Organizational coaching comes to the Valley. (Valley Education).

Everyone can benefit from the expertise and motivation of a coach at one time or another. Even professional athletes turn to coaches to improve their skills. Like athletes, high performing business professionals are now hiring "coaches" to keep them on their leading edge: observing, reflecting, challenging assumptions, building on strengths and taking action. Coaching skills are useful for a variety of people, adding to their effectiveness as a manager, supervisor, trainer, teacher, or principal.

As technology and business practices rapidly change, organizations may suffer a lack of experienced people to help the company grow. Organizational Coaching is fast becoming one of the most indemand sectors of the business community and has changed the way many progressive organizations view professional and personal expansion. Organizational Coaches motivate people by designing questions and actions that challenge old ways of working, encourage taking reasonable risks, and offer ways of doing jobs differently.

Phillips Graduate Institute, a professional school in psychology located in Encino, has introduced a new Organizational Coaching program, which specifically prepares participants for the challenges of coaching. The program features insight from Karen V. Bading, a leading business coach and consultant.

The new certificate program, "Coaching for Organizational and Personal Change," is designed for those who want to develop/deepen their coaching skills. Using a combination of learning activities including experiential learning, supervised practice, self-assessment, self-reflection, and reading to achieve this goal, participants will develop their understanding of the coaching role while exploring and developing their coaching skills.

HR professionals can also benefit from this course, as they are often called upon to develop or evaluate coaching programs for their organizations. Coaching skills can also benefit therapists and executives. Whether you become a professional coach or use the distinctions of coaching in your current professional role, developing your coaching skills will serve you and those whose learning you support.

Some of the skills you can expect to develop in a coaching program are relationship building, listening skills, planning, and how to move people into action. Coaching occurs in a relationship of trust and respect, always with the permission of the individual or group being coached.

In the coaching program, participants will learn to "listen and check" for understanding, to hear beneath the words for what is and is not being said, and to listen for the assumptions and limiting beliefs that are getting in the way of new action. Participants will grow into powerful observers, telling the truth as you see it. They will develop skills to determine what the company/individual wants/needs, how it will make a difference, and how to obtain it.

Some coaches work with clients all over the world, exclusively by telephone. Most coaches combine phone and e-mail with occasional face-to-face meetings. Many use shadow coaching, observing their clients at work. As with skills and experience, session length and frequency can vary with individual coaches.

Coaching can offer a new way of looking at the world and yourself, improving choices in behavior. If you are serious about your career, your life and your legacy, if you have a desire for a tomorrow that is measurably better than today, you will benefit from an alliance with a coach.

The Summer Certificate Program "Coaching for Organizational and Personal Change" will take place at Phillips Graduate Institute Fridays and Saturdays only from June 13 through July 26 from 8 a.m.-5p.m. For more information on Organizational Behavior and Organizational Coaching, please contact Phillips Graduate Institute at [phone], or visit their website at www.pgi.edu.

Information for this article was provided by Phillips Graduate Institute, a professional school of psychology offering Master's and Doctoral degrees.