News items:

Update from Lew Stern of the Training Guideline for Coaching working group:

The Working Group on Guidelines for Coach Education and Training has worked over the past six weeks sharing information on coach training and education that is going on around the world. We have asked several other members of the Working Group to provide additional information in the next week. We are still missing information on what is going on in Asia, non-executive coaching education and training in the US, and what is going on in Europe outside of Franceand Ireland.

We are asking our Consultation Group to provide any additional information they have access to in order to help fill in the gaps. Our plan for next steps are to begin the end of February with generation of likely scenarios, dialogue about those scenarios, select those which are more desirable, and document and prepare some potential strategies to affect the field in the direction of the desirable scenarios to be discussed in Dublin.

Update from Dale Williams of the Code of Ethics working group:

We've made a good start and have some interesting contributions to date as we map the field of ethics around the globe.

What we are looking for now is two things:

1. Ethics codes from coaching companies, professional bodies, organizations and also codes from related fields (psychology, counseling, business etc.)

2. Examples of ethical dilemma's. These are either from coaches who have faced the dilemma's or from clients who believe that coaches have acted in ways which are unethical.

Confidentiality is guaranteed and examples from 2 above will be used to map the field of ethical issues that coaches need to work with.
If you can share anything for 1) or 2) above then please do so that we can broaden our understanding of the field of ethics.

Update from Sunny Stout Rostron of the Research Agenda working group:

Below is our previous summary for the Research Agenda Working Group. Currently we have about 50-60 Consultative Body Members who have expressed an interest in working with us. We look forward to setting them up on a web forum to get them out of my email inbox! I have asked Matt Dower for help with the web forum. One of our working group is writing up a Current Reality for us in our dialogue so far, and we are busy exploring possible future scenarios.

We are setting up a tele-conference with our Working Group members hopefully on 9th March to clarify where we are and give information about Dublin; I hope we will have a monthly tele-conference thereafter. We would like to suggest a buddy system where WG members speak to one other WG member before posting new ideas as a way to inspire and brainstorm together.

At the moment, it is very administratively heavy building the Consultative Body, and one of our WG members has agreed to help discern any other possibilities for CB candidates. Our thinking is to have one of the CB members to oversee giving feedback to the WG. We have brought on board two new WG members to build up the WG energy and brain power.

Dublin Convention Dates Confirmed

We can confirm that the dates for the Dublin Convention shall be 7th - 11th July 2008.
The GCC Chairs and Facilitators will be meeting all day on July 6th to do final preparations for the convention.
July 5th and 6th will be reserved for social events for those arriving early.

Working Group Topics:

Nine working group topics have been formed with feedback from coaches and other stakeholders around the world. The topics are:

1. Knowledge Base for Coaching–Core and Specialist Areas
2. Code of Ethics
3. Core Competencies–General and Specialist
4. Training Guidelines for Graduate Programmes
5. Research Agenda for the Development of the Field
6. Professional Status for Coaching—Should this be pursued, in what form?
7. Mapping the Field–What constitutes the field and its related areas?
8. Selection of Coaches and Management of the Coaching Engagement
9. Evaluation of Coaching Engagements

See the “Who’s involved” link for a list of the chairs and faciliators of these working groups. As the dialogue continues further topics may emerge, so keep an eye on the website for updates.

Training Working Group Chairs and Facilitators

A good number of expressions of interest were received for people willing to act as chairs and facilitators of the working groups. The steering committee faced the difficult task of selecting from among the applicants. Apart from seeking to ensure that these people had the requisite abilities to fulfill the roles, the committee also sought to ensure, as much as possible, that the different sections of the coaching community, geographic locations and gender were represented. (Of course, it is the mix of working group members, not just chairs and facilitators, that ensures the real representativeness of the working groups – so register your desire to participate ASAP!)

On the 15-16 July 2007 the chairs and facilitators of the working groups will be trained to facilitate the year long dialogue that will culminate in a global gathering in July 2008 in Dublin. The working groups are the heart of the GCC process and the chairs and facilitators face the challenge of ensuring that the dialogue is both genuinely open and inclusive, and effective in producing material that will stimulate high quality dialogue in the journey toward Dublin 2008 and at the Dublin Gathering.

Michael Hann of the Oberon Partnership is an expert in dialogue facilitation. He is donating his time to lead the training process in the New York workshop. The process draws on Michael’s years of experience in facilitating dialogue over complex issues in corporate, government and community settings. The process builds on the insights and work of such people as David Bohm, William Isaacs and Adam Kahane, who have been involved in creating dialogue in such complex conflicts as South Africa, Guatemala, and the boardroom!

Matt Dower of Centre for Networked Learning will be on hand to lead the group through the web platform he has created to enable an international dialogue to occur.