After a great day 2 (the first real day of the conference), I was looking forward to another day full of connecting, learning and inspiration.
The sponsor Erickson, who started off proceedings provided some thought provoking quotes on coaching which had an impact; ‘coaching is like a tide- its coming from everywhere around the world’ and ‘ coaching is the only human development game- and becoming a world game’. These were both true after hearing the stories and examples from around the globe formally and informally yesterday.
Session 1 kicked off with a keynote speaker. Whilst I used all my internal powers to push myself out of my comfort zone and to learn, connect and inspire– unfortunately I simply couldn’t connect– so I am disappointed to say I left this session after 40 minutes due to not gaining the learning or connection I was after. Enough said on that, as clearly others gained plenty of inspiration from following tweets and comments.
Session 2 saw me move from my intended session at the last minute to go into the “opening doors to a global business” session. A good move based on the insights I gained. I attended this out of a curiosity to see if there was any potential for my own business in this arena, and given the recent opportunity to present at an upcoming conference in Dubai in December, so was looking for learnings as to how I can potentially use this to connect with old Middle Eastern contacts as a part of this opportunity.
The session focussed on the themes of the conference with tips in each area.
Connect
– With coaches to see if there are any partnerships with complimentary skillsets. For link-ups, affiliations etc.
-with professional associations to look at ins to their business connections
Learn:
– are the associations vertical or horizontal to determine your style of approach
-Listen to their needs- forget your elevator pitch. What do they want and customise to that need
– learn the culture and organisation fit to support that.
-don’t be afraid to try a pilot program customised to their corporate language
Inspire:
-enhance and develop a program to build on their existing tasks i.e. interviews, people etc.
-be there and build the relationship long term.
From this session, I have been given some great thinking points to go and follow up for potential planning prior to the speaking gig I have and to look at how this can be offered to the organisations I have affiliations with!
Session 3: Conflict and alignment strategies.
Again this was chosen as a direct skill-set to look at being a tool I can use with current coaching clients, as conflict is a common theme that comes up and the management of this process isn’t one I am highly skilled in, so I was truly looking to learn from this.
The theme was focussing on building alignment vs conflict and getting the parties to see the common ground. A great activity based learning method was used in pairs with a string and a scenario to role play non-alignment then move into alignment. Unbeknown to me I was partnered with the CEO of the group facilitating – Faith- so I grilled her for information to help me, and this was awesome and inspiring- so THANKS Faith.
There was a nice connection between Brene’s session yesterday and the power of vulnerability to the exercise and asking those in non-alignment if they are willing to try a strategy without blame towards the other.
Definitely a lot to digest in the coming weeks and see how I can incorporate this into my own coaching!
Session 4: Building an internal coaching culture at Joeys.
Again, this was chosen with the potential to see if this was an area I could move my practice into, and linked with session 2 for global opportunities and larger organisations.
The process of Engage, Enlighten and Excel was well demonstrated with many video examples to demonstrate how the facilitators built this into an organisation.
I got a lot from this session, and again have probably posed more questions than answers.
Looking back on today, I leave with a lot of potential questions for my business and where to take it. There are many opportunities to do a lot of things differently to the current status and to expand product offerings to other diverse areas focussing on my niche and background. I get the impression I will have ample post conference sole searching to do based on the learning’s gained today.
In summary- another inspiring and learning filled day, with a few connections as well.
One day to go!
Tony Ozanne
www.smallfish.com.au/tonyozanne
