The nature of coaching is that it is a two-way process involving coach and client as equals; the more active a part you take in the process the better the outcomes are likely to be for you. Here are 15 practical ideas and suggestions to help you get the most from your coaching.

1. Remember it’s not the coach’s responsibility to solve your problems or achieve your goals for you 

The coach is there to support, challenge, listen, stimulate, encourage, share feedback and offer anything else they have in their tool kit to help you think better and plan well to make the changes that are important to you. Ultimately you are the one that has responsibility for your own work and life. This is why we encourage a model of active, adult-adult partnership in coaching rather than anything that suggests you are dependent on your coach.

2. It’s up to you to ask your coach to change the way they are coaching you if you feel they could coach you in a better way

Coaches are of course only human, and as such have their own distinct personalities: yet a good coach will be able to flex their style in many ways to suit you, e.g. by being more or less direct/challenging, by moving at a faster/slower pace or by sharing more or less of their thinking and ideas with you. They will be happy for you to make such requests because their aim is to coach as effectively as possible.

3. The coach’s job is to ask you for even more than you might normally ask of yourself

Your coach wants the best for you and for this reason will be looking to offer and encourage ‘stretch’ wherever possible. Your coach may well question the limits you set for yourself and encourage the setting of challenging goals and targets. Coaching should not be a ‘cosy club.’

4. The coach is your success partner, not an accountability service

Coaching will work best for you when you are actively seeking to get the best from yourself and when you take responsibility for your own growth and development.

5. The value of coaching isn’t based on how much time is spent coaching

The value of coaching depends on quality rather than quantity: when both you and your coach are fully engaged in the task and working hard then success should follow – it is a bit like going to the gym and really working at it, rather than thinking you will get results just by being there.

6. The coaching session in itself is not what gets you results

Ultimately this is down to what you do and how you act after the coaching – what you put into practice. Coaching is there to help you to plan and prepare to get the best out of what you are doing.

7. Talk about what matters most to you

You are not there to conform to any expectation you feel your coach may have on you – least of all are you there to please the coach in any way. Yours is the only agenda that counts and if it is important to you, your coach will work on it with you.

8. Focus on yourself

Sometimes clients worry that coaching is somewhat self-indulgent – even a selfish luxury. We offer the view that you can only effectively do your job or serve others well if you are yourself fulfilled, purposeful and operating to your fullest potential. When you succeed, others should benefit too: if you are unhappy, unfulfilled or frustrated in your work or blocked in some other way it is likely that others will not get the best from you. You can look at your coaching as a positive boost to the communities of which you are a part.

9. Be open to seeing things differently

Very frequently, the issues you face are not in themselves the real issues! Often it is the way we see issues and how we think about them that needs to change. Even when some of the issues we face are objectively daunting or difficult challenges, we can use coaching to open ourselves up to new ways of responding to them. Opening your thinking up will open up new possibilities for choice. Your coach can help you identify ways of seeing, thinking and responding that may offer you very different options and approaches.

10. You can develop and evolve with coaching

Coaching is both a developmental process and an evolutionary one. It helps clients accomplish more with less effort – the developmental aspect – and can also lead to different thinking and possibilities for growth and change – which we call evolving. Evolving is a skill worth building because life itself is about evolving, not just developing.

11. Use your coaching to help you think about – and design – the kinds of environments and systems you want to work in – you can go beyond yourself

We can all exercise some choice and responsibility in creating the kind of environment to allow ourselves to flourish. Even when your organisation places apparent restrictions in your way we can often exercise at least some discretion in the physical, social, professional and cultural contexts in which we work and live. Coaching encourages a whole-system approach and links personal change to the contexts we inhabit.

12. Take charge

You are invited to take charge of the coaching process, to get it focused on what you most want and need. We encourage you to come to each session with a direction in mind, perhaps a list of issues or questions you want to address. Ultimately the more you know what you want out of your coaching the better. Your coach can then work with you to craft really specific and relevant goals for the coaching.

13. Be Real – say what you think

When what we say does not reflect what we are really thinking, we are incongruent. Coaching is not an abstract exercise or an intellectual joust but an opportunity to work together with your coach in a climate of shared honesty and truth. When you are authentic it really helps to get the best out of your coach.

14. Promise what you can deliver

Whilst we encourage stretch and boldness in coaching we also ask you to be mindful of what is realist and doable in the context of everything you are trying to do. Overextension causes great anxiety, guilt and suffering. We encourage you to remain mindful of what you are realistically able to take on as a result of your coaching.

15. Share what you are doing with your coaching

People close to you will see and feel the effect your coaching is having, either directly or indirectly. For some people this will create questions and even anxieties about the changes you are making. We would suggest that where possible you are open to others about what you are trying to do via your coaching. This will have the double benefit of including them and reaffirming your commitment to developing as a person and a leader.

Customer opinions have always had the potential to influence other people’s attitudes towards a business. In the past, these opinions were communicated mostly by word of mouth. But the internet has given customer opinions mass exposure. 

Track Reviews: To manage online reviews of your business, you need to know when and where they appear. Luckily, free services exist that will track and report them for you.

Many review sites (e.g. Yelp, Product Review, TripAdvisor) can send a notification each time you’re reviewed, provided you ‘join’ the site. If you want to search more broadly, Google Alerts [http://www.google.com/alerts] will report mentions of your business (or any other term that you request) in web pages, blogs, videos and discussions. Twitter Search [https://twitter.com/searchhome] allows you to search Twitter for any term.

You can also pay for more sophisticated ‘reputation monitoring’. If you’re interested in doing this, seek the advice of a social media consultant.

Claim Or Create Your Business Page: Sites such as Yelp, Zomato and Google Places use publicly available data (e.g. from the telephone directory) to generate a page for your business. Some sites do this only when you’re reviewed, but others do it automatically to provide complete search listings for users.

Claiming your page is free, and you then have control over what it contains. Or, if a page hasn’t been created, you can create one yourself. To claim or create a page, visit the site concerned and look for a button or link that says something like ‘For business’, ‘Claim your page’ or ‘Unlock your page’.

Claiming your page may improve your listing in search rankings, and will often give you access to special services provided by the review site (e.g. tools to track and analyse reviews, and the option of communicating privately with reviewers).

Decide Who Handles Reviews: Each business must decide who will monitor and respond to customer reviews. Many sites allow only one management response per review, and you also want to control the quality of your responses (e.g. you don’t want a junior waiter insulting a customer who has complained about the waiter’s serving skills!)

The staff member who handles online reviews needs to have:

• a strong customer service attitude
• a friendly writing style
• the authority to resolve complaints
• good judgement about when to refer a review to more senior staff.

Respond To Positive Reviews: Most marketers suggest responding to positive reviews so customers know that you appreciate their compliments. Some recommend sending a private message that only the customer will see, while others suggest responding publicly (if you’re responding to ‘reviews’ on forums such as Facebook and Twitter, you may have no choice but to respond publicly). You may also have to decide if you answer every positive review or just the ones that stand out.

Most experts say not to offer tangible rewards (e.g. gift vouchers) to reviewers, because this can be construed as a bribe for future positive comments. Nor should you annoy reviewers by targeting them with advertising or asking them to join your mailing list. It’s best to simply introduce yourself and say thank you. 

If some other aspect of your business might be of particular interest to them, it’s probably fine to mention that too (e.g. if a customer praises a particular brand of stereo, you could let them know that you’ll be expanding that range next month). Use your judgement on a case-by-case basis.

Follow Each Sites’ Rules: Most review sites stipulate that reviews and responses must not contain personal attacks, profanity, breaches of privacy, advertising, or criticisms of the site itself (e.g. you can’t say that a site is unfair, even if you believe it is). Other sites (e.g. TripAdvisor) go further and say that all material must be ‘family-friendly’.

Whichever site you want to join, read their rules carefully. There’s no point writing a response that breaks the site’s rules because it won’t be published anyway. In the case of personal blogs, there may be no official rules, but it’s best to follow the rules that the bigger sites use even if the blogger themself appears not to.

Don’t Post Fake Reviews: It’s unethical and a breach of site rules to post positive reviews about your own business or negative reviews about your competitors. This applies to business owners but also to staff and to any family or friends who are not genuine customers. Posting fake reviews may also be illegal. In some countries, business owners are using lawyers to challenge what they believe are false and defamatory negative reviews. Larger review sites filter any reviews that they believe are false.

Encourage Positive Reviews: One of the best ways to get online reviews working for you is to encourage happy customers to post positive reviews. But take care how you do this so that it doesn’t backfire.

Do:

• display the logos of the review sites in your store and on your website
• provide comment cards in store that include the logos and web addresses of review sites (customers can either drop the card in your suggestion box, or take it away and post their comment on line)
• embed a ‘Review us now’ button on your website that takes customers to the review site
• regularly give customers new reasons to review your business (e.g. introduce new offers, products and incentives)
• consider asking especially satisfied customers to post a review (e.g. the customer who sent
• you a postcard saying that your whitewater rafting trip was the highlight of their holiday)
• aim to add a few new reviews each month.

Don’t:

• send an email to your entire customer list asking them to post a positive review a wave of positive reviews posted simultaneously will either be filtered out as fake or regraded with great suspicion by readers
• offer incentives to ‘bribe’ customers to review you their reviews are likely to sound forced and to be filtered out or ignored by readers. Plus you won’t really learn what your customers think.

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Tips for Providing Career Services Remotely

Latest information and actions from the Education and Skills Funding Agency for academies, schools, colleges, local authorities and further education providers.

Documents

ESFA Update further education: 25 March 2020

ESFA Update academies: 25 March 2020

ESFA Update local authorities: 25 March 2020

Details

Information for further education

Information for academies

Information for local authorities

Published 25 March 2020

@VickyFord MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families has written to the #SEND sector and all families and carers of children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities to update them on the announcements and guidance issued by the Department over the past week as well as reassure them of the Department’s support at this time.

Dear colleagues,

This is an open letter distributed through as many of our partner organisations as possible. I would be grateful if you could circulate it as widely as possible to children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), their parents/carers and families, and all others who support them.

This is an unprecedented, uncertain and testing time for all of us due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It is particularly challenging for children and young people with SEND, their families, and those who work tirelessly to support and care for them.

This is why, over the past week, we have made announcements and issued guidance about how we will meet the needs of children and young people with SEND during this challenging time. As the Minister responsible for SEND, I wanted to write to let you know that we are committed to doing everything possible to support you during this difficult time.

We are working in partnership with many organisations, including the National Network for Parent Carer Forums and the Council for Disabled Children, to make sure we are focusing our efforts in the right places. In all our decisions, the needs of SEND children and young people and their families and carers, and safeguarding these vulnerable groups, are at the forefront of our minds.

The Government published guidance about supporting vulnerable children on 22 March. It includes a number of frequently asked questions and is available here.

We have also published new guidance that provides household isolation advice for children and young people who live in residential settings, and the staff that support them. This guidance is available here.

The guidance on supporting vulnerable children states that local authorities, nurseries, schools, special schools, colleges and other training providers should undertake a risk assessment to establish the individual needs of each child or young person with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan.

This assessment should incorporate the views of the child or young person and their parents. This will inform the decision about whether they should continue in school or college, or whether their needs can be met at home safely.

If needs are best met at schools or colleges, we will support their school or college to meet their needs, wherever possible. For those on SEN support, schools, colleges and local authorities have discretion to use the same risk judgement to decide whether home or school is the safest setting for these children.

It is, however, important that as many children as possible remain at home during this time in order to help reduce transmission rates.

On 19 March, the Government introduced new legislation into Parliament, in the form of the Coronavirus Bill (‘the Bill’), in response to the outbreak. Our overwhelming aim for SEND, through the Bill and the proposed changes to regulations that are to follow, is to balance the needs of this vulnerable group to receive the support they need with managing the demands on local authorities and health bodies to respond to this outbreak.

As a result, we have included in the Bill temporary emergency powers to enable us, where necessary, to modify the legal requirements on local authorities in fulfilling their duties in relation to EHC plans. In practice, this will mean that where a local authority is, because of the outbreak, unable, for example, to put in place stated provision, they will need to use their reasonable endeavours to do this, but won’t be penalised for failing to meet the existing duty as set out in the Children and Families Act 2014.

These emergency powers will only be exercised for the shortest period and where necessary, and will be regularly reviewed. We will also be seeking to amend regulations on the timescales for EHC plan processes where this is appropriate because of COVID19.

I want to reiterate that these decisions are not taken lightly but I believe strike the right balance in these difficult times. I encourage you to keep up to date by regularly checking the gov.uk webpages, and raise awareness of the DfE Coronavirus helpline we have established for local authorities, providers and parents to get information on the latest Government advice. The number is 0800 046 8687, and lines are open 8am-6pm (Monday – Friday), and 10am – 4pm (Saturday and Sunday).

I realise that the impact of these extraordinary circumstances on this group of children and young people can be particularly acute. This is why I have asked the Council for Disabled Children, in partnership with Contact, to ensure that their websites and forums regularly update both families and services on information, which is available to support them.

I have also asked them to collate any questions and queries from stakeholders so that we can maintain as many routes of contact as possible into Government to ensure our actions continue to be focused on prioritising where help is most needed.

The challenges we are now facing serve to further highlight the importance of ensuring the system of support for children and young people with SEND is as effective as possible in the future. Rest assured that completing our review of the SEND system remains a priority for me and for the Government.

In light of the current situation, we will think carefully about the right way and timescale to do this. Right now my focus, like yours, is on managing the current situation and keeping vulnerable children safe and supported. I know that by working together, we can ensure that children and young people with SEND receive the support they need during this difficult time.

Yours sincerely,

Vicky Ford MP

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families

Information, advice and guidance from the Money and Pensions Service below.

The government’s goal seems to be for the skills sector to “collapse”, a “furious” Mark Dawe has told FE Week after officials failed to provide apprenticeship funding support during the Covid-19 crisis.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive tonight lambasted the “disgraceful” decision and demanded an urgent meeting with skills minister Gillian Keegan.

New guidance released by the Department for Education stated that policy “does not allow payment for services in advance of delivery”, so funding for apprenticeships cannot be made until the training has taken place.

The situation has left providers in a “battle to survive”.

Dawe told FE Week: “I am furious that after weeks of discussions the government has made no attempt to provide any assurance to independent providers and end-point assessment organisations as to any future funding relating to any of their delivery.

“It seems their goal is for the sector to collapse and remove any delivery to apprentices, other learners and their hundreds of thousands of employers.  As things stand tonight, there is only one word – disgraceful.”

Here is his reaction in full: “The omission of any DfE funding support for apprenticeships and other skills training goes completely against the assurance offered by the Secretary of State to the House of Commons last week.

“ We are left to conclude that the government is not serious about apprenticeship training or any other forms of skills training continuing while the pandemic goes on or that it is very happy to preside over many independent training providers (ITPs) going out of business over the next three months.

“How are providers expected to implement the proposed flexibilities in today’s statement if they have vastly reduced income coming in? It is now a battle for survival. The majority of provider staff will be furloughed which means they will not be available to support the training of apprentices and other learners.

“Coming after Friday’s guaranteed funding support for mainstream FE provision, the DfE statement adds insult to injury. For example, it says that “government policy does not allow payment for services in advance of delivery” and yet this is precisely what it announced for colleges on Friday.  ITPs delivering adult education, traineeships and other forms of training have similarly been offered zero assurance by today’s statement.

“Then on apprenticeships, the statement goes further and lays down terms for clawback of funding from independent training providers if the crisis means that apprenticeships can’t be completed.  Given that it is not their fault that they cannot gain access to apprentices or assess them, this is beyond the pale.

“Unless the government urgently rethinks its stance that it has had two weeks to think about, we are likely to see the start of the collapse of the training and assessment sector over the next week unless action is taken on funding, and those employers who want training and assessment to continue will have no place to go when this is over.

“Colleges only deliver 2 per cent of apprenticeship training.  This means that they are no position to rush in and fill the gaps that will appear in key sectors and in many towns and rural areas across the country, including the Red Wall areas, if ITPs, who deliver nearly seven out of 10 apprenticeships, start going bust.  Niche provision in sectors like textiles will also suffer very badly.

“Another important point on the quality of provision is that nearly all ITPs have made the transition across to the new apprenticeship standards whereas less than six months away from the switch-off of frameworks, many colleges are lagging in making the change.

“So employers looking to get back on their feet after the end of the pandemic will find that the apprenticeships that they want won’t be available to them.  And soon that other oven-ready solution of EU migrant labour won’t be there either to fill the gaps.

“What about this year’s school-leavers aged 16 or 18?  Where are the opportunities going to be for them if lots of apprenticeship training providers are no longer around?

“This is why any further delay on a funding support package for apprenticeships and ITPs is totally unacceptable.

“AELP has this evening demanded an urgent meeting with the apprenticeships and skills minister.  We also hope that MPs on the Commons Education Committee will be raising these issues with the minister when she appears before them on Wednesday.”