OXFORD PROFESSIONAL CONSULTING - courses

Our most popular coaching skills courses in 2008

Introduction to Coaching Skills

ILM Level 5 Certificate Course in Coaching and Mentoring for Management

Intercultural Coaching Skills

Oxford Professional Consulting (OPC) runs a range of train-the-coach courses for managers in business and education. Our Introduction to Coaching is the entry point and explains what coaching is, its benefits and the skills that a coach uses. If participants want to proceed to the next stage they select our course leading to the Award in Workplace Coaching or the Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring in Management. Both these qualifications are from the UK's Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). We also provide tailormade in-company courses in coaching as a management skill for companies and organizations, as well as open courses in Oxford for managers, consultants, advisors and trainers.

We use QED as our ILM centre since they have many years of experience in running and managing these well-respected awards.

Tailormade coaching skills courses: for leadership

Case-studies - Newcastle:

In September 2006 we were invited to pilot a course, Introduction to Coaching in Education, for managers in Newcastle upon Tyne. As a result of the success of the pilot, places on the course were greatly in demand and we repeated it many times with, in all, attendance by well over 150 managers at all levels. Of these, 45 chose to proceed with us to take the ILM qualifications in workplace coaching and mentoring for managers, the Level 3 Award in Workplace Coaching and the Level 5 Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring in Management.

In addition, OPC is supporting managers from over six Newcastle schools which are in the process of establishing coaching as a tool for professional development of staff. Each school uses coaching in the way is chooses, some for co-coaching by teachers for peer observation of lessons, others as part of the programme for gifted and talented students, others as a basis for professional conversations at all levels.

Case-study - Oxford:

After attending one of our open courses on Coaching Skills for Managers, the Director of Studies for a successful language school in Oxford asked for a 2-hour taster on coaching skills for her teaching and pastoral staff. The school receives students from all over the world, mostly young adults aged 20-25 but also a small client-base of more mature professionals. The Director of Studies felt that coaching skills would help motivation in long-stay students as well as giving extra value to intensive courses for business clients. Her first step was to discover whether her teaching staff agreed.

The staff liked what they saw, quickly noticing how coaching differs from the methodology of teaching and how it could be complementary in their organisation. They will now decide between two options - running a coaching skills programme in-house to train all staff or training just one or two teachers to use as professional coaches within the school.

Coaching skills courses: for consultants

In October 2007, Chris Clark of Clark Consulting attended our open course on coaching skills for consultants, facilitated by Alison Haill.

"This really was a peach of a course for simply explaining in a logical and understated way the coaching and mentoring foundations. Alison quickly dispelled any incorrect notions, giving us ample opportunities to put tools and techniques into practice for fast effect. I can see this will enable me to help clients to work even more creatively with us and to significantly improve their results. An unexpected additional benefit was the coaching I received in the practice session - it was an eye-opener and I have taken away 5 'must do' steps to alleviate a business capacity issue that is becoming a drag on our increasing revenues. Warmly recommended."
Chris Clark, MD, Clark Marketing Ltd

For executive and corporate coaching to improve leadership and performance, please see our coaching page.