Date & Time:

Thursday, August 18, 2011 

6:00 PM to 9:30 PM

Registration:  Coming soon.

Our second annual Summer "Picnic" at Bahama Breeze Restaurant, located King of Prussia (next to the IMAX theatre) is coming soon!! Don't miss this great opportunity to party and network with the greatest community of coaches on the East Coast.  There will be live music, great food (including scrumptious desserts!) and a cash bar.

This event replaces the regular monthly dinner meeting for the July-August timeframe and it is the one and only dinner meeting event of the year that is 100% socializing fun! Bring your significant other or a friend or two.

We encourage you to introduce your friends and family to your coaching friends and colleagues.There's lots of room for warm and rewarding new connections to be made on this special evening.

Look for the registration, coming soon, on our website:

Calendar of Events 

Two Weeks Only
Conference Pre-Sale Offers Big Discount!   

By Marjorie Johnson, Conference Co-Chair

Registration for: "Coaching Excellence: Foundations and Frontiers" ICF Philadelphia's one-day regional conference on coaching at Penn State Great Valley OPEN on July 7, 2011 for a two-week special Pre Sale at reduced pricing!!!

Yes, for 2 weeks the price of the conference will be greatly reduced. Don't wait to register! Our space is limited to 300 participants and we expect the conference to sell out. This pre-sale period is your opportunity to be sure you have a seat in your chosen workshop sessions.

Take a look at the list below - we have a conference packed with fantastic speakers and workshops. The day will begin with a keynote by Annie McKee Ph.D., founderof Teleos Leadership Institute and renowned author, best known for her work on Emotional Intelligence.

Our speakers include Harvard professor Helen Reiss; Linda Anderson,  National President of  Attention Deficit Association; Ed Model, President of the International Coach Federation, and Marjorie Brody, President, National Speakers Association. 

Eighteen conference sessions will address building your business, coaching tools and techniques, and advanced coaching skills.  Over lunch, an outstanding panel of experts will address the role of the coach in addressing five coaching domains: the Mental, Spiritual, Emotional, Physical and Technical aspects of coaching. CCEU credits are available.

  A list of speakers and sessions follows.

Don't miss your opportunity to save and reserve your seats in your chosen workshop sessions. The registration pre-sale is beginning July 7, 2011 at  

Cyberspace Here We Come!

By Marcy Shoemaker

Social Media Websites are one of the most efficient forms of communication available today. Social Networking is an essential way to find jobs, establish business contacts and an excellent way to inform potential attendees about our upcoming ICF PHILADELPHIA CONFERENCE on Friday November 11^th at Penn State Great Valley Conference Center.

The Conference Marketing Committee will be placing content on key sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the many other professional, fitness, health, academic and personal interest sites.  

Leveraging the power of social networking means launching a team effort. Every member of ICF has their own unique interests and marketing tools which can contribute to the social networking /marketing success of the conference.  Do you have a Facebook page and/or a Linked In profile?  Have you posted information about the conference yet? Here are a couple of suggestions that you can implement today to help increase awareness of the conference:

• Use this link to go to the LinkedIn ICF Philadelphia Conference Event page: http://events.linkedin.com/Coaching-Excellence-Foundations/pub/703807.

  Send the event info to your LinkedIn contacts. You will find a "Spread the Word" tab on the page that will let you send the event announcement to your contacts.    

   

• And/Or, copy and paste the following announcement in the "update" box on your profile page. All of your LinkedIn contacts will get the information instantly! 

Check this out --- Coaching Excellence: Foundations and Frontiers --- will be a great conference! It's ICF Philadelphia's Regional Conference on Coaching, November 11, 2011 at Penn State Great Valley. Early bird registration opens soon! Click here for: Conference Fact Sheet  

• You can also use the above announcement and link on Facebook and Twitter.  

Please send your social networking ideas and examples to Marcy Shoemaker, at marcyshoemaker@comcast.net so we can maximize creative ways to use social media by sharing ideas with our members. The popularity of social networking sites increases daily. Let's harness the power of social networking to advance the field of coaching with a sold-out conference in November. 

PACA Interview - Dean Becker

One of the first things one notices in speaking with Dean Becker is how engaged he is.  He admits that he has always been interested in and very good at one on one interactions.  That interest fed an early and unrealized ambition to be a clinical psychologist...and later supported his work in sales and sales management.  Today, that interest lies at the root of his passion for coaching.  Dean began coaching when he assumed  his role as Managing Director and Principal of Adaptiv (http://www.adaptivlearning.com/), a company dedicated to helping "people change their mindsets for greater resilience, better bottom line results, and a clear path to greater success and satisfaction in both their work and personal lives." In a match made in heaven, Dean found that his ability lined up perfectly with the Adaptiv content.  He began and continues to coach within the Adaptiv framework.

Dean loves coaching "really, really smart people...quick studies who get what we are doing at a deep level, challenge me, and challenge the process." He notes that level of education matters less than intelligence. He finds in the PACA membership a group of peers, a very comforting and powerful community in which he can "just be Dean."

Given two weeks of free professional development, Dean would catch up on his reading.  "I've got a stack of books - mostly recommendations from clients - that I'm dying to delve into."

Dean regards his proudest accomplishment as his 36 year marriage. He is also proud of having started up and sustained Adaptiv through some of the most challenging years he has ever seen.

Words to live by?  "Be yourself - that bit of wisdom speaks to the power and importance of authenticity."

Welcome New Members

We're growing! ICF Philadelphia would like to extend a warm welcome to these new members:

Coaching Services International/Centre for Coaching   

Empowered to Dream Coaching  

J Fox Enterprises, LLC     

Book Review - Effective Group Coaching  

 By Cindy Howes, Executive Career Coach & Organizational Change Consultant

Effective Group Coaching: Tried and Tested Tools and Resources for Optimum Coaching Results

February 2010.

Jennifer Britton will bring her expertise on group coaching to our Coaching Excellence: Foundations and Frontiers conference.  She has literally written the book on the subject. 

If you have considered working with groups but weren't sure whether it is the right next step, this is the book for you.  Jennifer Britton specializes in group coaching and she has also brought along a bevy of other group coaches to give advice and counsel from their experience.  You can get information about designing your program, marketing your upcoming workshop or teleclass and facilitating the actual sessions.  There are assessments to look at how prepared you are and what skills you have and need to develop. The appendix also includes a wealth of exercises to support your work with groups. 

In addition to the basics of group coaching, Jennifer includes extra sections on virtual programs conducted by telephone or webinar.  She also provides the business case for group coaching if you are proposing a group for a corporation or organization.  You don't have to begin with multiple sessions that last for months.  You can start with a one-hour teleclass or a two-hour in person workshop.  You can use the material you have already created.  Jennifer suggests the environmental mantra of reduce, reuse, and recycle is most appropriate for group work as you can adapt techniques, information and tools and use them in different venues and combinations to meet the needs of your clients or participants.

Perhaps the most intriguing section deals with adapting one-on-one coaching techniques and principles that are part of the ICF Competencies to working with groups. How you can focus on the client, dance in the moment, and be unattached to the outcome, while meeting the needs of the group demonstrates the power and promise of group work. 

You have a great chance to hear Jennifer Britton at the ICF Philadelphia Coaching Conference  on November 11. The registration pre-sale is running right now until July 21.  Purchase her book and start learning now so you can ask really good questions at the conference!   

Strategic Planning Q&A

By Yoon Cannon

Question #1:  Is it really necessary to have a written strategic plan?

Not writing down your strategic plan makes it really tough to evaluate whether or not your plan is any good.  If you have a good plan, not writing it down will only keep you from accomplishing your goals.  Without a plan, you will feel scattered, overwhelmed and unfocused.  If you are the type of coach who has an aversion to writing down your strategies; keep in mind that we do some form of strategic planning every day in our personal lives. Take going to the grocery store, for example (for a full trip, not for 1 or 2 items). How many times have you gone to the store without a written list only to get home to realize you forgot to get several key items you could use this week.

When this happens, you have to do one of two things: either you have to change your meal plan to do without those missing ingredients or you have to go back and make another trip to the store.  The consequence of both options is your time eaten up by chaotic errands or less than appetizing meals. I know when I have a written list it also tends to help me get in and out in much less time than when I go without a list. The key benefit of the written list is to help us maximize and leverage our time and keep us keenly focused during the process.  While grocery lists, Christmas gift lists, to-pack lists, vacation plans, site seeing agendas, etc. make sense to us, consider that there's a whole lot more at stake when we're talking about the growth and direction of our businesses.   Don't be afraid to write it down.  The difference this small step can make in your life may surprise you!

Question #2: How do you go from strategy to tactical? 

I believe it's much easier to go from strategy to tactical if we have a bigger box of tactics.  I compare it to other occupations. If you're an expert chef you probably don't own just 2 or 3 knives. You likely have a whole collection, so you can choose the right tool for the right job. Same concept applies to building a home, fixing your car, painting your whole house, etc. In these examples we can all appreciate the value of having the right tool for the right job.   We could have a great lead generation strategy for example, but if we only have one tactic to carry out that strategy, to me that's like the 5 star chef relying on 1 cleaver to create 200 five course meals. In the case of lead generation, the core strategy may be to focus on building your in-house list, but the tactics to get to that desired result need to be diversified. Otherwise, it's like trying to paint that whole house with one wide brush.

Suzanne Perry, our VP of Communications at communications@philadelphiacoaches.org.

Yahoo! ICF Philadelphia Discussion Group: