I have just experienced three transformational days at the first Asia Pacific Coaching Conference held in Singapore, and before I share my learning’s and take-aways I wanted to publicly acknowledge Foo See Luan and Nancy Hughes Verhoeven and their team of dedicated individuals for bringing together 300 coaches from across the region to talk, listen, learn and collaborate.
The theme of the conference was ‘Coaching for Sustainable Mulitcultural Communities’ and the attendees were certainly diverse; I met fellow coaches from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Australia, India, Brazil, USA, Norway and of course Singapore.
Coach Denise Wright and team facilitated a World Cafe on the conference theme. I am a fan of facilitated processes such as World Cafe and enjoyed the dialogue around, whether coaches themselves are a community that can model multi-culturalism? And what an opportunity we have to influence the leaders we coach by encouraging listening without judgment. One concept that was floated was that we are a ‘Coaching Nation’ in as much that we are united in our passion to facilitate positive change.
I witnessed coaches preparing for their credentialing with the International Coach Federation, which represents coaches to the rest of the world in terms of their ethics and competency and I saw new and experienced coaches eager to learn methodologies and approaches to better serve their clients.
Presentations that I attended included; the Neuroscience of Coaching and how the brain resists change and yet can learn new strategies very quickly when coached to do so, how to assess Cultural Intelligence and plan a coaching approach to better equip executives to work effectively and how coaching and coaches are developing based on research of the profession.
A keynote from my fellow Certified Speaking Professional, Marcia Reynolds invited the audience to consider first looking for similarities in people rather than difference. Marcia shared strategies on how to do this which I personally found particularly useful.
Omar Khan, who I have had the privilege of meeting before, gave a powerful presentation on the importance of effective communication from his own multicultural background and his early influences including, Neuro Linguistic Programming and the mind of Dr. Scott M. Peck. The proceedings were kept moving smoothly by Rob Salisbury, CSP with his excellent MC skills allowing speakers and participants alike to enjoy themselves.
Over and above the presentations were the informal conversations I had with old and new friends in the hallways. If you were in Singapore and attended the conference you will know how important such an event is for the coaching profession in this region, if you were not then be sure not to miss the next one. And if you want to get a view of what the conference was like then it was captured by professional photographer Zurina Bryant (yes, my wife) who will be posting pictures on her website.
If you attended do let me know your experiences.
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