What it’s like working with Clare Norman Coaching Associates
Whether we are online or face-to-face
…our style is:
- nurturing and stretching
- engaging and learner-centred
- creative, tapping into the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual parts of your personal wisdom
- compassionate and consistent
- witnessing you as a unique individual
- generous
- in partnership
- adult-to-adult
- richly insightful, based on years of experience.
When we’re online and virtual…
…we use Zoom (we’ve been using it for years). It works well, and we use the breakout rooms and chat facilities to replicate what we also do in a face-to-face situation. Our experience working in an online environment tells us that people like the flexibility and the learner-experience that we create. We also use Zoom’s recording facilities - so useful for looking back at a session to review and identify strengths and stretches. We take frequent brain-breaks to re-oxygenate, re-hydrate, re-fresh and rest the eyes.
The one thing we miss with online sessions are the social catch-ups over coffee, as everyone moves to their respective kitchens. So we purposefully integrate time for one-to-one social time to get to know each other away from the screen. This might be between sessions or within the session.
When working one-to-one, we also work with audio only (good old-fashioned phone) as it enables you to walk and talk, which has been proven to improve your thinking capacity by 60%.
When we’re face to face, in person…
Our style is… no different! But if you come to us, the space is different. Light, airy, spacious, private, quiet, away from your usual thinking space to promote new thinking, memorable and with healthy brain food.
We are in them midst of the New Forest, so a great place to retreat. With nature all around us, you get to experience the greens and blues of forest, open sky and sea. Green is calming, stress-relieving, and encourages creativity. Blue is associated with freedom, intuition, imagination, inspiration, vision and sensitivity.
We think that is important because they stimulate learning and growth.
Because ultimately, we want you to connect with your full potential as a human being, who creates a ripple effect out into the world around you.
Our Design principles for group work (adapted from Make it Stick: the Science of Successful Learning by Brown & Roediger and McDaniel)
Creating a surprising and delighting level of excellence in every aspect of the experience; excellence = professionalism, care, creativity and quality
Contract
Identify the outcomes and measures of success before designing anything
Build it as we go
The design is never pre-prescribed by the coach; the team or group develops their own agenda with support from the coach
Recontract
The ability to switch gears when something more important emerges is key
Experiment
Between sessions, you are invited to experiment with new behaviours that you identify
Effortful
- Hard is good
- Demands emotional investment
- Failure with feedback is the norm
Generative
- Individual and group reflection
- Individual and team elaborate in their own words
Social
- Engages the group
- Allows for co-creation of content
- Time to interact and get to know each other informally
Spaced
- Distributed over time
- Requires retrieval
- Interleaved with varied practice
Always a clear agenda…
Virtual or face to face, there is no difference. We will always co-create a clear agenda with you and a group so you know what we are doing together, what your own measures of success are, how you will show up and how we can partner together.
We use tech to your advantage…
We’ve adopted Dubsado as our client management system, we’ve done this to improve our client experience from the very first contact throughout your journey with us. Trello is our adopted project management tool, Outlook for meetings and of course Zoom when we’re online together. We keep it straightforward; and we’re always looking for ways to improve our client experience.
Bespoke if you need it…
We’ve got a varied range of programmes and courses, but if you’re looking for something different within the realms of coaching, we’ll work closely with you to understand the distinctions of your project and team. If we are not the best providers for that need, we can often recommend people who are from our vast network of trusted associates.
