I have an accomplishment and some projects to share this month.
First, the accomplishment – earlier this month, I officially completed my ICF-accredited professional coach training program. This included a performance evaluation that determined that my coaching practices meet or exceed the expectations for an ACC (Associate Certified Coach) level coach. I am officially a Coach U Core Essentials Trained Coach!
This means that my coaching meets the standards established by the leading global professional organization for coaches. My next step is to accrue the hours of experience needed to qualify for the initial certification!
My recent professional projects can be summarized as increasing the number and range of courses that I teach at Library Juice Academy. I have several new courses listed that relate to topics I enjoy coaching on. Of course, teaching an asynchronous course is quite different from coaching in real time, but my goal is to create symbiosis between the topics I teach and coach regularly.
This month, the new course I’m teaching is Coaching as a Leadership Skill. There are a wide range of approaches out there that are referred to as coaching. My focus is on managerial coaching defined as adapting a professional coaching mindset, as outlined in the ICF Core Competency #2, as much as possible while leading a team. There is a great group of engaged participants in the course and some really great conversations. I’m enjoying it so much that I’m brainstorming ideas for future group coaching packages to offer on this topic!
I’m also gearing up to build a new course for June, Beyond Libraries: Translating Your Skills to Other Contexts. This topic is something that I see pop up on social media periodically, and is relevant to the past year and a half of my life! This isn’t a push to encourage anyone to leave libraries, but an opportunity to explore what other options are out there and explore how your skills translate if you’re already considering that.
I’ve tried over and over again to post regularly on this blog, but it has been the easiest thing to set aside whenever I’ve gotten busy. But here I go, trying it again! My goal this time around is to post monthly updates on upcoming classes, group coaching programs, and other projects. Once a month should be doable, right?!
