The Al­liance of Coach­ing Pro­fes­sion­als (ACPTT) has been of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished. It is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion formed by in­di­vid­ual pro­fes­sion­als who prac­tise coach­ing, in­clud­ing health and well­ness, ca­reer and life coach­es. The or­gan­i­sa­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to ad­vanc­ing the coach­ing pro­fes­sion by en­com­pass­ing the high pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards set by the In­ter­na­tion­al Coach­ing Fed­er­a­tion USA, ed­u­cat­ing and build­ing a net­work of coach­es. It will sup­port and ad­vance the coach­ing pro­fes­sion through pro­grammes and stan­dards sup­port­ed by mem­bers and will be an au­thor­i­ta­tive source on coach­ing in­for­ma­tion and re­search for the pub­lic. There will be dif­fer­ent tiers of mem­ber­ship to suit in­di­vid­ual needs in­clud­ing a stu­dent mem­ber­ship.

The first AGM will take place be­fore the end of the year and in­ter­est­ed peo­ple from vary­ing pro­fes­sions and lev­els of em­ploy­ment are wel­come. Coach­ing is a com­pa­ra­bly new pro­fes­sion. It blends the best con­cepts from busi­ness, psy­chol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, sports and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Al­though coach­ing com­bines skills from oth­er dis­ci­plines, it is a dis­tinct process of sup­port­ing oth­ers to cre­ate an ide­al life. Coach­es work with clients on a va­ri­ety of top­ics, from busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al is­sues to per­son­al and spir­i­tu­al con­cerns. Coach­ing in­volves di­a­logue be­tween a coach and a client with the aim of help­ing the client ob­tain a ful­fill­ing life. This is achieved by help­ing the client es­tab­lish what is im­por­tant to them and by clar­i­fy­ing their val­ues.

A coach of­fers many things to the client dur­ing the coach­ing process such as:

• sup­port to dis­cov­er the an­swers with­in him or her self

• clar­i­fi­ca­tion of val­ues

• co-cre­ation of a plan for how to achieve what the client re­al­ly wants

• a sound­ing board for new ideas

• sup­port in mak­ing life-chang­ing de­ci­sions

• chal­lenge to ex­pand their views be­yond their per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions

• di­rec­tion

• ac­knowl­edg­ment

• en­cour­age­ment

• re­source in­for­ma­tion

As a rel­a­tive­ly new pro­fes­sion, coach­ing is a method­ol­o­gy that draws on a range of oth­er more tra­di­tion­al pro­fes­sions in­clud­ing psy­chol­o­gy, busi­ness con­sult­ing, men­tor­ing, man­age­ment the­o­ry and adult learn­ing.

How­ev­er coach­ing is a unique field and there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences be­tween coach­ing and these fields.

• For in­quiries, con­tact Nashroon Mo­hammed at 766-1734 or e-mail acpt­ton­line@gmail.com.