Identify and Leverage Client Strengths
In this course, you’ll learn to coach your clients to a greater understanding of their strengths and how to work with them to improve their lives. By collaborating with your clients’ strengths, their systems and solutions will be more lasting and their project outcomes more successful. Both you and your clients will become curious observers of preferences and perspectives (developing metacognition skills).
We train in the use of two very different strengths models in a coaching process. The first model, Values & Needs, develops client self-awareness about what matters most to them, providing criteria for priorities and boundaries.
The second coaching model identifies nine Processing Modalities. Clients with organizing and productivity challenges often attempt (or are encouraged to use) strategies that work well for others. You will learn how to coach clients to embrace and work with their specific modality strengths and sensitivities. In addition, knowing each client’s modality preferences enables a coach to communicate more powerfully.
In this course, you’ll use the identification of your own values, needs, and modality strengths to identify the best (for you) learning strategies to build coaching competence.
SBC is the second of the five foundation courses. It reinforces and builds on the coaching skills taught in Coaching Essentials.
- Senior Trainer: Denslow Brown, MCC
- Assistant Trainer: Elizabeth Brink, ACC
SBC Course Registration Info
SBC is offered twice a year — every spring and fall. Find the upcoming course dates and times on the Foundation Coach Training Overview/Schedule or by clicking on the REGISTER NOW button. The registration deadline is two weeks before Class 1.
Registration includes access to the SBC Coaches Learning Lab (on-line learning center for forums, trainer communication, access to training materials and participant profiles) — and a copy of the e-book: The Processing Modalities Guide: Identify and Use Specific Strengths for Better Functioning (Denslow Brown, Hickory Guild Press, 2017).
You will need to purchase or access this book on your own: Making Peace with the Things in Your Life by Cindy Glovinsky for a Class 5 reading assignment.
Foundation Course Fees & Payment Options
SBC Course Details (FAQs)
— Five weekly Zoom classes, 90-minutes each. Class 1 is two hours long — plan for this.
— There are two trainers unless the cohort is very small (six or fewer).
— Full attendance is expected although classes are recorded for review or emergencies.
— Each class includes instruction with discussion, reflections on participants coaching practice, and a group review of a recorded coaching demonstration (participation expected)
— Trainer stays late for any additional questions or discussion
— Four weekly, 90-minute Skills Building Group (SBG) meetings with another aspiring coach
— One optional 90-minute bonus class
— Between-class assignments (described below)
Allow 3-5 hours to complete all Strengths-Based Coaching pre-Class 1 start-up tasks. You will be emailed specific instructions 12-14 and 7 days before Class 1. Start-up tasks:
— Review your Coaching Essentials training materials (binder).
— Set up your Skills Building Group meetings with your assigned partner.
— Log in to the SBC Coaches Learning Lab to access and download the SBC training documents. If you wish, print the training documents and set up your SBC training binder (which will have been mailed to you on request).
— Review the SBC Overview and other Class 1 documents before the first class.
— Locate a copy of the book (Making Peace for the Things in Your Life, Glovinsky) for the Week 4 reading assignment.
Individual assignment completion times vary, but plan to spend about 5 hours each week in addition to the 1½-2-hour class. Assignments include:
— 90-minutes for your Skills Building Group meeting (plus: 10-20 minutes to prepare, and up to an hour to listen to your own recorded coaching effort and complete and submit the SBG Report)
— Complete the reading assignments and review the documents assigned for each class discussion (30-45 minutes)
— Complete assigned forum posts (15-45 minutes)
— Listen to the weekly recorded coaching demonstration and bring your comments and questions to each class (45 minutes)
Set aside 45-60 minutes after Class 5 to
— Complete the on-line course evaluation (30 minutes) and
— Fill out and send in your one-page processing modality profile (overview/summary) (15 minutes)
There are 3 more courses open to those who complete SBC:
— Brain-Based Coaching (BBC), the third course in the foundation training program. This coach training is unique in the industry. You can learn more about it on the Brain-Based Coaching page.
— Cultivate Coaching Courage (CCC) provides important grounding and confidence. Coaching by definitiation asks us to work with people with honesty about what matters to them most. This elective course builds that strong self-knowledge center that coaches need to do this work. It’s six seminar sessions are seminars based on a text. There are practice groups but little other outside assignments.
Read more about this $395 course on its own page: Cultivate Coaching Courage
— Client Enrollment (CEBP) is another elective course. It supports new coaches in framing a marketing message that captures the kind of coaching they do in language that feels right. Its 3 classes meet alternate weeks. Read more about this $295 course at Client Enrollment: Best Practices.
— And don’t forget the Coaching Skills Lab (CSL) course, created for new coaches to take at any point in the foundation training for coaching practice and Q&A with a trainer.
Required Foundation Courses
- Coaching Essentials (CE)
- Strengths-Based Coaching (SBC)
- Brain-Based Coaching (BBC)
- Life & ADHD Coaching (LAC)
- Coach Integration (CI)