because as you know, if you don’t take action in the direction of our dream, nothing happens, yeah.

Merci: Yeah. Nothing happens. Absolutely. And boy, what a way to take some action. Good for you. We’re delighted to have you in our community. So let’s say…

Sumbo: Thank you.

Merci: …we’re going to talk a little bit more about more about what your work at ICA. First thing, tell me a little bit about your coaching model, like we here at ICA create our own coaching model. So tell me what yours was.

Sumbo: Mine was clarified to succeed. Like I said a little bit earlier, clarify every letter of the word. Clarify actually means something. So I start with a ‘C’, the C means having a compelling vision or a clear expectation of what you want to achieve. And L means you need to locate where you are, you know, relative to where you want to go. And then A means you need to analyze the gaps. So with the gaps, I don’t only look at maybe, deficiencies or what’s lacking. We look totally about what resources do you have, what are the things that are already working for you. So I classified those as accelerators or the things that are stopping you. So what are the things that accelerate the process? Or what are the things that could stop the process? So we look at all of that. We look at what is the real intention of what we want achieve, and what are your values, you know, getting a good understanding of what the values are. What the true intention is and what you really want to accomplish in this generation, it’s very important. So that when we then go to the next step, which means we need to redefine goals. We’re going to be setting goals that are actually aligned with the values, with the intention, and everything else that we have uncovered in the analysis stage. So once we then – we define the goals, the next thing would be to intentionally commit to action because if we said goals, we have good intentions and if you don’t take action, nothing happens. The goals would just remain goals. So once we start to take action, the next thing would be to remain focus and follow through. So focus on what you’re doing and follow through with your commitment on what you want to achieve. And then, what we expect to get to is your Y at the end of clarify, which means when you can say, “Yes, I did this.”

Merci: [laughing] Yes.

Sumbo: [laughing] Or this is, “Yes, my success is here because also we need to bear in mind from the start to really clearly define what success means for each…

Merci: Right.

Sumbo: …individual because success means different things for everyone. So getting to that point of “Yes.”

Merci: Yes, [laughing] I love it. Yeah.

Sumbo: [laughing] Yeah, you got to celebrate, you know, also we encourage people celebrate little milestones along the way. And then getting into that point of “Yes,” you can look at everything, “Okay, is this what I really wanted to achieve? Did I achieve it or what happen upon along the way? Maybe I didn’t really hit the target.” It’s not so much really about the destination.

Merci: Right.

Sumbo: It’s also about the whole journey. It’s good to have ahead in mind, however, also to remain flexible along the way knowing that things could change. You could go through a different route, but as long as you get the outcome that fulfills you, that means something to you. So that is the goal of what I do.

Merci: Clarified. Wonderfully done. Sounds very powerful. Speaking of powerful, what was your power tool? Here at ICA, we create our own coaching tools, what was yours?

Sumbo: That was clarity versus ambiguity.

Merci: Oh, of course, clarity versus ambiguity.

Sumbo: [laughing]

Merci: So you kind of overlap some of your coaching model with your power tools so they kind of work together?

Sumbo: Yes, I did.

Merci: Great. Good job. Let’s see. The other one is the research paper. What was your research paper about?

Sumbo: Yeah, that was thought leadership article, “Where would I stop, stopping, your stop has?” Identifying roadblocks in the way of your success and living to your full potential because understanding that in order for us to achieve success, or whatever we set out to, there’re often some roadblocks that we need to be aware of and also develop strategies to help, you know, client from the perspective of a coach, we need to have that understanding that those roadblocks and when those things come up during the coaching process, we are more aware and we are able to deal with those roadblocks. So that our clients can move forward. And also on personal level, we need to be aware of that on our own journey, too, knowing that these roadblocks are there and be aware of them and deal with them when they surface so that we can move forward.

Merci: Right. Right. Oh, my gosh, very powerful packing of tools there. Good for you.

Sumbo: Thank you.

Merci: So let say, well, I have a question for you If you could share…

Sumbo: Okay, what’s that?

Merci: If you could share with the world like one thing…

Sumbo: Yeah.

Merci: …about coaching, what would it be?

Sumbo: Well, I think coaching is really empowering because in achieving success, we don’t need to do the journey alone, with leveraging on the help that we can get through coaching and actually getting to the deep root of some of the issues that we have in some of the roadblocks that I talked about. It’s quite powerful with coaching. What you can achieve maybe in twelve months, with the right coach, and with the right support, things can up on the shortest amount of time that, you know, it’s quite possible and I would encourage anyone, you know, to get a coach, get a mentor, leverage on the people’s experiences. Leverage on the support that you can get so that you can get the way you want go.

Merci: Beautifully said. Thank you so much, Sumbo. Let’s see…

Sumbo: Thank you.

Merci: …do you have a website? Would you tell us for all our viewers out there? What’s your website?

Sumbo: Yes, I do have a website and that is clarifytosucceed.com.

Merci: Right. So if you want to know more about Sumbo’s coaching approach and her model and her extensive, wow, such an incredible passion for coaching here. So thanks again for being my guest on Day in the Life of a Coach. Thank you, Sumbo.

Merci: Thank you very much, Merci.

Sumbo Ndi, has a Ph.D in Biomedical Science and has earned the Accredited Certified Coach credential (ACC) from ICF.

She is an adjunct research Fellow at University of South Australia and is the Director and CEO (Chief Empowerment Officer) of CLARIFY To SUCCEED

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post Interview with Sumbo Ndi – Empowerment Coach Australia appeared first on International Coach Academy.

ICA Coach Jaahnavi Katti uses coaching and mindfulness tools to help others find their purpose, align it with their goals and actions, and get real results in their business and career.

(0:35) Jaahnavi started as soft skills trainer for other companies

After a decade of experience in soft skills training, ICA Coach Jaahnavi adds mindfulness coaching to her company KeyKonnecct services providing both management coaching and training.

website:

Every week we open a few places in our coach training to people considering coaching as a career. You can join in on a class with real students and experience learning the ICA way.

The post Founder and CEO of KeyKonnecct, Brings Mindfulness Coaching to Executives and Entrepreneurs appeared first on International Coach Academy.