AICTP Journal Summer 2012 Final

SUMMER 2012
Association of Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals
In this issue: Values-Mission-Assessment-Questioning-Planning tools-Training-Reviews
Contents Chairs welcome

Debra Jinks
Questioning
Linda Aspey
Book review Thinking, fast and slow Book review Time to think: listening to ignite the human mind
Assessment
Carolyn Mumby
Values and mission

Gordon Jinks
Training for integration

David Jackson
Book review Shamanism and spirituality in therapeutic practice The one thirty-two slot Helen Whitehead
PC planning tools
George ONeill
AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1
Welcome to AICTP
Waiting seems to have become a theme of my life. Waiting for phone calls, emails, invoices to be paid, other peoples decisions or thoughts. Waiting for holidays, waiting for weekends, waiting for the next instalment of the TV programme Ive become enthralled with, the next book in a truly brilliant series even waiting for summer this year! And as I write this, Im reminded that Im such a bad waiter. To me, waiting implies thinking of the future and moving away from my current experiencing. And its something I do well in the abstract, daydreaming and exploring possibilities, even to the point of crafting myself a goal. But sometimes, as well, it is possible to not know exactly what youre waiting for until you actually find it. Feeling a space where something/someone should be but not knowing what/who it is or where or on earth you might find it/them. This is how I have felt about the concept and practice of integration of coaching and therapy. When I kept the two disciplines separate and distinct, it was as if something didnt feel quite right, although at first I couldnt quite put my finger on it. There was a time when I saw myself primarily as a therapist. During the time I worked for an alcohol agency, I would see clients at different places on a spectrum.
For example, there were those who needed a lot of restorative, therapeutic work before they were able to address their addiction in a meaningful way, and there were others who had already gone through that process or didnt need to and were chomping at the bit to make positive change. I began to see that I favoured the assertive, proactive type approach that helped to truly launch clients into a different kind of life, and this was my entry point into coaching. Assertive counsellor? Or therapeutic coach? Having viewed myself as quite an assertive counsellor, the transition to coaching seemed relatively easy at first and I naively thought that I had left my therapy work behind. However, the opposite was true. In reality, my clients often had underlying issues or patterns that seemed to get in the way of them achieving what they wanted, and so, from being an assertive-type therapist, I became something of a therapeutic coach! But my natural response of approaching certain issues therapeutically caused something of a quandary I had been trained to keep the two disciplines separate and refer on to another therapist if someone had therapeutic needs. When faced with a particular coaching client who was motivated and doing well most of the time, there were nevertheless instances when all that seemed to crumble and I was conscious of issues that were really blocking his movement. I believed this would continue to happen until he addressed the things that were holding him back. And I saw that this could be done relatively easily within one relationship. After all, I was trained and experienced in both disciplines. So I took my
Debra Jinks, Chair of AICTP, talks about waiting, and not knowing, and how she has found her home with coachtherapists
If you would like to join our Core Team and contribute to the shaping of AICTP, please email me, saying how you feel you could contribute, at debra@aictp.org.uk If you would like to secure a place for the Open event at UEL An Open Conversation please email support@aictp.org.uk
dilemma to supervision and was advised to keep the two separate and to refer my client to another therapist. This didnt feel like the right response, and the nagging waiting but not knowing what I was waiting for began to rear its head again. And this was what prompted me finally to try and find some answers although at that time I wasnt completely sure if there were any. Discovering integration Imagine my excitement when, on researching something quite different, I discovered Nash Popovics1 article on Personal Consultancy. Here was someone who advocated integration of the two disciplines and offered a model for doing so that was coherent and made perfect sense to me. But it seemed radical. I knew that. And there was a part of me that quaked in my boots at the thought of becoming a professional outcast from both fields by embracing such an approach at that time! Then, for my MSc dissertation at Hull University, I bit the bullet and decided to research the thoughts and opinions of coaches about Personal Consultancy and the integration of coaching and therapy. So the waiting, which Id been at least partly unaware of, was over. The journey had begun and I was in the driving seat and was focused and in control. Quite apart from the research, which is another story, my quest for these answers put me in touch with many likeminded people who shared similar experiences and felt similar feelings in relation to integration. Interest started to build and I felt a renewed strength in a shared sense of purpose that something big was about to happen that would change both disciplines. Interest and momentum was growing and it felt very exciting to be at the forefront of such change. My time on the BACP Coaching executive was an important part of the journey. This in itself was groundbreaking, in that here was a body that would take care of peoples therapy and coaching needs, and I was grateful for my good fortune to be involved in the shaping of it. But because my real passion was about integration, this was only part of the journey.
So then to the really exciting bit the decision to set up the Association of CoachTherapist Professionals (AICTP), which stemmed from a phone call between myself and Keren Smedley, our Deputy Chair. And now, although it is still early days and we have a long way to go, it seems as if we have carved some solid foundations. But who are the we? Some formal introductions Apart from myself and Keren, there is Jayne Hildreth, whose talent is in innovations and creativity; Gordon Jinks, our expert in professional standards; and Nash Popovic, who is passionate about establishing training and education in integration. We also have Phil Tyler, whose role is, as yet, undefined but who is a great thinker and doer and asks just the right questions; and Rino Giordano, who will represent the student or recently qualified voice. Linda Aspey is President and at times lends weight to our arguments, offers a guiding voice and fulfils the perfect ambassadorial role. We have also been supported by others too many to name but to whom we are very grateful. We knew that we wanted to promote integration and offer support and guidance to those of you who choose to work in this way or who are interested in doing so. We werent sure at the outset exactly how we would do that. But we knew that we wanted to create and develop an organisation that really listened to the views of its members and potential members in terms of what they thought and what they wanted, and many of your responses to questions we have raised have helped shape our direction so far. We continue to ask questions and you will undoubtedly have some of your own. So far, we have drawn on conversations and responses from our LinkedIn group to help develop our mission statement and identify the values that should underpin our organisation. Gordon Jinks explores this in more detail in his article. The future As I write, we exist primarily on the AICTP LinkedIn group page, but are moving beyond that and developing our website, which will be interactive and user friendly and will really
form the hub of our business. We are also planning for our Open event An Open Conversation on 3 October 2012 at the University of East London (UEL), Stratford, between 4pm and 7pm, where we want to initiate or continue a conversation or series of conversations about integration and AICTP and the way forward. We will explain how we see things and where we are, and in turn we want to hear from you, so that anything we craft is truly rich with knowledge and experience. Our guest speaker is Dr Patrizia Collard, whose expertise is in Mindfulness. She will look at how Mindfulness can be applied to the area of integration. Patrizia is a Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapist (MBCT) in private practice who delivers very popular training and workshops in MBCT in Central London. She is also a senior lecturer at UEL, working mainly on the PGDip Counselling and Psychotherapy. I hope that you will ringfence the space in your diary and come along. It promises to be a memorable evening and the first of many. With our mind on opening ourselves up for a more formal kind of membership, we have been thinking about where we sit amongst the myriad of professional bodies and organisations that already exist. Since our main focus is on the area of interface between the two disciplines indeed, on integration for the future, we see membership of AICTP as something that will complement the other membership(s) you already hold. So you have ethical guidelines and frameworks that guide your practice as a coach or a therapist, but what do you have that guides and supports the integrated work that you do? For some of us, that might be quite a large proportion of our work and one that is growing so we want to develop resources that guide and support this work. Carolyn Mumby starts the ball rolling with her article on integrative assessment, and we will be focusing on other areas too. You may have some ideas about the aspects of integration where you would welcome some support, or you may have something to offer yourself. Do let us know.
I have found my creed and found my clan life is good
So, exciting times and Im conscious that Ive finally found the answer to what I was waiting for. As a professional, I feel like Ive found my home. I work in a way that is assertive and reflective and frequently with one client and sometimes within the same session, depending on the clients needs. This feels right. I work and advertise myself as a coach-therapist and personal consultant and the earth hasnt fallen in and I havent been shunned by the profession. The response from clients has been positive both the ones who engage me directly and those who are introduced from a third party. I feel like I have found my creed and found my clan. Life is good. And as I write this, I look outside into the garden, I see that the sun is out and I truly think that summer is here. The waiting is over for now and Ive found what Id been missing. Debra Jinks is Chair of AICTP. She works as a freelance coach-therapist, personal consultant, trainer and supervisor. www.debrajinksconsulting.co.uk
Reference 1 Popovic N, Boniwell I. Personal Consultancy: an integrative approach to one-to-one talking practices. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring. 2007; Special Issue 1:24-29.
Why we need to stop asking so many questions and what to do instead!

Jake was stuck. Forty minutes into our session, whilst I had listened intently, hed done some very productive work as his thoughts came tumbling out and he began to generate new ideas, occasionally encouraged by me quietly asking: What more do you think or feel or want to say? Now he fell silent, still thinking. I chose to wait expectantly for yet more, again offering him my undivided attention and my unflagging interest. He gazed back at me for a few moments, sighed, hunched his shoulders and said he couldnt think of anything. I asked if hed like me to ask him What more? again to see if that helped, and he nodded. So I asked just that. Nothing, he said ruefully. Nada. So I asked: What would you like to achieve with the rest of this session? I dont know, he replied. After a few moments I said: Weve still got plenty of time left. Is there another question youd like me to ask you? Jakes shoulders lifted, he sat up straight, looked me in the eye and said: Yes. Ask me why am I dragging my damn heels on this crazy situation with the finance team. So I asked him, using his exact words. Then I looked at him and kept his gaze, encouragingly. He took a deep breath, looked away for a moment and then began talking, exploring this in all its complexity, aided by my sustained attention, yet without further verbal prompting from me. After 20 minutes, hed achieved far more insight and made more gains than I think he would have done if Id devised and asked him a different question, however good I might have thought my question was.
In the first part of a two-part article, Linda Aspey explores what happens when we give our clients or coachees sustained, uncorrupted attention instead of bombarding them with questions
Questions are one of the cornerstones of effective coaching and counselling. We use them to help our clients open the door to possibilities, inviting them into a discussion with themselves and with us. Were trained and often highly skilled in questioning; its understandable that we see this as a key part of our role. Which is why its sometimes a habit, like adding salt and pepper to food before tasting to check if its needed.
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Whenever we ask a question, it has the potential to influence the client. As soon as we take the lead, were inevitably, consciously or unconsciously, bringing in our own agenda. Even in some of the most precise and prescribed forms of coaching and counselling, the questions and how we ask them will come from within us. Sometimes we feel under pressure from the client to ask questions, or use them as a way of managing our own anxieties about just sitting there doing nothing. We might use questions to show care, empathy, interest, supremacy, knowledge, and even to compete. I wonder if coaches are particularly prone to this because of the drive for achievement inherent in coaching? Ive seen forum postings asking Whats your favourite/most powerful transformational coaching question? and been fascinated at the competition to come up with the most brilliant. What a great question! they say. Must try that one with my clients! Knowing when and how to use questions can be a particular challenge for counsellors and therapists coming to coaching anew, or when integrating the two as coach-therapists. Some people differentiate coaching from counselling by claiming that coaching is more driven, more upbeat and more of a two-way dialogue than counselling. That may be true, but I dont think it means that we need to bombard our clients with questions.
Id like to invite you to think about your use of questions. Consider the last time you asked a client a great question, and what you intended or hoped the question would do. Was it:
To help them to identify something perhaps a positive trait, a strength, a pattern or a blind spot? To help you to understand them or the situation better? To indicate that you were really listening and really interested? To bring them back on track? To encourage them to have an aha moment? Because you could see what the problem or solution was but they couldnt? To test out a hypothesis or hunch that you had? To make a suggestion of some kind that could be hidden in your question? To challenge their thinking or reasoning? Or something else entirely?
the client can know where that is, as Jake showed me so clearly. This conscious choice immediately puts us in the role of expert in someone elses thinking. Is that what we are? I dont think so. Not if we are to be effective or true to our ethical framework. Whichever one you subscribe to as a coach or therapist, it usually includes principles such as those found in the BACP Ethical Framework1: autonomy having respect for the clients right to be self-governing, and respect showing appropriate regard for others and their understanding of themselves. When we choose new questions to direct the clients thinking, what is happening to these vital principles? What an alternative approach looks like I find that The Thinking Environment developed by Nancy Kline of Time to Think2 offers a gentle yet robust framework that enables clients to be autonomous and enables me to be really respectful as a coach and coach-therapist. Built around what she calls the Ten Components ways of thinking and being that help thinking, with attention, ease and equality at the core it means choosing to deploy the lowest number of coaching interventions possible. Why? So the client can go to the edge of their own thinking in their own way. Sessions start with the simple question What would you like to think about today, and what are your thoughts? And then I listen. And during that listening, clients generate their own thoughts and questions and then answer them beautifully. The human mind seems to have a powerful drive to do so, and Ive often been amazed by how gracefully a client can coach themselves when I hold back. Ive also been surprised at how incisive, brave, direct and even blunt peoples self-questioning can be, as Jakes was. Imagine you could ask your own coach or therapist to ask you your own question, one that that would get right to the heart of the issue. What would that feel like? Working integratively This approach is an excellent example of working integratively as a coach-therapist. There are some parallels with person-centred counselling in being client led and non-directive. I see an element of the psychodynamic approach in using the power of silence to support the client as they unfold their
I certainly recognise myself here in my earlier career. I thought that was what I was there for to ask insightful questions. (I can still fall into the same trap from time to time.) Yet as well-meaning (or egotistical!) as my reasons might have been, looking back now, many of these questions were a response to my agenda, not the clients. Even with really good supervision, which Ive been fortunate to have over the years, I dont think I ever really thought about the use of questions in the way I do now. The problem with questions The moment we choose to ask a question we have directed the conversation to wherever we think it should go next. Not to where the client thinks it should go yet only
own thinking. It shares aspects of the solution-focused approach for example, the Thinking Environment has appreciation, attention, encouragement and equality as components, whilst the solutionfocused approach has respectful curiosity, a quest for strengths, and the belief that people are the experts in all aspects of their own lives, able to make their own choices, and to decide for themselves what is right or wrong. Content free coaching similarly offers very open questions for the client to take where they want, unhindered by being channelled towards a particular destination. However, Nancy Kline didnt develop this to be used by therapists, and would never claim it as a therapeutic model but a relationship model. She started developing it over 20 years ago for use in educational settings. Yet its value in therapy and coaching is clear. Interestingly, although the Thinking Environment is used more in coaching than it is in counselling, and Nancys books are recommended reading on most coach training programmes, it doesnt contain many of the traditional approaches to coaching. For example, the Thinking Environment framework isnt present or future focused the client takes it wherever they want to, which may also include the past. (Clearly, careful assessment, contracting and supervision is necessary; more of this in part 2 of this article.) It doesnt have homework unless the client wants some. It invites and welcomes the expression of feelings, which many forms of coaching tend to see as treading on dangerous territory. And its not pointedly goal driven but subtly so: What would you like to think about today and what are your thoughts? Or: What more would you like to achieve with this session?
Is there anything you would like to write down from this? Creating thinking conditions The session with Jake illustrates that if we create the right conditions for the client to explore their thinking, they will generate their own questions, which are usually far better than ours. They may not even need to say them out loud (some of my clients say very little but think a lot) but they will most certainly produce them when we give them quality time to think. Nine times out of 10, people will say more when invited to with the simple question What more do you think, or feel or want to say? when the conditions are right. Pure, clean and simple, with no other agenda than enabling the client to think for themselves. In fact, theres an increasing amount of neuropsychological research to show how creating the right conditions can quieten the amygdala and create feelings of safety, trust and attachment, generating approach hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. These hormones make it possible to really explore thinking and generate new thoughts unhindered by fear. It seems the 10 components of the Thinking Environment offer this capacity in spades. How this works is explained further in Paul Browns and Virginia Browns forthcoming book Neuropsychology for Coaches: understanding the basics3. It is crucial to the whole process to give clients sustained and complete attention. Listening to what they say and being fascinated by what they might say next. Not waiting patiently when they are silent, but waiting expectantly. It means making it comfortable for them to feel uncomfortable, enabling them to dig deep to find the answers and create the shifts they seek. It means relying on my presence rather than my questions, letting go of my need to assess, analyse, interpret, look for themes or give them aha moments. They will find their own. Does giving clients this level of attention sound simple? Its not, yet with training and extensive practice it can become natural, and its liberating for both sides of the coaching relationship. What, no questions ever? Of course, there are times when questions are useful and relevant. For example, when fact finding or asking the client what they want next
from the session. Or when the client hasnt come to the insight they hoped for, despite the conditions being as conducive as they can, and a new question can help. In the Thinking Environment session, we use questions to help the client to get to the heart of the matter with their permission and only when we are sure they have done all the thinking they can without our direct intervention. Sometimes clients achieve all they want to by freely exploring their thinking. They go away relieved, purposeful and decisive. And sometimes they want and need more, and then we take the process further with them. More of this in part 2. Critically, to make this type of integrative coaching work well, you need to have genuine faith and trust in the intelligence of the client; even to value their thinking more than you value your own. Put simply, the mind that contains the question or the problem is usually the best mind to answer or solve it. We add value through our presence and our generative attention: the coach is both essential to the process and irrelevant to its outcome. So Do you find you spend more time thinking about asking good questions than creating conditions for people to think well? Do you think you might unwittingly be getting in the way of your clients thinking with questions? If so, might this be a liberating alternative for both of you? There are many other counselling/ therapy approaches that share elements of the Thinking Environment and Id welcome dialogue with readers willing to share their ideas and experiences.
Linda Aspey FBACP, President of AICTP, and Time to Think consultant, coach and facilitator www.coachingforleaders.co.uk
If you would like to comment on this article, please contact Linda at linda@coachingforleaders.co.uk To find out more about training in the Thinking Environment, visit Lindas blog for details of a forthcoming two-day programme, The Time to Think Foundation Course, with Linda Aspey and Ruth McCarthy, on October 12 & 13, 2012 in Oxford, UK.
And during that listening, clients generate their own thoughts and questions and then answer them beautifully
References 1 BACP. Ethical framework for good practice in counselling and psychotherapy. Revised edition. Lutterworth: BACP; 2010. 2 www.timetothink.com (being rebuilt) Reading: Kline N. Time to think: listening to ignite the human mind. London: Cassell Illustrated; 1998. Kline N. More Time to think: a way of being in the world. Pool-in-Wharfedale: Fisher King Publishing; 2009. 3 Brown P, Brown V. Neuropsychology for coaches: understanding the basics. Maidenhead: Open University Press/ McGraw-Hill; due for publication October 2012. www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk/html/ 0335245463.html
THINKING, FAST AND SLOW Daniel Kahneman Penguin 2012 ISBN 978-0141033570 8.99
REVIEW
Professor Kahneman is an internationally recognised psychologist, researcher and Nobel Prize winner. His book explains in detail the two main systems by which people think and make choices. He refers to these as Systems 1 and 2. System 1 is our fast thinking, which dominates many of the choices we make through the use of intuition, emotional judgment and a rapid, unconscious calling on past experience. System 2 is our slow thought process which is more considered, conscious and analytical. The core theme of the book is that we humans are mostly irrational in our choice making, even though we can appear to convince ourselves and others that we have made a rational sound choice. The first part, chapters one to 24, is stimulating, with many examples and opportunities to test ones own thought processes through the use of exercises. This part explains how and why our mind will want to make decisions based on over-simplified pictures and assessments via System 1, and why it is more difficult for us to think about a decision in a more considered, conscious way using System 2, before coming to a conclusion of what choice to make. The section on overconfidence is particularly interesting on the dangers of relying on the recommendations and views of experts and on trusting our own expert intuition. Kahnemans use of existing research shows that having a large body of knowledge and years of experience in a chosen field does not protect someone from making flawed choices or recommendations due to the cognitive biases built into System 1. The second half of the book, chapters 25 to 34, is harder to digest unless the reader has a love of statistics and mathematical analysis, as the writing and examples focus heavily on the use of such data. As coach-therapists, it is important for us to keep in our conscious mind the subject matter of this book. It reminds and shows us why both we and our clients will apparently make flawed choices sometimes, in spite of having possession of all the facts, even when we have been shown hard evidence that our current choices and actions will not work out and lead to failure. Both our clients and ourselves live and work in a world that is speeding up, and also in organisational and social cultures that promote fast-paced thinking and decision making. Modern technology, such as email, smart phones and the internet, is underpinning this. So our environment favours the use of System 1. Online coach-therapists, for example, might especially have unique client challenges around speed of response and System 1 thinking. Whilst System 1 enables us to make a large number of decisions each day at work, it does not allow us the time and space to consider that a number of those decisions may be flawed until it is too late. The book makes a very good case for us, as coach-therapists, to ensure that both we and our clients use our System 2 thinking more often when making choices. In summary, this book is not a light read, but is a seminal text for anyone who wants to understand more deeply the thought processes and psychological systems that lead to how human beings make choices and what we can do to improve the outcomes of such choice making. PHIL TYLER
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TIME TO THINK: listening to ignite the human mind Nancy Klein Cassell Illustrated 1998 ISBN 978-1844037223 9.99
REVIEW
Attentive listening is what we did before we thought we knew it all and started jumping in with our own views, shouting Me! Me! I can tell you! Now, as adults, we have to concentrate hard to recall the skill. But reading here that the Thinking Environment depends on the quality of our attention and the use of incisive questions, there is an immediate resonance for the coachtherapist: Carl Rogers meets Ms Coaching Tutor (who obviously knows Nancy Kline). And it feels like coming home, because we always knew it worked. The book is filled with examples and anecdotes, and most importantly detailed explanations of the necessary structures, for example the eight aspects of a Thinking Meeting, the 10 components of the Thinking Environment etc. Kline covers many areas of our work: health, schools, politics, love relationships, families, organisations and partnerships. The need for this way of being stems, according to Kline, from our feelings of perpetual change, fear and being out of control. She equates time to think with gaining time to live and having a tool for life. As coaches and therapists, and knowing what we do about the debilitating effects of over-arousal, it makes sense to offer clients an environment in which to release feelings and regain the ability to think for themselves, both for sorting out past blockages and for being motivated to move on. Add in Klines incisive questions and you are set up as a coach-therapist, bucking the trend of expert and powerfully enabling the client. This is an absorbing rather than a dry read. Klines analogies tend to stick in mind: do you have eyes joined underneath your skull by another pair of eyes, like a kind of periscope, scanning the faces of others to see what the right answer is? I know I do at times. And our schools are filled with pupils desperately following this fitting in ritual. We need to think for ourselves. Interestingly to pull out a small section Kline believes that virtual meetings via Skype etc can help the Thinking Environment on account of time lags and the need to flesh out our flat on-screen image with personal ideas and contributions. So Kline has obviously thought about this! She further maintains that physical tasks may become more automated and that our contribution in future may well have to be the result of what we think, not what we do. I like the structure that supports the Thinking Environment and in particular the Timed Talk that avoids fierce confrontation. This has the potential to be hugely helpful to us in groupwork, whether coaching, counselling or consulting. Klines final tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales does make sense, granted the publication date one year after those events, but seems slightly anachronistic now. Back then, Diana was, says Kline, a chief example of someone creating a Thinking Environment instinctively, which reminds us of the power we hold, as individuals, to change things. I would recommend this book as part of our CPD even if we originally read it some time ago. Revisiting the powerful basics, in the light of our client work in the intervening years and our growing maturity as coach-therapists, can only reward us with new thoughts and applications for the concept. ELEANOR PATRICK
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Integrated assessment do we know what were talking about?

Carolyn Mumby summarises our thinking so far, informed by the varied responses to the topic on our LinkedIn group
As a counsellor, and separately as a coach, I am reasonably clear about my approach to assessment, though I am always learning and adapting. But the question of assessment for an integrated approach of coaching and counselling has thrown up some interesting questions and dilemmas. This led to me posting a question on the AICTP LinkedIn forum earlier this year, which said: Im interested to hear how people manage the assessment or first session process when working in an integrative way, and how this is influenced by the context in which they work? The discussion on LinkedIn highlighted some issues that make this question complex to unpack. What do we mean by therapy/counselling and coaching? What do we mean by integration? What do we mean by assessment? The scope of this article is to focus primarily on the latter, and to stimulate further debate within the wider AICTP membership.
Some contributors on LinkedIn interpreted the notion of assessment as something one-off, perhaps gone through swiftly at the beginning, and were concerned that this couldnt take in the full richness of the client, and maybe would lead to reductionist conclusions on the part of the practitioner. They preferred a much more fluid and ongoing assessment as a more appropriate way forward: The story unfolds slowly, and the client shifts as the work goes on, Caroline Nairn wrote rather beautifully. Perhaps this reaction is in part determined by the word itself, which can imply making an appraisal, valuation or judgement and may suggest that in some way the assessment is a final and complete decision. For me, initial and ongoing assessment are not mutually exclusive. There are good reasons for having a more focused assessment at the outset, but reflecting with the client as themes emerge and revising and informing our initial formulations is also a vital part of the ongoing work. At this point, it may help to put my experience and views into context. In 2004, Youth Access commissioned me to design and pilot assessment training for counsellors
working in Young Peoples Information Advice and Counselling Services (YIACS). The aim was to ensure that young people received the best and most appropriate service at the point of contact, to manage risk and long waiting lists, and to enable YIACS to make and take appropriate and credible referrals to and from statutory mental health services. Part of the brief was to develop a young person-friendly assessment framework that nevertheless had appropriate rigour and credibility as part of the mental health provision for young people. This training has been running successfully for the last eight years and was accredited at Masters level by UEL in 2010. Youth Access1 has this to say about its assessment process: A counselling assessment is a respectful, collaborative and transparent process in which the counsellor ensures young people are central to the process and feel heard and understood. It seeks to maintain a balance between gathering sufficient information to understand the young persons needs and providing information about what help is available. Young people explore with the help of the counsellor their difficulty/pain and/or
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confusion and how it affects their life, what changes they want, their strengths, hopes for the future and how counselling might help. This information enables the counsellor and young person to consider whether counselling would be helpful or appropriate, or if access to a different YIACS service or a supported referral to another agency would be more beneficial. The counsellor explains relevant aspects of agency policy on confidentiality, information sharing, counsellor allocation, waiting times and internal and external referrals. Thus we do not assume that because a young person presents or is referred to counselling that counselling is the best and only approach that would help them. There may be other more appropriate services that they can access instead of, or whilst waiting for, counselling (eg sexual health, specialist legal or housing advice, opportunities for volunteering or being involved in youth provision etc). Assessment also helps to identify and prioritise young people at risk where necessary, fast-tracking them into counselling or referring them out for specialist support and offers a holding experience for young people who would otherwise wait a long time before being seen by the agency due to high levels of demand. Furthermore, it clarifies whether they have a preference for the type of
counsellor they see, and can enable more effective allocation in terms of expertise of the counsellor and times they are available. Milner and OByrne2 provide invaluable information about assessment: It describes the problem; it finds personal and systemic strengths and unique abilities that would help to create change; and decides with the client where to focus intervention, whether on skills, cognitive processes, feelings, behaviour, problem solving or solution building. They make a clear distinction between intake assessment and formulations that emerge over time, and make a further important point with regard to definition: Perhaps it is best to leave the term diagnosis to health professionals who infer etiology from symptoms and for whom it may be helpful to classify disorders, ensuring the correct medicine. [] Counsellors can retain the term assessment as descriptive of a more collaborative and ongoing process, with much emphasis on finding wider influences and then focusing on resources both within and around the person. Coaching assessment So how does this compare with coaching assessments? Within executive coaching, assessment is closely linked with the contracting stage and is likely to include gaining the views of the sponsor if the coaching is paid for by the clients place of work. It may also include
360-degree feedback and the use of psychometrics, and sometimes clear behavioural outcomes are identified. Philippa van Kuilenburg on LinkedIn: When meeting a person or group for the first time, I am primarily focused on developing the contract for working together and what they want out of the sessions and building a picture of who I am working with. I may spend quite some time developing measurable goals so we both know when they are achieving what they came for. Jenny Rogers3, who is a coach not a therapist, usually advocates a separate first assessment, in order to develop a shared understanding of where the client currently stands. Assessment ascertains with the client answers to the following questions:
Where, who and what am I now, in my life, my work, my relationships, my skills? Where, who and what would I like to be ideally? Given those answers, what goals do I need to set for myself? How can I achieve and sustain those goals?
She concurs that this may not be necessary for just a couple of focused sessions with a client on, for instance, job interview coaching, but says that the longer the likely length of the coaching programme, the more important it can be to make the first session different from what follows.
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Graham Lee, in Leadership Coaching4, sees assessing as a distinct stage of coaching that is also interwoven with all other stages. Aims include:
Gathering personal and practical information to construct stories about developmental challenges. Inviting managers to view a continuum of past, present and future to gain a sense of their capacity to shape the journey. Identifying individual and organisational needs. Identifying ways of being that are more and less effective (including action, cognition and emotion). Considering how conscious and unconscious factors may influence capacity to change. Exploring motivation and seeking to collect information in a way that triggers the resources and strengths of the managers to learn and change.
partners, children, career choices, themes and patterns, and links to the coaching. So we find that even within executive coaching there are assessment approaches that seek to build a rich and detailed picture of the clients situation at the beginning of the work. Assessment for an integrated approach Whilst both approaches may start with an invitation to think where am I now?, in therapy (unless the theoretical approach is, for example, Solution Focused) there may be an explicit interest in how did I get here, in contrast to coaching, which may emphasise where do I want to be?. So whilst in practice all of these questions may usefully arise at some point in either therapy or coaching, in principle the expectation of the client, with regard to the initial focus at least, is likely to be different. I would feel comfortable, with a counselling client, explaining that I have a comprehensive assessment process, which includes assessment of risk. I would feel comfortable with a coaching client focusing more on outcome and goal setting but do counselling and coaching clients really neatly divide themselves down the middle in this way? Linda Aspey: I think assessment is central to
what we do at the contracting stages are we coaching or are we counselling or working therapeutically? Maybe we think we know, but maybe not. Debra Jinks: When I first started working in an integrated way, I wondered if the depth and seriousness of issues would be less than for someone selecting a pure counselling approach. As it turns out, it strikes me there is little or no difference, and in fact Ive had quite a handful of clients who have chosen an integrated approach from the outset and who have brought some really complicated and serious therapeutic issues to work with, and who would have been categorised as high risk for several reasons and therefore have needed careful and sensitive management. Gladeana McMahons extensive experience has led her to the view that an integrated approach needs a robust (though not overwhelming for the client) assessment. Her coaching assessment process includes a behavioural contracting model (anyone interested in this can email her5). She adds: But underlying the behavioural contracting is the assessment on aspects such as physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioural issues using my therapeutic understanding to explore any concerns I may have and to check out any possible issues that might require
Lee assesses aspects across the past, present and future domains of experience, both personally and professionally. Rogers3 also says: I have always regretted it when I have not asked clients for a brief account of their lives so far. If you are going to do it, the first session is your best chance. It builds intimacy and rapport and also establishes that you are interested in the whole person, not just the work person. She provides a very useful framework of questions, which include birth order, parents occupations, school, rewards and punishments in the family, outstanding experiences, relationships with parents and siblings,
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counselling rather than coaching. To me, it is a complex process of merging assessment of the client, his/her needs, engaging the client in identifying and stating their own needs, as well as unearthing needs they might not have realised they had but require addressing in order to move on. Debra Jinks wonders if the way we might approach the assessment process may be different depending on whether we are more influenced by our therapeutic training and experience or our coach training. Because she is now working in a way that integrates both, she says: I am conscious that the work is likely to include a therapeutic element and so my approach to assessment needs to take account of that. Because of that, I swing towards managing the process much as I would have done when I was only counselling. For Debra, this means including a fairly thorough therapeutic-type assessment, including mental health, suicide and other types of risk. Sharon Eden shared that she starts with a focus on their current situation, what kind of future they want to develop, whats getting in their way...and what could be a baby step forward, so that they leave the initial session with a focus forward. Inherent in that is outcome setting with measurable behavioural evidence so
they can assess and evaluate their progress throughout. So a thorough assessment process may be needed. Some people begin from a more therapeutic foundation; others begin with a future focus. And for some, assessment involves the need to identify clear behavioural goals. Others steer away from the idea of a separate initial assessment.
appropriate. This approach goes beyond fixating on goals have we achieved them? to something more multi-dimensional. Linda Aspey: Sometimes (maybe even mostly?) its just not possible to do an assessment, particularly if we are letting go of our need to be the expert (if we have decided to do that, as I have, with greater and lesser amounts of success!). The needs unfold. The client tells their story. To assess on a presenting issue may be missing the point. The practitioner goes away, reflects, and talks to their supervisor. The client comes back and says more, and they relax into it. The practitioner (lets say coachtherapist) reflects on it and takes it to their supervisor again. The client comes back with more thoughts. The coach-therapist takes a new perspective. Thats assessment. Its dynamic, not static. We have to be responsive, flexible, yet boundaried whatever the context. I agree that responsiveness is key and I dont see assessment as something I do to the client, but something we do together. They may be clear why they have come at the outset and what they want from the process, and the deep attentive listening provided by the coach-therapist may enable them to become clearer themselves about attendant themes and ways forward or ultimately their own solution. Its interesting to think about where we typically
Are we more influenced by our therapeutic training and experience, or by our coach training?
Janice Russell Dexter: I always used integrated approaches to counselling within a purposeful framework, and find goal setting a dynamic tool, yet over the years, developing a clear coaching approach has pushed me to considering the structure of assessment more than counselling ever had. The model I use integrates assessment, implicitly and overtly, incorporating Dilts neurological levels6. For me, that gets away from assessment being an initial stage its ongoing, with some broad bench marks to keep on evaluating/ assessing reflexively whenever its helpful/
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start. Mary Pelham says: I also tend to begin by thinking about the client from a therapy stance as I get a feel for them, and gradually, as I listen, begin to expand my approach to meet their coaching needs. Julie Hewson offers the view that integration may work from one direction but not the other: I think that the coaching contract has to be boundaried and take place in the here and now, as that is the nature of the beast so to speak. To slide into counselling, as part of a coaching brief, I would consider to be an intrusion and unethical. However, counselling can use coaching skills and techniques to great effect without harm to the client. My thinking behind this is that archaeological processes can regress the client and create a relationship that does not match the one contracted for in coaching, whereas a hereand-now relationship as part of the therapeutic process is certainly appropriate and desirable. As a coach-therapist, I dont set out to dig into areas of the past. However, if it is clear that the intention to move forward is blocked by something that has its roots in the past, I will contract to explore it, if the client is willing, and I explain this in my initial assessment. I do agree, though, that this raises important issues explored in other threads on the AICTP LinkedIn group, for example with regard to how we contract and whether working
therapeutically requires shorter more frequent sessions compared to coaching, which is often more suited to longer but less frequent sessions. Tools I do believe that the power of a present and attentive listener is paramount, but I have found that there are some useful tools and frameworks that have been beneficial as part of a process of mutual assessment, whether initially or as part of the ongoing work. Some of these tools have already been mentioned under the coaching assessment heading. The most effective tool I have found for an integrative assessment is inviting a client to complete a Wheel of Life, either before or during the first session, particularly when linked with a solutionfocused approach to scaling how satisfied they are in different areas. They can view themselves as a whole, both personally and professionally, and, by considering aspects of their lives other than just the presenting issue, they may identify other pressing concerns or, perhaps even more importantly, areas of their lives in which they feel resourced and which can inform the arena for change. Having completed the Wheel, and reflected on it with the coach-therapist, the client can be invited to choose where to start in the process, which in my experience is not always with the most difficult area. This enables trust to be
developed and emphasises the clients responsibility for the direction of the work. It also provides a visual tool to revisit as part of an ongoing assessment of change. Others use tools specifically designed to help measure outcomes. Frances Masters: I tend to use an emotional needs audit and Core 107, which tells me how a client feels subjectively and also points to which of their innate human needs are unmet, which helps unearth the essence of the problem, the essence of the solution and the focus for our work together. For me, the Core 10 is useful but would need to be balanced by a strong coaching element, and perhaps it would be interesting for us to consider the different Core tools and discuss what would need to change or be adapted to suit an integrated approach. Frameworks for integration Frances has developed a framework to integrate coaching and therapy at Fusion Therapeutic Coaching8. Several commenting in the thread use the Personal Consultancy model as an integrating framework because few clients are interested in lengthy therapy that is supposed to reveal some hidden parts of themselves with little effect in real life. On the other hand, clients soon become disillusioned by the shortterm effects of practices that
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build on weak or nonexistent foundations. Most clients want to explore their depths but also make practical changes9. When working with adult clients as a coach-therapist, I explain the Personal Consultancy model at the first session, drawing the four quadrants for the client. This enables me to talk about the process, emphasise the importance and the power of listening, and explain the potential to work both proactively and practically as well as at depth when needed. Mary Pelham: My integrative psychotherapy training required me to create a coherent, comprehensive model that encompassed my thinking about human beings generally, as well as one that sits with my own values, beliefs and personality, rather than needing to think about or draw on separate theories. This enables me to have openness during assessment, which I agree is an organic process, but also provides flexibility to incorporate and adapt to client needs. I am fairly new to coaching, but find that explaining my integration (which now includes coaching) to clients and contracting clearly with regular reviews is working well for me so far. So, many questions have been raised, and it is not for me to conclude whether we have reached any answers! However, to sum up, I would like to offer my own thoughts about the purpose of a separate initial
assessment when working from an integrative coachtherapy approach. This assessment does not imply something final, but instead may give practitioner and client together some formulations to explore. 1. To determine the clients 2. 3.
expectations and desired outcomes. To clearly explain the coachtherapists theoretical and practical approach. To enable the client and the coach-therapist to understand the nature of the presenting issue/s and to see it in context of other relevant aspects of the clients personal and professional life. To highlight some strengths and resources at the outset, as well as areas for development. To take account of information/expectations from other sources where relevant (eg sponsor, team etc). To ascertain whether there is a need for risk assessment. To determine whether an integrated approach is the best way forward for the client, and whether the practitioner is a good fit to work with them. To collect baseline information that can be compared with subsequent data to evaluate progress. To provide the basis for developing a contract.
designs and delivers counselling and coaching training for Youth Access on a freelance basis, and through them delivers youth counselling courses for local and national organisations including Relate, and the diversity module for the Place2Be diploma. info@carolynmumby.com and www.carolynmumby.com
References 1 Youth Access. Quality Standards for Youth Information Advice and Counselling Services. www.youthaccess.org.uk 2 Milner J, OByrne P. Assessment in counselling: theory, process and decision-making. London: Palgrave Macmillan; 2004. 3 Rogers J. Coaching skills: a handbook. 3rd edition. Oxford: Open University Press; 2012. 4 Lee G. Leadership coaching: from personal insight to organisational performance. CIPD; 2003. 5 info@gladeana mcmahon.com 6 Environment, Behaviour, Skills, Beliefs, Values, Identity, Spirituality. See www.nlp-now.co.uk/ nlp_logical_levels.htm 7 Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation. www.coreims.co.uk/ 8 www.fusion-coach.com 9 Personal Consultancy: an integrative approach to oneto-one talking practices. Presentation at the BACP Coaching Conference 2011 by Dr Nash Popovic and Debra Jinks.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9.
For me, this article is just a beginning and I think assessing for an integrated approach needs to be discussed in much greater detail. There is also a need for clarity with our clients, and for us to have a reflective space with a supervisor who understands the benefits and perils of working in an integrative way. Carolyn Mumby is a coachtherapist, trainer and supervisor with a private practice in London. She
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Values and mission

Gordon Jinks discusses pragmatism, butterflies and getting people to agree
When I am required to think about values, two things tend to happen. The first is that I start to feel a certain anxiety that this is a word that clearly means something important, but I am not sure I can articulate exactly what it is. I sort of know, I can use the word convincingly, but if pressed to define it and explain how it is different from beliefs or ideals or ethical principles, it tends to get a bit hand-wavy. So today, Ive done something Ive been meaning to do for a while, and looked it up. I liked this definition from www.businessdictionary.com: Important and enduring beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or desirable and what is not. Values exert major influence on the behaviour of an individual and serve as broad guidelines in all situations. That sounds about right to me. So they are like beliefs and ideals, but theyre shared by members of a culture, they help us to decide how to behave, and theyre concerned with what is good or desirable. My less hand-wavy response could now be that values are a particular class of beliefs or ideals that help us decide how to do the right thing, and that they operate in the context of a culture, which I suppose could be anything from a societal or professional group to a particular organisation. The second thing that tends to happen when I think about values is that I am reminded of something I heard Gerard Egan say a number of times when I used to work on the York Counselling Summer School in the late 1980s and early 1990s about the value of pragmatism, which he translated as do whatever works and is ethical. It struck me at the time, and still does today, that this is one of those valuable bits of wisdom which is both obvious (once you hear someone say it) and rather profound. If you are engaged in some purposeful activity that you think is worthwhile, and if pragmatism is a value you subscribe to, then you really need to be concerned with two things knowing what works, and having a framework for deciding what is ethical. Neither of these concerns is straightforward, but they have
tended to underpin a lot of my work as a helper and as an educator/ trainer over the last 20 years or so. Combining this view of pragmatism with another snippet of Egan wisdom there are at least 54 ways of achieving anything I have been keen to find out as much as I can about what works, but particularly what works, with whom, when, under what circumstances etc, and with developing the ability to make good decisions about what is ethical. Does it work? Is it ethical? Gerry was talking about using the Skilled Helper Model as a framework for integrating techniques and conceptual frameworks from a range of approaches to helping, and I was listening with my counsellor selfconcept on, but I think it also applies to what we are concerned with here in relation to AICTP. Over the past couple of years, when I have been thinking more carefully about coaching and counselling about what they have in common, what the distinctions might be and about the pros and cons of keeping them separate or integrating the two I keep coming back to the pragmatic position, which raises the two questions: Does it work, at least for enough people, enough of the time to be worth doing? And is it ethical? After a lot of thinking, reading and discussing with various people, Im fairly confident that the answer to both of those questions can be yes, and maybe part of the mission of AICTP should be to help develop more comprehensive answers to the open versions of the questions. So, who does it work for, when, under
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what circumstances etc, and what ethical considerations need to apply? I am not going to attempt to answer those questions here, but Im suggesting that if were on board with the idea of the coach-therapist, then maybe thats a really useful role for AICTP. Values However, back to values for now. A few months ago we had a discussion thread on the AICTP LinkedIn group titled What values might you like to underpin our organisation and the work that we do?. There was a lot of interesting discussion, and a lot of suggestions. My attempt to summarise looked like this:
Valuing of the concept of the coach-therapist/therapist-coach (promoting practice, informing potential clients and interested groups, promoting access to services) Openness to ideas and approaches (and avoiding the imposition of a particular creed, approach or framework) Willingness to listen, think, reflect Responsible autonomy Individual and collective empowerment Inclusivity people should feel able to get involved in a variety of ways Honesty and transparency in communication Congruence at all levels but particularly between words and actions Humility Generosity Commitment to innovation, originality A positive but prudent orientation to change, the future, new technology Genuinely valuing difference and diversity Valuing consensus but accepting dissent Offering value (for money, effort, involvement) Acceptance and valuing of both the commercial and the charitable/altruistic Mutual respect and tolerance
in relation to what to do and how to behave as an organisation. In the spirit of how we are trying to do things at the moment, we are calling our first physical event An Open Conversation, and I think that really applies to things like values and mission. We want to know what potential members think and what they might want. But it also seems important that we say something about what our values are. Debra started the values thread by saying: As a starting point, we see some of our values as being about inclusivity, listening to members and trying to provide what they want/need from an organisation like ours. The list above takes that a bit further. These are some of the values that interested people have offered and seem able to broadly agree on, but the process isnt finished and should probably always be evolving, so wed like to hear from you with any comments or further suggestions. The thread is still open on the LinkedIn group or you can email me. Maybe the bigger challenge for an organisation is to actually conduct itself in a manner consistent with its espoused values. If you are able to view the LinkedIn discussions, I hope you will feel that were trying to do that. We will make mistakes and we wont always know exactly what to do for the best, but having even an evolving set of values to refer back to should help. Mission critical Developing a sense of the mission of the organisation might be a case in point. We also started a LinkedIn discussion about that, because it seemed like the next step might be to have a mission statement we could all get behind. There was again a lot of very interesting discussion, but my sense of it is that it was much harder to pull out a consensus. I think a key part of the discussion was around the
As I said on the thread, there is probably some overlap between some of these, and it would need a bit of work before it felt like anything finished; but they do feel like beliefs or ideals that, if shared, would be a good starting point for helping us express what we think is good or desirable, and for guiding us
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extent to which we might want to look like a relatively conventional professional body, with some or all of things like entry requirements, accreditation processes, an ethical code, professional conduct procedures etc, or to what extent we wanted to try to be more radical, more inclusive, more flexible and responsive, and perhaps find new ways of supporting members, promoting good practice in our field while at the same time promoting (and safeguarding?) the interests of potential clients. I was tasked with pulling a draft mission statement together, and I still havent done it. Im going to propose a couple of levels at which I think a mission statement might exist, and suggest that the kind of dilemma outlined above maybe needs to come after the mission statement, rather than inform it, and should be part of the open conversation that takes place on LinkedIn, at our open evening, and by as many means possible over the next few months as we hope to emerge from our current chrysalis into something a bit more butterfly shaped. Some of you may have heard what is I suspect an urban myth about the mission statement of the drills division at Black & Decker something like to facilitate the making of holes. It certainly gets to the point and I like the idea of a mission statement being brief and not tying anybody down to a particular way of doing things. On that basis if drills become redundant because everyone is making holes with laser cutters, at least the mission statement wouldnt need to be rethought. Taking that as a model, AICTPs mission statement could be as simple as to help individuals and organisations get better at achieving their goals. But thats probably too simple. It doesnt highlight what I think we would see as the unique aim of AICTP to promote and develop the integration of coaching and therapy, and it could apply to any provider of services, rather than specifically to a body that aims to support practitioners in their work. So heres a first attempt to go a level beyond that: To promote the professional practice of integrating coaching and therapy, to provide the best possible support for coach-therapist practitioners, to develop understanding of best practice in the field, and to promote and safeguard the interests of clients. It needs a bit of work, but I think it might be at about the right level (at least for now) and I would caution against going too much further in terms of specifics.
That caution is based on another bit of Egan wisdom, about the need to keep a careful distinction between aspirations, aims and goals on the one hand (what we want) and strategies and plans on the other (how we might achieve what we want). It seems to me that if we can agree that the above statement, or something like it, is a reasonable encapsulation of what we want, then actually discussions about the desirability of accreditation processes, professional conduct procedures etc are about strategy. Is that the best way to support practitioners, is it the best way to promote the interests of clients, is it the best way to promote the professional practice of integration etc? And to return to the value of pragmatism, given that there are lots of ways we might approach achieving each of those things, we should probably always come back to thinking about what works and what is ethical. Ive really enjoyed being part of the process of trying to build an organisation from the ground up, and take part in discussions with a lot of bright, creative and wellintentioned people who I sometimes agree with. Please get involved by joining the LinkedIn group, coming to the open evening or emailing any or all of the people involved so far. Im particularly interested in anything anyone might have to offer around values, mission, and the process of evolving them in a way that is as organic and mutual as it can be, without needing a geological time frame to get to the point of standing upright. Gordon Jinks is a principle lecturer and the programme leader of PGDip Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of East London. Email gordon@uel.ac.uk
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Training for integration moving out of our safe corner

The current coaching revolution has presented a new and exciting range of opportunities for both coaches and counsellors, and the integration of the two practices is rapidly becoming an integral part of many helping roles. This begs the question as to how exactly this integration fits within the larger socioprofessional process? After all, coaches and therapists are unique in their approaches to their respective fields, each individual with their own beliefs, personalities and idiosyncrasies. This was the challenge I faced when starting the coaching module on an integrative BA honours counselling course at the University of Hull (Scarborough campus). Transferable skills From the outset our tutor made it clear that the coaching module was designed to present us with a unique set of skills that would be transferable to our current counselling practice. After three years of intense counselling training, the prospect of something different thrilled me. Yet at the same time, I was very aware that I was treading new waters and that using the new skills on offer would be more than just an academic exercise. Initially we looked at the differences between counselling and coaching, which proved useful for establishing the philosophical underpinnings of this approach and provided
David Jackson explains how he and his fellow counselling trainees were taught coaching skills to integrate into their practice and interviews their tutor, Jayne Hildreth
a clear answer to the question many of us had: How is this different to what I already do? Yet it was still unclear, at this early stage, how coaching skills and theory might be made use of within our already established counselling practice. It gradually became apparent that this was something that was achievable, because there is a wealth of literature detailing how integration has evolved into practices beyond the standard conglomeration of individual counselling and coaching approaches. Practices such as mentoring and consultancy have added a degree of credibility to a somewhat elusive concept, yet it appeared that, for many of my fellow trainees, integrating coaching skills was a seemingly impossible task. Why so impossible? This was most evident in those who had vehemently adopted the Rogerian personcentred approach to therapy, where the focus for them was grounded very firmly in allowing the client to explore their personal histories and issues, and who viewed their own role as a kind of vanguard or pathfinder, avoiding or dismissing any approach they deemed as being too directive. This resistance to a new and different way of working became more evident the more we were introduced to the practicalities of
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coaching practice, as certain aspects of the coaching approach suggest advice giving or an element of being more directive, which some peers felt clashed with their limitations in their role as counsellors, particularly, as I say, those from the person-centred school of therapy. A personal breakthrough However, I happened upon a personal epiphany when reading the works of William of Occam: Plurality should not be posited without necessity.1 For me, navigating the integration of the two approaches was guided by that most basic Rogerian principle that the client is the most important element to consider. By adding a coaching skills base to my professional repertoire, I had a wider range of resources that could be drawn on, while my intervention choices in the moment could remain selective in response to the clients presenting needs as opposed to me trying to use all my skills simply to prove that I had them.
have and how the two approaches are different. Contracting with clients to encapsulate the collaborative choices about the direction of the work ensures that the risk of haphazardly changing tracks between the two approaches is minimised. Straight from the lions mouth an interview with Jayne Hildreth In preparation for writing this article, I interviewed the tutor of the coaching module from the University of Hull, Jayne Hildreth (Innovations Director at AICTP), to ascertain her views on how the integration of the coaching approach was facilitated. Excerpts from the interview are as follows: David: What were the most important factors concerning the students that you had to consider when putting together the coaching module? Jayne: I wanted to provide an array of new skills that every student could consider. I wanted to offer something new and dynamic that had some meaning for each student. I did not initially start with integration; I wanted to ensure that the identities of coaching and counselling were clearly considered, and so I began with looking at the differences between the two with the intention of having a clear outline of what coaching was and encouraging the students to look at their current practice and how these new skills might fit. We wanted to offer an additional skill set that had marketability, to give each student a competitive edge when they qualify. D: What did you do to manage the students initial resistance to the coaching module? J: I tried to be invitational and encourage the students to take a look at what was on offer. I encouraged an open-minded approach; students on the third year were naturally more open and had already considered integration within their existing counselling practice. They had already encountered different therapeutic approaches, so I wanted to encourage them to use that open-mindedness to challenge their preconceptions and explore how these new skills might fit for them personally.
The concept of pluralistic practice addresses the variance in clients needs as they change
Equally, I began to feel that a refusal to integrate coaching skills because it isnt counselling or because counselling is enough suggests a Procrustean one-size-fitsall approach to problem solving whereas the concept of pluralistic practice addresses the variance in clients needs as they change, both between clients and for the same client within different stages of their development. Just as all counsellors and coaches are unique in their practice, so too are the individual clients that we aspire to facilitate. Maintaining the integrity of the identities of both counselling and coaching can be facilitated in the same way, by ensuring that clients are very clear about the options they
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D: Do you feel that your professional career as an integrative coach and counsellor had an effect on this process? J: Yes, I believe that it added a degree of credibility to what I was teaching. I think it demonstrated on a practical level that this could be done. I used my experience to help facilitate the students; I used elements from NLP to help build relationships and rapport, and promoted what I was teaching with relevant examples from my own practice. I wanted to try to make the theory come alive and inspire interest from the students. D: What do you feel are some of the benefits of integration when considering practice and client work? J: I think it offers the prospective clients something more. With integration of counselling and coaching, there are more opportunities to meet client need and offer more expertise, skills and choices. A practitioner who is trained in both schools can facilitate the client in more ways. I also think it reduces the need for signposting to other professionals or organisations, which is good for the client, as it can be stressful enough for them to come and see a professional practitioner, without being referred to other people as well. Its all about offering the client more informed choices.
In conclusion When considering where integration fits within the larger process of helping, any kind of anxiety around making the integration work in practice can be eased with the simple guiding principle of the process being led and informed by the needs of the client. The most prominent aspect of integration is the inclusion of the practitioners own strengths and idiosyncrasies, all of which can be drawn upon to offer the client a more potent and informed approach to problem solving. Integration is more effective when they consider their own abilities and unique skills and aspire to further enhance them, thus creating a wider range of possibilities and opportunities for the client, instead of remaining preoccupied with the perceived limitations within their own role. After all, if we hope to inspire a can do attitude in our clients, then it follows that the process should begin with us as integrative practitioners. David Jackson is a counsellor at Whitby Underground (part of SeaChange) and a life coach for Next Steps. d.jackson@counsellor.com
Reference 1 Hyman Arthur, Walsh JJ. Philosophy in the Middle Ages. 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co; 1973.
Twitter #AICTPLaunch
AICTP launch event
Venue MAP
An Open Conversation
October 3rd at UEL, Stratford 4pm - 7pm
COMPUTER AND CONFERENCE CENTRE
Guest speaker: Dr Patrizia Collard on What does Mindfulness have to offer the area of integration?
Dr Collard is a therapist and coach specialising in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy
There is no charge for this event but spaces are limited. If you would like to secure a place, please email support@aictp.org.uk with event in the subject.
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SHAMANISM AND SPIRITUALITY IN THERAPEUTIC PRACTICE Christa Mackinnon Singing Dragon 2012 ISBN 978-1848190818 18.99
REVIEW
I wont keep you in suspense: this is a great book. If youre interested in taking a more holistic, spiritual approach to your coaching and/or therapeutic practice, I think youll get a lot from it and find yourself referring back to it often. Billed as compelling reading for psychologists, therapists, counsellors and coaches, I was at first a little sceptical. Shamanism underpins my personal spiritual path, and I certainly use spiritual elements with my own clients, but, integrative practice or not, I was wondering how well shamanism would fit in. Isnt it a bit, well, primitive for use with clients? One chapter in, I was hooked. Mackinnon makes a compelling case for incorporating spirituality through elements of shamanic practice into our sessions and provides a fascinating overview of recent scientific developments that support the shamanic perspective. Having covered the need to integrate the spiritual with the psychological, Mackinnon then emphasises that an ethical approach is to base any work on the clients spiritual system and not the therapists. In line with this, I found that all the exercises and techniques described in the book could be applied to any belief system. In my opinion, the reason this is possible is because shamanism is indeed primitive. Rather than being a drawback, I now see it as one of its biggest benefits in a helping context. Dating back possibly as far as the Paleolithic period, shamanism is spirituality at its most basic. This gives it a wonderful flexibility for working with any client who is open to the spiritual, in whatever form their spirituality may take. Mackinnon covers many topics of value to a contemporary coach or therapist, ranging from altered states of consciousness (for example, dissociated clients) to shamanic tools. Part 3 of the book looks at the practical application of shamanic tools and techniques, with tips, step-by-step instructions, case studies and anecdotes. Subjects covered include creating a positive space, using embodiment, shamanic journeying, power animals, soul loss and soul retrieval (advanced work, and covered for information only), connecting with ancestors and descendants, working with myths and stories, using rituals and ceremonies, the medicine wheel as a therapeutic tool, reconnecting with nature, and finally death and the cycle of life. As an example of the very practical nature of this book, the chapter on using rituals and ceremonies outlines several different types of rituals/ceremonies and the context in which they could be used, provides suggested timings and explanations of how to use them with individuals and groups, and gives step-by-step instructions for creating a personalised ritual with a client. Mackinnon emphasises that proper integration following any kind of spiritual experience is essential if the work is to benefit a client. I agree, and would add that if you intend using the technique of shamanic journeying with a client, you should consider first attending an introductory course in shamanism as an absolute minimum. Journeying is a much deeper experience than the more widely known visualisation, and I recommend developing some personal skill with it before you move into facilitating client journeys. Everything else in the book could be used off the shelf with common sense and the usual coach or therapist skill set. In summary, this is an excellent book which you should be able to quickly and easily apply in your integrative practice. Recommended! ESTHER PATRICK
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The one thirty-two slot
A brief pause to think about:

Underneath the clients current set of negative thoughts, memories, stresses, blocks and all manner of other disturbances, the client is creative, resourceful and whole. The job of the therapist-coach is to help this underlying client to be revealed.
[Source unknown but gratefully acknowledged]
All too often a young client will come to therapy and say, I have anger issues. I need anger management. But this is only the surface and what others see. Can you fix him? they ask. There is far more to a young person than anger. There is distress, sadness, loss, unfairness and much more. And alongside these negative feelings, there is always hope and potential and endless possibilities of what they can become. If you take the time to look closely enough, you can see it and, in turn, help them to see it. Ive had the privilege of working long term with three such clients, who, in time, showed creativity with the brightest and shiniest of colours as they explored the use of paint and glitter. The use of glitter came as a surprise to me as I hadnt associated glitter with teenage boys obviously my prejudgement was way off! I provided them with a long-term consistent committed relationship, which they had each lacked previously, and through their artistic efforts they became aware that they had choices. They then were able to start taking ownership of their feelings and the choices they had about what to do with those feelings. The choices took time but starting with choosing how long they wanted to stay in the therapy room, they then applied the power of choice to other elements of their lives. For instance, when faced with a violent situation, one in particular chose to walk away for the first time in his life. My holding of the enabling boundaries within the therapeutic relationship and the forward-moving positive aspects of coaching all combined to make their journeys successful. I believe that by picking up on even the smallest positive inner resource (even love of glitter!), we can enable clients to grow and to see that there is much more to life than being labelled the angry kid. Choice and positives are a powerful combination that, along with the added relationship aspect, can produce amazing results. Young people have a huge inner strength, and would rather put their energy into more positive ways of being than negative ones, given the opportunity. HELEN WHITEHEAD
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Houston we have a problem!

George R ONeil writes about using a life plan and planning tools to target both difficulties and dreams in an integrated intervention
Over the years a number of strands have influenced my thinking. Systemic thinking, in particular, through training in Family Therapy, taught me that:
Lifes not as simple as cause and effect. Things dont happen for a reason but for lots of reasons interacting together. Labelling people doesnt tell you much about real life. There doesnt have to be somebody to blame. The different parts of your life interact they cant be partitioned off.
Just imagine it. Apollo 13 takes off and, before long, the crew discovers it has a crisis on its hands. Ground control sends a message suggesting the crew should see the situation as an opportunity and recite an affirmation Every day things are getting better and better. Much of the ensuing conversation is not fit for broadcasting! Another example: there was one motivational speaker (whom I otherwise liked) who suggested that a letter from the tax man demanding payment should be seen as a glorious opportunity to contribute to the wealth of the nation! Neither of these approaches is based on how people generally see things. There are problems and there are dreams. To suggest that we should only see positives and not problems is not particularly helpful. The coach-therapist approach, for me, is one that tries to see both sides of the situation because life is not simply about problems. I used to be head teacher of a special school where children labelled as having emotional and behavioural difficulties were referred to be fixed. It soon became clear that the difficulties did not lie solely, or even at times mainly, in those who were labelled as problematic. We all knew what society wanted them not to do. But it was also empowering for them to have dreams, ambitions, beliefs and a plan.
I retired from teaching after 18 years as a head, added a diploma in counselling and, with BACP accreditation, worked as a counsellor with adults described as having a learning disability. I added training in NLP and was influenced by others in the field of learning disability. I also picked up ideas from the field of business management. I therefore have great sympathy with any approach that tries to tackle both difficulties and dreams, recognising that both influence how we live. I believe that the combination of counselling and coaching, whatever name is given to it, has great possible benefits, not only for minority groups such as people with a learning disability, vulnerable people and business executives, but also for the general population. Person-Centred Planning I would like to highlight an approach used often within learning disability but increasingly in a number of other settings. It is referred to as PersonCentred Planning. Central to the thinking within this approach is the
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idea that my priorities may not be the same as those around me anticipate. A plan made about my life by social workers and carers may not be the same as the plan I would make for myself. Their priorities may not be my priorities. I may well need to do something about the bits of my life which I see as not working but I also can usefully know what, in detail, I want things to look like in the future. Knowing that I want to be fit, breathe well and smell fresh, for example, must be more motivating than simply, on a minute-by-minute basis, tackling the problem of stopping smoking. How can you DO a not-doing something? It was within the field of learning disability work that I really came across person-centred approaches. With the closure over the last few decades of big institutions for people seen as disabled, there was a push for them to be seen as individuals in their own right, each with their own strengths, needs, preferences, interests and priorities. Each should have the opportunity to play a part in society, to have an identity other than cared for or disabled. Individual plans should not simply be the wish list of the various professionals involved with that client.
week as my situation and priorities change. At simplest, it consists of the answers to three questions: 1. What are the good things about me? (A 2. What are the most important things in 3. What, in detail, do I need to do to
achieve my goals? my life at the moment? question we are seldom asked!)
I may usefully have help in working out the answers to these questions. That may be from those close to me or from relative strangers who are not so personally involved. It might be a coach or counsellor. But who are the people who are part of my life? Which ones are closest to me? Who else plays a part in my life? Tools about Relationships help me to list those who need to be consulted or considered in plans I make. And the list is not always predictable! But this is a simpler way of discovering this information than completing a genogram (family tree) as one might in a family therapy setting. And how do I want those around me to contribute to the planning process? Those around me might, if they can speak objectively, be able to express opinions about whats working/not working. The friend who tells me that I need to chill out at times, stop feeling responsible for everyone, or stop giving myself a hard time can be doing me a real favour. Looking at the goal and also at the hindrences and links The emphasis is on achieving goals, making dreams come true. Whats your next big adventure? In an ideal world, what would you really like to happen? Whats stopping you from doing what you want to do? What would life look like if your wishes were granted? For me, one limitation of Person Centred Approaches is the prompt that the Wheel of Life (used in many
The different parts of your life interact they cant be partitioned off
The need to ration services leads to the labelling of people. For example, disabled or not disabled? Intelligent or not intelligent? Intelligence tests, still widely used within our health service, do not reflect the wide range of talents and needs within each of us, tested or not. I believe that they mostly measure how well you can do intelligence tests! I now believe that the Person Centred Tools, widely available on the internet1 for free, are very useful in making plans for anyone, labelled as disabled or not. You can access training in the use of the various tools, but it should be clear to somebody with counselling training what the various issues involved are. I have my own One Page Profile. It changes from week to
27
life coaching practices) provides. From systemic thinking, I am aware that life is made up of many bits, but also aware that we need to be reminded of the interdependence of health, relationships, work, money, living situation and beliefs about the big questions in life. Nobody thinks of asking a person with learning difficulties about their views on the purpose of life (or sometimes even about having a bit of romance or an exotic holiday or adventure). These things will come up while using Person Centred Planning.
All material in this journal is AICTP 2012 Permission to reprint articles must be obtained by emailing support@aictp.org.uk with details of your proposed use of the material. All material so reprinted must be suitably credited to AICTP. AICTP journal is published four times a year for members of the Association and others who are interested in the concept and practice of working as integrative coachtherapists. Members of the Core Team at AICTP: Linda Aspey President Debra Jinks Chair Keren Smedley Deputy Chair Jayne Hildreth Innovations Nash Popovic Training and Education Gordon Jinks Professional Standards Phil Tyler Communications Rino Giordano Student link
From systemic thinking, I am aware that life is made up of many bits

Another valuable resource I have recently discovered, both for counsellors and coaches and for clients, is Headspace2 an easy-to-learn introduction to daily meditation, the first stages of which are free. Learning to relax and to be in the here and now is helpful for anybody, but especially as we give space for clients to think for themselves. And the arrival of the Association of Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals gives us the opportunity to network and learn from each other. I thought Id finished learning things in life. But it looks as though Ive only just started! George R ONeil, MBACP (Accred) is a counsellor, life coach and trainer. Formerly head of a school for young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, he has qualifications in family therapy, counselling, NLP and Gender and Sexual Diversity, and for several years worked as a counsellor with adults described as having learning disabilities.
Editor Eleanor Patrick Contributions to empatrick@aol.com Cover photo: The Blue Grotto, Malta Tony Patrick
References 1 www.thinkandplan.com 2 www.getsomeheadspace.com
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AICTP Journal Summer 2012 Final

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SUMMER 2012

Association of Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals

In this issue: Values-Mission-Assessment-Questioning-Planning tools-Training-Reviews

Contents Chairs welcome

Values and mission

Training for integration

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

I have found my creed and found my clan life is good

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

Why we need to stop asking so many questions and what to do instead!

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

Integrated assessment do we know what were talking about?

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

Values and mission

Training for integration moving out of our safe corner

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP launch event

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

The one thirty-two slot

A brief pause to think about:

[Source unknown but gratefully acknowledged]

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

Houston we have a problem!

From systemic thinking, I am aware that life is made up of many bits

References 1 www.thinkandplan.com 2 www.getsomeheadspace.com

AICTP Summer 2012 Issue 1

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