Hello Coaches!

Has your coach training left you feeling like you have a good grasp of a wide variety of tools, but on a mostly superficial level? Are you left wanting to know more? I know I was!

Most coach training programs, by their very nature, need to teach you a little bit about a lot of different things, an approach that by necessity focuses on breadth, which then leaves some of us wondering about the depth.

I wanted to know more and to understand how deeper exposure could inform my coaching and enhance my client’s experience. If knowing bits and pieces helped me become a coach, then having a deeper understanding should help me to become an even better coach and thus provide more value to my clients.

I also wanted to develop more confidence and knew that learning these tools would do just that.

So I dove in!

As a former academic, my default mode is research, and that’s exactly what I did. I dove into learning all I could about three psychology-based approaches that seemed to inform much of what I had been taught in coach training, one of these being Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT).

I realize most people aren’t researchers by nature, and don’t want to do the kind of deep dive I did, but they may still want a more in-depth exposure to such powerful tools of transformation than they received in coach training (if they were exposed to them at all).

Combining extensive teaching/facilitation experience from my years in higher education, a knack for pulling together and synthesizing information in a way that makes it approachable and easier to learn, and my extensive coach training and experience was the logical next step.

This is why I created Concepts for Coaches: Coach Education Beyond Coach Training, a professional development and continuing education program, with ACT for Coaches as the first course offering.

 

ACT in Coaching

I designed ACT for Coaches to be a supportive, approachable, interactive, and thorough introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Training in a coach specific context. The course is designed specifically for you as a coach and takes into consideration the boundaries and limitations we, as coaches, face.

It isn’t just another course on a psychological technique facilitated by and designed for therapists with coaches thrown in as an afterthought. This was designed for you.

The ACT toolkit is extensive, robust, and flexible, which makes it ideal for use in coaching. It can form the framework for a coaching session, or you can pick and choose specific tools and techniques as needed. It incorporates a healthy dose of mindfulness and body awareness techniques to complement its focus on accepting thoughts and committing to values and courses of action.

The starting point in the ACT framework is to identify our deeply held values. What we value most and what we most want our lives to reflect.

In focusing on deeply held values and desired behaviors and outcomes, ACT allows us to identify when we’re thinking thoughts and acting in ways that move us away from these values. It then takes the process full circle by teaching strategies and techniques for staying focused on the ways we move towards them.

When we want to create lasting change in our lives, we need more than thought work, we need an anchor to remind us why we want the change. Values-based goalsetting and committed action to those goals creates this anchor and an effective way to generate accountability. Recognizing foreseeable barriers and obstacles then allows us to plan ahead and not get thrown off when they arise. Add in mindfulness and self-kindness and you ensure that all of this is done in a kind and gentle way.

When we have trouble gaining distance from painful thoughts, negative self-talk, or self-judgment ACT has a plethora of tools to help us see past the thought, gain perspective, and move forward in a way that matters to us leaving us feeling empowered rather than powerless.

This course is offered quarterly.

Course Details

The Spring Session begins Wednesday, April 3 and runs for eight weeks.

Dates: 4-3, 4-10, 4-17, 4-24, 5-1, 5-8, 5-15, 5-22.

Time: 1:00-2:30 pm PT

  • We’ll meet for 90 minutes to ensure there is plenty of time to cover the week’s material, questions, and allow for practice
  • We’ll meet by Zoom
  • All classes will be recorded and posted to the course’s learning portal
  • All course materials will also be posted to the learning portal
  • We’ll have a private Facebook page for our group for discussion and interaction
  • The group will remain small to allow for a personalized experience
  • This course is accredited by the ICF for 20 CCEUs (14 Core Competency and 6 Resource Development)

Cost: $1297.00

Register Now

Course Content

ACT for Coaches is for coaches who want to learn about a tried-and-true psychology-based technique, sharpen their skills, add new tools to their toolkit, build confidence, increase their effectiveness, and do so in a safe, supportive, and unintimidating environment.

Topics include:

  • ACT’s origins and history – putting it in context
  • Psychological flexibility
  • The six key processes of ACT
  • Values-guided behavior
  • Experiential avoidance
  • Defusion metaphors and exercises
  • Mindfulness in ACT
  • Body awareness in ACT
  • Values-based goalsetting in ACT
  • Committed action and dealing with barriers
  • ACT's versatility - grief/loss and chronic pain as examples
  • Self-kindness /compassion practices

 This is a highly experiential course with plenty of time dedicated to learning and practicing ACT's tools and metaphors both in and outside of class.

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Your Instructor:

Gloria Walker, PhD, ACC, Certified Master Coach

Gloria Walker is the founder of Concepts for Coaches and owner of Gloria Walker Coaching. She has over 15 years of experience in higher education and has been a coach since 2017. Gloria is a Martha Beck Certified Master Coach and has her ACC credential from the International Coaching Federation. She has extensively studied Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Nonviolent Communication, Internal Family Systems, Somatic Coaching, and Mindfulness in Coaching and incorporates these concepts into her professional development curriculum.

Contact

For more information about ACT for Coaches or to be added to the email list for notifications about future course offerings send an email to: [email protected]

 

Diversity Statement

Concepts for Coaches by Gloria Walker Coaching is anti-racist, anti-discrimination, anti-hate, pro-diversity, pro-equality, and pro-equity. This is a safe place for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ persons. We are committed to dignity, equality, equal rights, and justice for all human beings.
Until Black Lives Matter no lives are truly safe
Pride is beautiful and love is love
The Equal Rights Amendment is still necessary

Shelly Haas, Well-Being Coach and Mentor

I highly recommend Gloria’s ACT for Coaches course. I thoroughly enjoyed it and gained so many wonderful tools to apply not only with my clients, but in my own life as well. I was amazed at how often the tools came in handy in my own life as we were moving through the course!

Gloria has an enjoyable, clear & concise teaching style, and she also left a lot of room for discussion and application for the participants, which I loved and helped everything sink in for me more deeply. The course materials were laid out so clearly that they made the concepts & tools easy to follow, digest, and easy to reference in the future, as I’m sure I will be doing often.

Gloria clearly laid a path in how to utilize ACT specifically in the context of coaching, which is super important, and so helpful. 

I ended this program with such a great supply of simple, yet powerful tools to utilize with my clients and myself, and feel confident using them.

Diane Bailey-Boulet, ACC | Author

ACT for Coaches is an inspiring and powerful course that delivers valuable insights, accessible practices, and resources that coaches can apply in client work. The course has the added benefit of holding space for us as coaches to practice self-care. What makes the course magnificent is Gloria Walker's inspiring facilitation. She's passionate about the content and energetic and thoughtful in how she delivers the course. I highly recommend this course.

Lillian Powell – Generativity Coaching

“I am a fellow coach and I needed recertification for my ACC through the International Coaching Federation, so I went on the ICF site and found Gloria’s ACT for Coaches program.  I had been interested in learning ACT for a while and Gloria’s program was the only one I found that was accredited by the ICF and that would give me the required CCE units I needed. When I met with Gloria to get details about the program, I found out it was just what I was looking for. Gloria’s teaching style is warm, open and inclusive and I learned a lot about ACT for coaching. In fact, since completing the class, I have used many of the exercises with my own clients.  Thank you, Gloria!”

Indrani Goradia, ACC, Founder RAFT Cares

Act for Coaches, with Gloria Walker, was one of the most efficient and exciting classes I have ever taken. Gloria is an amazing teacher who is able to take complex ideas and distill them into bite sized pieces.

The class involved lectures, group exercises, and some coaching based on the examples we gave in class. She always let us know that she was there to explain anything we may not have understood, but honestly, her teaching style is clear, and her slides and handouts are excellent. And her sense of humor makes even the most complicated concepts fun to learn.

One of the biggest surprises of the class is how the tools keep resonating as life unfolds. One of the questions I ask myself now is, are you hooked? If the answer is yes, then I do one of the exercises to unhook. I no longer have to be a prisoner of any thought.

I have used the tool of unhooking from thoughts with my clients as well. The way Gloria taught it made it easy for me to teach to others. 

If you're thinking of upping your coaching game, I highly recommend Act for Coaches with Gloria Walker. She is an amazing teacher and I'm happy to call her friend.

Cid Lough, Master Wayfinder Coach

I just completed the ACT for Coaches course, and I was delighted with the whole experience! I had gotten just a taste of ACT in my life coach training and wanted MORE… Gloria’s passion for teaching the subject was contagious, and the type of students her work attracts made for a safe space to dive into the tools and get vulnerable enough to see them in action.

I’d highly recommend this course to any and all life coaches who want a thorough and approachable introduction to ACT—you will learn simple and powerful tools to use with your clients, and in your own life!

If you’re interested in learning about ACT in a supportive, fun, and small group environment with plenty of opportunities to engage with the tools, then join us April 3!

Register Now