New Coaching Program Helps Managers Continue Building Supportive Work Environments

By Meredith Woodward King

The Vermont Business Center is teaming with The Coaching Center of Vermont to offer a new Business Coaching Professional Certificate for Leaders and Managers. The program allows participants to receive a certificate and two continuing education units (CEUs).

Liz Dallas, who founded The Coaching Center four years ago in Winooski's Champlain Mill, worked with the VBC to establish the certificate program. Her colleague, Lea Belair, will teach the first seminar in April 2007 at The Coaching Center.

Participants will learn coaching theory, methodology and tools to help their work teams become more collaborative and productive. As part of the Vermont Training Program at the Vermont Department of Economic Development, manufacturing companies that sign up for the certificate program may receive a grant of 50 percent of the program fee.

"Coaching is a unique relationship where a coach partners with a client such that they can further their agenda, whatever that agenda is," Dallas said. "It's not consulting because you don't bring content to the relationship. You try to keep it about what the client brings to the relationship."

The field of personal and business coaching was started in the early 1990s by the late Thomas J. Leonard, a one-time financial planner who began helping clients not only on budgetary issues but also on personal goal-setting and decision-making. Leonard first used the Internet to train coaches and to attract clients, founding, in 1992, the online Coach University, now called Coach U, and, in 2001, CoachVille, currently the largest network and trainer of coaches worldwide.

Belair is a professional certified coach (PCC) through the International Coach Federation, the professional organization and credentialing body that Leonard founded in 1995 and which claims 10,000 members worldwide. Both Belair and Dallas are graduates of Coach U and members of the ICF. In addition, Belair is affiliated with CoachVille, from which she will draw the curriculum for the VBC seminar.

Although participants in the VBC's certificate program will not be anywhere near becoming professional coaches - that takes years, and there are three levels of certification, associate, professional and master - they will learn all 15 coaching proficiencies and skill sets, "just as a professional coach would," according to Dallas, who herself is working to become a master certified coach.

"The fact that UVM has licensed material from a coaching program is innovative," Dallas said. "It's the first time it's been done anywhere," because Belair is the only person, besides the CEO of CoachVille, to be licensed to use the material outside of the company.>

The VBC's co-directors, Janice St. Onge and Dann Van Der Vliet, embraced the fact that "if you don't integrate a coaching component into what business leaders are learning and doing, the learning can get lost," she explained, "so partnering the two (training and coaching) makes a lot of sense."

As part of a special add-on piece, business leaders participating in the VBC's coaching certificate program, as well as the Leadership and Management Certificate program, may choose to participate in three months of individualized sessions at The Coaching Center of Vermont.

"After they go through this program, they can continue and partner with the coach of their choice," said Dallas, who is one of 12 coaches at the center. The coaches come from numerous backgrounds, ranging from business and education to religion and spirituality.

Dallas primarily works with business leaders and clergy and integrates the study of Daniel Goleman's six leadership styles into her coaching. "I spend my focus and attention on the visionary and coaching leadership styles," she said. "Visionary is the most effective and coaching is the second most effective. It's a very powerful combination that moves organizations to create extraordinary results while energizing leaders versus leaving them and their teams burned out.

She draws from her interest in spirituality - she is active in the Methodist Church - and her eighteen years of experience in business management and international business, including positions at Salomon and Burton Snowboards. She also holds six patents, including one with acclaimed industrial designer Roger Ball for the award-winning Skycap snowboard helmet.

In the 1990s, however, she felt the need to do more with her life. "I felt this pull to have more congruence in my personal and professional life. A big part of me wants to give back. My faith is important to me," she said. In coaching, Dallas said, she found her "calling in life."