I am delighted to
have been invited to, and accepted, the role of Honorary President of AICTP -
The newly launched Association for Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals.
AICTP has been formed to embrace
the concept and practice of integrating coaching with therapy.
Debra Jinks, the
founding Chair says, “AICTP aims to offer support and guidance to practitioners
who combine the theory and practice of therapy and coaching. We want to offer
coach-therapists a grass-roots environment where they can share ways to improve
their practice, gain increased security, safety and support in the way they
choose to work, and a sense of community – we already have 200 members of our
Linked In group which shows even at this early stage that there is interest out
there. Right now we’re not intending to be a standard-setting body – we just
want to get people talking about what they’re doing and what it means for
clients”.
With Keren Smedley as Deputy
Chair and Jayne Hildreth as a fellow founding director, plus Gordon Jinks and
Nash Popovic taking on key roles and projects, AICTP will be holding its first
open forum - world café style - on October 3rd at the University of
East London (Stratford Campus) from 4-7pm, in which anyone working as a
coach-therapist is welcome to participate.
As former inaugural Chair of
BACP Coaching (the coaching division of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) it's a subject close to my heart and I'm pleased to support them in any way I can.
Integrative practice has been going on for some
time in the UK and Europe (as far as we know, not in the US because of licencing laws). This is borne out by research and anecdotal evidence from coaches,
counsellors and therapists alike - yet because there has been so much debate
about “the differences” it’s masked the reality out there. Many just see their
clients’ needs as being on a continuum, and so that’s how they work. There is
much to explore around the ethics and the practice from many angles, and with
integration at its core, AICTP aims to lead the way in this important arena.
It's a very exciting development.
For more details about AICTP
contact Debra Jinks or Keren Smedley at support@aictp.org.uk
Showing posts with label Difference between therapy and coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Difference between therapy and coaching. Show all posts
Friday, 1 June 2012
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Building Trust - focus on relationships not on sales
In the May edition of The Art of Coaching in Therapy Today I share my thoughts about the importance of building trust in developing work with clients, focusing on relationships rather than "selling". http://www.therapytoday.net/article/show/1893/
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Learning from Coach Assessment Centres
My April Coaching Column in Therapy Today looks at new forms of Coach Assessment Centres - http://www.therapytoday.net/article/show/1867/
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Therapy and Coaching - what's the difference?
I m writing this on my blog as there have been so many debates on this subject in the coaching and therapy worlds I wanted to take it a bit wider and see what HR and OD folk think too.
The text below is more or less what I have said on a recent posting to a coaching forum on yahoo groups.
I have have long held the view that coaching and therapy are on a continuum of supportive interventions at different points in people's lives. It's often the context and intention (of both the client and the practitioner) that differentiates them rather than the practise.
Equally, I see "therapy" as being on a continuum from simple supportive listening to complex intensive therapy. If we pathologize the term "therapy" it doesn't help. It's in mainstream use for both counselling and psychotherapy (as far as I am aware, there is still no compelling evidence to prove that counselling and psychotherapy are different activities and have different outcomes) and it can mean different things to people, from "talking about the issue" through to "seeing a shrink"!
So I do have some concern about the idea that some seem to have that therapy is for dysfunctional people. Many people find it invaluable during crises that we might all reasonably expect in or around own our lives and communities at some point: bereavement, divorce, infertility, being bullied, serious illness, disability, relationship problems etc. When people seek support to help them to understand, respond, manage or recover from these challenges, many are actually functioning pretty well. EAPs / workplace counselling services see people like this every day; clients have their session and go straight back to work.
Naturally there are individuals who have greater challenges in coping with distressing past and present life events, in achieving good emotional and mental health and who experience repeated or protracted difficulties, and thus who may need more in-depth work. Yet many of these clients at the right point can benefit from a coaching approach too.
I don't think it's useful either to assume that all therapy focuses on the past or that it's all going to be negative and painful, or that the therapist is expert and the client is not. There are many brief, future oriented and client empowering forms of therapy (for example Solution Focused Therapy and CBT) which have been embraced by the coaching world, and many highly generative ideas in coaching that have been embraced in client oriented therapy (for example, Clean Language and The Thinking Environment).
Many skilful and experienced coaches from non therapeutic backgrounds now do life enhancing and healing work with clients suffering from distressing symptoms such as severe anxiety, panic attacks and phobias, situations which would once have been the sole domain of therapists and hypnotherapists. Professional supervision is much better established as a supportive reflective learning place for coaches as well as therapists, and more coach training and CPD is available to support in addressing the needs of more complex clients; these have both helped to widen out the type of work that coaches do. Whether coach or therapist, their skills and experience will be on a continuum too, so ensuring that the needs of the client and the situation are matched with the skill and experience of the practitioner is key to professional and safe practise.
Our challenge is perhaps how to help clients to decide what they need and how practitioners, whether coach or therapist, we can explain how they work so that clients can make informed choices.
The text below is more or less what I have said on a recent posting to a coaching forum on yahoo groups.
I have have long held the view that coaching and therapy are on a continuum of supportive interventions at different points in people's lives. It's often the context and intention (of both the client and the practitioner) that differentiates them rather than the practise.
Equally, I see "therapy" as being on a continuum from simple supportive listening to complex intensive therapy. If we pathologize the term "therapy" it doesn't help. It's in mainstream use for both counselling and psychotherapy (as far as I am aware, there is still no compelling evidence to prove that counselling and psychotherapy are different activities and have different outcomes) and it can mean different things to people, from "talking about the issue" through to "seeing a shrink"!
So I do have some concern about the idea that some seem to have that therapy is for dysfunctional people. Many people find it invaluable during crises that we might all reasonably expect in or around own our lives and communities at some point: bereavement, divorce, infertility, being bullied, serious illness, disability, relationship problems etc. When people seek support to help them to understand, respond, manage or recover from these challenges, many are actually functioning pretty well. EAPs / workplace counselling services see people like this every day; clients have their session and go straight back to work.
Naturally there are individuals who have greater challenges in coping with distressing past and present life events, in achieving good emotional and mental health and who experience repeated or protracted difficulties, and thus who may need more in-depth work. Yet many of these clients at the right point can benefit from a coaching approach too.
I don't think it's useful either to assume that all therapy focuses on the past or that it's all going to be negative and painful, or that the therapist is expert and the client is not. There are many brief, future oriented and client empowering forms of therapy (for example Solution Focused Therapy and CBT) which have been embraced by the coaching world, and many highly generative ideas in coaching that have been embraced in client oriented therapy (for example, Clean Language and The Thinking Environment).
Many skilful and experienced coaches from non therapeutic backgrounds now do life enhancing and healing work with clients suffering from distressing symptoms such as severe anxiety, panic attacks and phobias, situations which would once have been the sole domain of therapists and hypnotherapists. Professional supervision is much better established as a supportive reflective learning place for coaches as well as therapists, and more coach training and CPD is available to support in addressing the needs of more complex clients; these have both helped to widen out the type of work that coaches do. Whether coach or therapist, their skills and experience will be on a continuum too, so ensuring that the needs of the client and the situation are matched with the skill and experience of the practitioner is key to professional and safe practise.
Our challenge is perhaps how to help clients to decide what they need and how practitioners, whether coach or therapist, we can explain how they work so that clients can make informed choices.
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