By Eoin McCabe
The Irish Lifecoach Institute (ILI) was formed in 2003 by Adrian Mitchell and myself who had already been training coaches in Ireland since 2001. We have always been passionate about creating unique and powerful coaching and personal development programmes and workshops that would not just be of the highest quality but that would also be transformational for participants.
Previous to his training as a coach, Adrian worked as an accredited counsellor where he helped people from many backgrounds to deal with their difficult life situations. During this time, he developed unique workshops and programmes specifically designed to empower his clients and was also invited to give regular talks and seminars based on his work to interested groups. As a career guidance counsellor, I worked with people from all backgrounds, including prisons, the unemployed, the corporate and SME sectors and the general public. As this work progressed, my focus broadened beyond simply career issues and, to address this, I decided to train as a Lifecoach.
I wanted to work with groups and individuals in a positive and pro-active manner. Having always been passionate about personal development, I felt coaching was a natural fit for such work and I have found it to be very rewarding and personally challenging. I feel that a good coach is one who is seen to practice what they say they believe in. It is easy to pay lip service to ideals and spiritual practices but it’s our actions that tell others who we truly are. A good coach makes a personal commitment to their own self-development. Part of this lifelong process involves working with others to maximise their own self-development. I have always believed in the importance of people following their heart in whatever they do in life. Let passion be your guide. The heart is never wrong and to coach from the heart is key to powerful and effective coaching.
From the beginning, we set about creating a unique course based on our own coaching work and on our particular interest in human development which we both had researched for many years. By 2003, we had already created our own coaching model, awareness model and change management model, all of which became the framework from which our course was built around.
To be an effective coach you need to be honest, real and present with yourself and those around you. It’s important not to fall into the trap of telling and advising clients what to do as that is a cop out and the antithesis to true coaching. By being fully present when coaching another person, I suspend all judgement, all analysis and opinion forming, enabling the client to gain a deeper and more comprehensive experience and knowledge of themselves. What coaching has given me is the opportunity and space to be as present and open-hearted as I can possibly be, and the more I get to do this the more I can remain heart-centred in my life as a whole.
Coaching, which Adrian describes as “applied common sense”, helps people to live their lives, run their businesses and do their jobs more effectively with greater rewards and much better results. More importantly, it promotes and encourages personal responsibility in all things, thus bringing huge unexpected empowerment to people’s lives. When people know that they are fully in charge of their lives and fully responsible for how they are living their lives, they become empowered as they no longer need to be “victims of circumstance” and feel powerless as a result.
We are passionate about our coaching course because it provides the space and opportunity for participants to not just get a professional qualification in coaching, but to understand and experience themselves on more meaningful and compassionate levels, which can allow for significant personal transformation.
The coaching courses run twice a year, beginning in October and again in February. Please contact the ILI on 1850200591 or info@ili.ie for information and a brochure. You can also get their brochure by visiting their website www.ili.ie
