ACTivate Your Coaching for Beginners: A practical introduction to using ACT in your coaching sessions

Are you a coach looking for an evidence-based approach to support your clients to interact more skilfully with their thoughts and feelings?  Are you drawn to provide coaching with a focus on wellbeing and resilience?

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an approach which has tools and techniques that are applicable for anyone interested in how to live a full a full and meaningful life.  ACT’s evidence-base within workplace wellbeing and coaching is growing, as is the interest in approaches which have been shown to increase resilience and support individuals to achieve transformational change.

ACT supports the development of psychological flexibility, enabling individuals to consciously respond rather than react as if constantly on autopilot.  Coaching clients tell us that ACT’s power is in how it normalises their experience, how the mindfulness techniques support them to notice what is happening and how the exploration and clarifying of values helps them to focus their attention on what is most important to them.  There is often a feeling of lightness following the coaching relationship and a confidence that comes from having a toolkit for living with their mind.

This training gives you the unique opportunity to learn about ACT from one of the leading ACT trainers in the UK and to hear from a highly experienced International Coach Federation (ICF) accredited coach who has been applying it within the UK National Health Service.

The aim of this workshop is to take you through the key parts of the ACT model in a coaching context. We will introduce you to the concept of acceptance and how to engage coaching clients with the idea in creative ways. We will discuss up the broad skill set of mindfulness and show you how it can be used across the range of coaching clients. We will take you through the latest methods in working with sticky, tricky thoughts. We will also introduce values-based behavioural change methods

In this introductory workshop you will:

• Gain an understanding of what ACT is, the research behind it and how it can support your coaching clients achieve lasting change
• Learn how to use mindfulness techniques to build psychological flexibility – the ability to engage in valued behaviours even in the presence of unwanted thoughts and feelings
• Find out how to help clients in taking committed  values-based action in service of their goals, creating sustainable change
• Learn new ways to enhance your clients’ skilful responding to thoughts and feelings
• Experience the tools yourself and gain a powerful, practical toolkit to use with your clients.

Who is this course for?

This workshop is aimed at executive and life coaches.  There is no requirement for you to have a therapeutic background.

PLEASE NOTE: This course does not train you to be a coach, it is designed to enhance your existing coaching practice.