September 2015

31 August 2015

Dear friends

Already September 2015!   I hope this summer has been as fantastic for you as it was for us,. Even if it was much too short to my liking.  We have just returned from Ibiza and our eyes and hearts are still full of beautiful seaside sunrises.  A full fifteen family days with my sons, grandsons, wives, and friends.   Pure joy!

But our road warrior lifestyle has already kicked in.  We have already been off to Vienna for a few days, then to Bucharest for the opening of the Enescu music festival.  And  I'll soon go back to Paris to work for a client, then off to Lyon for an ICF conference, then to Paris and Bucharest again for work.  October and November will beat to the same Bucharest-Paris rhythm, adding a few days in Amsterdam, a week in Montreal, a sidestep to Luxembourg, etc. You know that we have traveler genes. 

Ibiza sunrise


 

This fall season:

First a quick update on my coach-training and supervision activity (with numerous links to resource pages):  
  • The Métasystème-Coaching Systemic Coaching Fundamentals are now being offered starting September 21-22 in Bucharest in English, in Madrid and in Spanish (by Claude Arribas PCC), and both à Paris and starting October à Lyon In French.  For managers and coaches, these nine-day on-location programs are spread over four months and allow for up to 450 coach and client experiences - by phone or Skype - for each participant.   Just a way of saying these are intensely hands-on, very practical training programs.  Check their learning architecture on our website!  What's more, surprisingly original systemic-coaching strategies and tools are introduced from the first day on. 
  • The Métasystème-Coaching Supervision programs for coaches continue to be offered in the form of 3-day marathons in Bucharest and in English. You can get the same in Madrid in Spanish (also by Claude Arribas, PCC), and à Paris and à Lyon in French.
  • Two other English-language workshops, one on Team Diagnosis are programmed for October 29-30 in Iasi and another for November 23-24 on Delegated Processes in Bucharest.  The two are classical Metasysteme-Coaching training programs.  They set solid foundations for very performing systemic team coaching strategies and tools.
  • A two-day workshop on the Breakthrough Processes for managers and coaches, is programmed in English, October 2-3 in Amsterdam.  Breakthrough processes permit deep shifts in personal frames of reference, important cultural evolution in  teams and organizations, and notable increases in measurable quantitative or qualitative results.  For what more can you ask?

All these courses and workshops are open to managers, consultants and coaches.  All are ACSTH-validated by the ICF, which offers a number of advantages.  And all offer strategies and tools that rest on a systemic perspective.  


As usual, I will greatly appreciate your support if you pass on the above information to managers and coaches in your network, especially to those would benefit from expanding their personal and professional perspectives by developing a more systemic or all-inclusive, collaborative frame of reference.

Resources

Earlier this summer, I have put the finishing touches on a number of new resources.   These will gradually be posted online over the fall.   So you will soon benefit from new tools, books, translations and video recordings: 

1) For your Hispanic network, a second Spanish-language book will soon be available on Kindle, titled  Coaching Sistemico de Equipos y Organizationes,  It is the second book to be offered in that language.  This book is expanding the collection that also titles three English-language books for coaches. 

2) For French readers, an new updated translation of the online Metasystème-Coaching Management-Coach Skills Inventory will soon be available on the French Métasysteme-Coaching website.    The English beta version is already available through the above link.  The purpose of this tool is to help managers (clients) and coaches self-evaluate their active skills, the ones they deploy in a variety of personal and professional contexts, including coaching.  An extensive report provides each with precise development strategies and tools in management and coaching, both in one on one and team contexts. And thank you for the feed-back from those who have tested it!

3) A new series of nine short conferences - ten to fifteen minutes each - will be gradually posted on our English YouTube playtist.  Along with our French YouTube playlist, these will add to the Metasysteme-Coaching video library that will then offer over fifty short interviews on systemic coaching, plus a few longer conferences  The new recordings with Serena Massih mostly concern practicing the coaching profession in the Middle-East and North Africa.

Another magical IBIZA sunrise!


 

Conferences

To celebrate ICF's 25 years of active service developing the coaching profession and worldwide community, I have been invited to deliver several conferences and workshops.

  • September 14 in Lyon, during la journée nationale d'ICF France,  I will deliver several workshops on clarifying client goals and contracting.  In a systemic frame of reference, of course, so be prepared for innovative perspectives.   

  • October 22-23 à Montréal I will deliver a keynote speech for the ICF Quebec annual conference on the ICF 25-year anniversary theme.  Its focus is on all the bridges between coaching and the digital revolution, which happens to have also started around the early nineteen nineties.   This coincidence is significant as both are still developing at a very rapid pace, both are rooted in immediate solution-oriented reactivity, both ignore time and distance and cut through the territoriality of individualism, fields of expertise, the provincialism of national boundaries, ... etc.  Kin to a Google or an Apple, the ICF is a web-like network organization that is exploring, defining, spearheading, ... the future of coaching. 

  • November 19, I will deliver an evening conference à Luxembourg.  It also concerns the role of coaching to accompany the practical cultural transformations organizations need to undertake to surf on the digital revolution, in order to survive.


Coaching

Of course, an occasional conference leaves me with ample time for my real job: coaching managers, team coaching and coaching large leadership groups that include over three organizational levels.  In the latter, the 3-day process aims to simultaneously and intensely accompany more than sixty top key corporate players from the same company ina  systemic organizational coaching process. Call it complexity management!   A few companies are started with that type of approach in Romania, and the buzz is out!

The concerned targets for the above are usually national or European level executives.  It's no surprise, their challenge often concern a vital personal or organizational transformation.  Collective coaching processes also often concern actively managing organizational transitions towards a more actively committed collaborative or digital culture. (Read a case study)

And on a more personal level...

We are impatiently, and somewhat anxiously waiting to finish the second half of our walk to Compostella.  Another 950 kilometers from the Spanish border to Finistera on the Atlantic shore.  We finished the first half last spring, on May 31st, starting from Paris and walking all the way to Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port, almost in Spain.  April and May 2016, we will start where we left off and the first hike will have us cross the Pyrenees: a 1200 meter climb.  Anecdote: From the last trip I still have to bear the swollen sequels of two sprained ankles.  But no worry: when you limp on both legs, you end up walking like everyone else.  So it doesn't show !  

Before that, however, we will take some real time off on a Caribbean vacation.  Fifteen days vacation, sea, sun and farniente for Christmas and New Year's eve.  That is very soon!

Once again, I thank you for your presence and support without which all I am developing would not serve much purpose.  And do not hesitate to call, write, mail, or stop by for coffee should you come around Paris, or when I'm in your area.

Coachingly yours

Alain (and Geanina for those who have had the privilege to meet her)