This course is designed to equip you with the necessary skills and knowledge to facilitate transformative dialogues for themselves and others. Developed by Dr. Haesun Moon, a communication scientist and faculty member at the Canadian Centre for Brief Coaching and the University of Toronto, this course covers topics such as how to prepare for coaching conversations, how to “attend” when listening, how to “curate” when responding, and how to end the conversation with many beginnings in mind.

You will also explore practical tools and tips, such as setting up the coaching room and hosting follow-up conversations. The coaching skills introduced in this course are informed by Solution-Focused Brief Therapy techniques and the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ) framework. This course is ideal for individuals interested in personal and professional growth or those seeking to become certified coaches.

Welcome to the exciting world of conversation skills development! In this module, you'll learn about how conversations work, and how you can use effective communication techniques to build stronger relationships, achieve your goals, and facilitate growth and development in others. Whether you're a seasoned coach looking to refine your skills or a newcomer to the coaching profession, this module is designed to provide you with practical tools and strategies for improving your communication skills and facilitating meaningful conversations. You'll explore common misconceptions about coaching, learn about the power of active listening and powerful questioning, and discover techniques for creating awareness and designing actions. So, get ready to dive in and transform your coaching practice through the power of conversation!

As coaches, we know that building a strong relationship with our clients is crucial for achieving impactful results. In this module, we'll explore the importance of creating a welcoming environment for coaching conversations and provide practical strategies for doing so. We'll delve into topics such as seating arrangements, room setup, and reflective practices to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for coaching sessions. Additionally, we'll discuss how to adapt your coaching environment to different contexts, such as one-on-one coaching sessions, group coaching, or virtual coaching. By the end of this module, you'll have the skills and knowledge to create an environment that fosters trust, collaboration, and growth for you and your clients.

In this module, we will explore the roles of both the coach and client in a coaching session and learn how to create a collaborative and empowering coaching relationship. We will develop curative listening skills, and learn how to listen for what is important to the client, what they want to change or improve, and what signs of progress they may already be exhibiting. We will also learn how to facilitate a coaching session that empowers the client to find their own way forward. With the latest empirical evidence from the field of Communication Science, this module will equip you with the tools to become a skilled and ethical coach.

Get ready to take your coaching skills to the next level with Module 5: Beginning with the End in Mind! This module is like a treasure map for coaches, guiding you to the client's desired outcome or "preferred futures". You'll learn how to create a coaching conversation that keeps the learning and growth going beyond the coaching session. You'll develop skills in facilitating progress towards the client's goal and supporting their continued growth and learning. It's like you'll have a secret coaching weapon in your pocket! By mastering the concepts and skills covered in Module 5, you'll be able to help your clients navigate their journey with ease and achieve their goals. Get ready to begin with the end in mind and make coaching fun and transformative!

This module focuses on the crucial first few minutes of a coaching session and how to create a safe and welcoming space for your client. You'll learn about the Solution Focused approach and how it differs from traditional coaching models. By focusing on small signs of progress and steps already taken in the direction of the client's preferred future, you'll foster a sense of competence, agency, and motivation in your clients. With interactive case studies, peer discussion, and self-reflection activities, you'll have the opportunity to apply your learning to real-world coaching scenarios and take ownership of your own development as a coach.

In this Module 7 - Different Types of Wants, we'll explore the importance of understanding and exploring clients' wants and desires in coaching. As a coach, one of the first things you'll likely want to know is why your client made an appointment with you. In this module, we'll introduce you to effective techniques for helping your clients articulate their desired outcomes in more concrete and specific terms. You'll also learn how to use the "suppose" technique to uncover the underlying desires and motivations behind unrealistic or unhelpful wants. By the end of this module, you'll be equipped with practical tools and strategies to enhance your coaching practice, and to support your clients in achieving their goals and objectives.

This module explores the powerful impact of questions in coaching conversations and provides an understanding of the assumptions that questions carry. Through interactive case studies, reflective exercises, and personalized learning plan templates, you'll gain the skills necessary to check your own assumptions and align them to support the client's resources and hopes. The module also covers the importance of establishing purpose of visit, hosting dialogic conditions for useful inquiry, and refraining from imposing your own values and opinions.

In this module, you will learn about the importance of “opening questions” in coaching. We will explore the purpose of opening questions in coaching and how they can steer the conversation in the direction that is useful to the client. You will learn how to frame opening questions that focus on the client's purpose for the conversation rather than their problems or the coach's position as a helper. We will also develop strategies for responding to clients when their answers to questions don't seem to land or when they comment on the question rather than answering it.

This module provides a comprehensive introduction to the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ), which is a simple, but powerful, tool that coaches can use to help clients explore their preferences, goals, and challenges differently. Coaches are often faced with the challenge of guiding clients to imagineer their preferred interactions, and the DOQ provides a framework for this purpose. The module emphasizes the importance of compassionate listening in coaching and helps coaches develop their ability to respond to clients in many other ways than just questioning. By using the DOQ, coaches can guide conversations and support clients in curating their preferred stories of purpose, possibilities, and progress.

This module provides an in-depth exploration of the concept of the Preferred Future in coaching conversations. Through this module, you will gain an understanding of the importance of exploring the Preferred Future in detail with clients, linking past skills to what clients want in the future, avoiding letting clients positively fantasize about something they may not be able to attain, and incorporating the Preferred Future into coaching conversations early on to make coaching more effective in the long run.

This module provides an in-depth understanding of the importance of identifying and eliciting a client's past resources, including skills, supports, and circumstances that they were able to mobilize in the past. You will learn effective ways of getting clients to self-compliment instead of complimenting them outright and how to avoid problem-solving approaches. The module focuses on building your coaching skills by learning how to invite clients reflect on their progress towards their preferred direction. Upon completion, you will have a solid understanding of how to reinforce the client's strengths, ultimately supporting their clients in moving toward their purpose and possibilities.

This module explores the difference between discussing the past for exploring problems versus visiting the past to acknowledge clients' values, strategies, and growth. You will learn how to reframe problem descriptions into workable strategies and practice compassionate listening to understand what is important to the client while they are complaining. Through interactive exercises and case studies, you will develop strategies to gently interrupt repetitive problem descriptions and redirect the conversation towards the client's wants. By the end of this module, you will have enhanced your curating skills to better support your clients in getting closer to their desired outcomes.

This module focuses on coaching clients when they are worried about the future. This module emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and addressing clients' fears and worries, while also keeping in mind that lengthy problem descriptions may not facilitate progress. Through this module, you will learn how to gently interrupt clients' lengthy problem descriptions and reorient them towards the progress they want to see. Additionally, you will recognize the role of problem descriptions in reinforcing problems, and the importance of focusing on progress instead. The module will also help you develop the skill of reorienting clients towards progress in a compassionate manner, while understanding how your words shape the coaching sessions. Overall, this module provides you with the knowledge and techniques to coach clients through fear and uncertainty about the future and help them become aware of their purpose and progress.

This module takes a deeper look at how focusing on progress motivates clients towards their outcomes and actions. This module teaches coaches how to identify progress, build on progress, and connect progress to desired outcomes using a range of coaching strategies and techniques. It also emphasizes the importance of redefining problems into values and actions. You will learn how to pay close attention to what is important to clients, even when they are complaining, to better understand their values and motivations. By the end of this module, you will have the skills and knowledge they need to help clients connect their progress to their desired outcomes and build upon their strengths and resources to activate more progresses in the future.

This module is designed to help you develop skills in using scaling as a tool for measuring and celebrating in coaching sessions. The module provides you with an understanding of how to set up scaling questions in a solution-focused way that emphasizes progress rather than deficits. You will learn how to ask open-ended questions that invite clients to reflect on their progress and identify the resources they used to achieve it. The module focuses on developing the skill of resisting the impulse to problem-solve and instead guiding clients to explore their own strengths and strategies for progress. You will gain the ability to use scaling to celebrate clients' achievements and reinforce their sense of agency and self-efficacy in pursuing their goals.

This module is useful when you support clients who are experiencing challenging emotions or situations. The module emphasizes the importance of meeting clients where they are and honouring their current situation, even if they are not ready to explore their preferred future or resourceful past. You will learn how to inquire about a client's coping strategies and ways to manage their current or past situations. You will also learn how to apply dialogic and relational intelligence in partnering with the client so that clients can make useful discoveries and gain insights in their coaching conversation with you when it matters the most.

This module provides an introduction to the concept of exceptions and instances in solution-focused coaching. This module explores how to identify and explore exceptions to problems and instances of the preferred future in coaching conversations, and how to develop effective inquiry to elicit exceptions and instances from clients. By inviting clients to remember their past successes and resources, coaches can build their self-confidence and resilience, and support them in developing effective strategies, ideas, and insights to their challenges.

We explore the importance of "relationships" in coaching and how they can be leveraged to help clients build a sense of action and interaction in their preferred ways.

This module introduces Relationship Questions used in Solution-Focused Coaching and explores how they can be used to facilitate client progress by inquiring about what others might notice about the client's progress and how it can impact their relationships. You will gain familiarity with various relationship questions that can be used in coaching conversations and learn how to apply them to different relationships in a client's life, including family, friends, and colleagues. Additionally, this module emphasizes the difference between describing feelings and behaviours and how focusing on behaviours can be more effective in helping clients make lasting changes. By the end of the module, you will have a greater understanding of how to use relationship questions to help clients achieve their desired changes and build stronger relationships.

This module introduces practical strategies for using reflection techniques to facilitate client self-discovery and progress. This module emphasizes the importance of allocating time for reflection in coaching sessions, and provides you with effective reflection questions to ask clients to facilitate self-discovery and progress. You will also gain an understanding of the importance of avoiding assigning homework or solving problems for clients, and instead, encouraging clients to identify their own next steps. By the end of the module, you will have developed practical skills for using reflection techniques in your coaching practice and will be better equipped to help your clients initiate positive changes.

What are some ways to effectively invite clients to continue experimenting and experiencing their preferred actions and interactions? The module explores the concept of homework in solution-focused coaching and highlights the differences between traditional therapy homework assignments and those used in coaching.

You will learn how to invite clients to notice and reflect on their progress between sessions, create a changeable collection of ideas for clients to add to, and avoid limiting clients' creativity with specific tasks. Additionally, you will develop strategies for handling situations where clients have not completed homework, focusing on what was useful to them and directing the conversation towards progress.

How would you design your subsequent sessions with your clients so that you can build on the progress made after the first session. You will learn effective strategies for establishing a sense of renewed purpose and progress with clients, reviewing their initial purpose for the visit, and assessing whether the session is still relevant and meeting their wants. The module emphasizes the importance of compassionate listening and responding with useful curiosity to prompt clients to talk about their learning and development. You will also learn how to respond when a client reports negative feedback or lack of progress in a direct and effective manner, and will review the client's progress and priorities to ensure that the session is moving in the right direction.

What are some useful ways to follow up with our clients? How might follow-up sessions be different from initial sessions? You will learn various progress review tools and techniques, including scaling questions, to open sessions effectively. The module emphasizes the importance of reviewing coaching purpose and progress in each session, checking in with clients about when to stop meeting, and celebrating their progress. By the end of the module, you will have useful tools that you can apply right away when meeting with your clients who are coming back for a follow up session.

If we "begin with endings in mind" when we begin a coaching session with a client, we also "end with beginning in mind" each time we end our coaching conversation. What does that mean, and how would you do that? This module is designed to introduce the concept of coaching as the beginning of new chapters. Key concepts covered in this module include orienting clients towards the future, reflecting on what is now possible, and staying connected with the people who matter.

Be sure to contact learn@humanlearning.ca and let us know within 48 hours if you are unable to attend a course you have registered for. We will do our best to accommodate with the next run of the particular module. If that module is full, you will be placed on a wait list until a spot becomes available.

The beauty of this program is that it is not tied to a designation. You can pick and choose what courses speak to you. Whether you have a designation or not, there will be something for you in this program!

Absolutely it will! We have designed this program to be applicable for all work environments. Have you ever onboarded someone? Then you are a learning professional. Have you ever had to teach someone how to perform tasks at work? Then you are a learning professional. This program is the right fit for anyone whether they already have skills that they want to improve or they are starting out fresh.