Reflections: The Animas Blog

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What Happens When A Manager Learns to Say Less?

What changes when a manager stops being the answer? This article explores how a coaching approach, listening, stillness and restraint can create better thinking and greater ownership.

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Starting With the End in Mind: An Exploration of the Importance and Impact of Endings in Coaching

This article starts with a disclaimer: it raises way more questions than it answers. In fact, the whole piece is written with you in mind (yes, you!), wondering, ‘How is it for other coaches? Are endings easy for them? Consistent? Challenging? Unpredictable?”

How quickly can I train and become a life coach?

One of the most common questions we are asked is ‘how quickly can you train and become a life coach?’ Understandably, most people want to know that you can embark on training

Ten Benefits of Working With a Coach Mentor

Working with a mentor can be invaluable to your development as a coach. Mentoring sessions provide a reflective space to get feedback on your coaching, ask questions and identify areas of improvement,

Considering a Career in Life Coaching?

Are you considering a career in life coaching? In making your decision, think about what draws you toward the coaching profession: Do you love helping others?

Choosing the Right Coach Training for You

The best clients, the ones who fit your style of coaching, as well as your personality, who engage proactively with the work, are going to be interested in exactly who you are as a coach.

How to Become a Life Coach: Is Training Really Necessary?

If you’re wondering how to become a life coach, you may find the options for training confusing — and perhaps a bit overwhelming. It’s not surprising: if you were to talk with a dozen coaches,

Choosing the Right Life Coaching Course

A life coaching course will enable you to confidently pursue life coaching work with a variety of clients, giving you the knowledge and skills required to thrive in this rewarding industry.

How to Find a Life Coach

Finding a life coach that is right for you can be challenging. Once you’ve made a decision that you’d like to work with one, or at least explore the possibility, you then have to go out and actually find one!

Why Now Is an Important Time to Become a Coach

The world can be a challenging place to be at the best of times. But in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic we find ourselves facing unparalleled challenges,

The Three Ages of Coaching

Times change and thoughts shift. Whatever your profession or career, it is highly unlikely that it will stay in a static state, unchanged forever. The world is perpetually changing, and as it does many aspects of our lives change with it. We adapt our mindsets

Certification: Determining the Credibility of a Life Coach Training Course

Whilst it’s perfectly possible to set up as a Life Coach without any kind of certification, you may not be surprised to learn that we at Animas feel there are a number of reasons why professional coach

A Space for Reflection: The Invaluable Benefits of Coaching Supervision

If you were to ask coaches how they found their way to coaching, many of them will tell you that their decision to coach came as a result of being coached themselves. This is testament to just how beneficial and powerful creating a space for dialogic reflection can be.

Coaching Practice vs Coaching Business

What is the difference between a coaching practice and a coaching business? For many, there may not seem to be a difference. After all, in both, it’s all about coaching. Surely, it’s just semantics?

What Makes a Good Transformational Coach Training Course?

Not all Transformational Coach Training courses are equal. There are some key factors to look out for to ensure you receive high-quality training to set you up to become a successful Transformational Coach. In this article, we discuss what those qualities are and look specifically at the Animas Diploma in Transformational Coaching (DTC).

What Does a Transformational Coach Do? | Animas Coaching

Before we embark on an attempt to develop ourselves it is natural to do some research and understand why a particular method will suit you. If you’re considering seeking the services of a transformational coach, or perhaps even considering it as a career, you might be asking yourself what does a transformational coach do?

What Type Of Life Coach Could I Be And How Do I Get Started?

When you’re just starting out on your journey as a life coach it can be a confusing time. What is the right avenue to go down? What type of life coach do you want to be? How will you win coaching clients? And which life coach qualifications are worth your time and money?

Time to drop niche and think context instead?

To niche or not to niche? That is the question! And it’s a question you’ll hear a lot in the coaching world. It’s discussed endlessly in books, blogs and forums about how to create a coaching practice.

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee: Mindfulness In Coaching

Have you had a coffee today? Do you remember it? For many people, the first thing that comes to mind when they think of mindfulness is meditation, stillness and quietness. But is this accurate? And how could this be useful in coaching which is a conversation based approach to change?

Have We Been Seduced By The Myth Of Omnipotence?

I have several concerns about the myths being created within the personal development world, and I have often used the term ‘personal development fascism’ to refer to the attempt of some parts of personal development thinking to pin all responsibility on the individual. This came home most forcefully to me some years

Is Coaching Supervision Really So Super?

OK, I have to admit a vested interest here. I’m a coaching supervisor, so it’s pretty obvious what I’m going to conclude! But bear with me. As a supervisor, I find the work I do with coaches fascinating, rewarding and enjoyable.

Is This The Most Important Coaching Question You Can Ever Ask?

What do you think the most important coaching question is? Indeed, is there one? Surely there are so many that there can’t be just one. There are so many factors that come into play that there can’t be just one question: “One Question to rule them all”, as Coach Frodo might have it!

Truth vs Story

We build a sense of a journey that makes sense of our own personal history, and of the world around us. And whether it’s the behaviour of others, our own responses, the results we get in life, the obstacles we face, or something else, we often find that “the long and winding road … always leads me here”.

Why coaching still matters in a world on the brink

If you’ve kept up with any of my posts recently, you’ll notice I am fascinated by how coaching provides a space for someone to explore their meaning and purpose in today’s hypercomplex, volatile, choice-ridden world. And I am, essentially, very optimistic about the role

Is Coaching Suffering An Identity Crisis?

When I started coaching 15 years ago, it was all so simple! Coaching was about helping people move from where they were to where they wanted to be by identifying their main sticking points and planning an active journey to overcome them.

Coaching As Spring Cleaning

It often gets messy before it gets better! You might soon start noticing a common theme in my thoughts, and it’s essentially that they largely aim to debunk myths

Me, Myself And I: The Grammar Of Selfhood

In the classic 1937 song, Billie Holiday sings, “me, myself and I are all in love with you”. Quite honestly, it’s a rare thing to have such consensus of the self!

Slowing Down For Depth And Mastery

We’re trying to get there too fast. There’s a hunger to be the expert, the go-to-guy or gal, the thought leader, the brand, the personality, the star….without putting the time in.

Why It’s OK To Fantasise About Your Coaching Clients

Now there’s an interesting statement and, no doubt, one that will get every ethical nose twitching. But don’t worry. I don’t mean it as it sounds!

Why A Code Of Ethics Can’t Help With Ethical Dilemmas

As a coaching supervisor, I always have an eye on ethical dimensions in my supervisee’s work. It is rather like a goalkeeper in a football match who, even when their side is dominating play, has to be constantly ready to leap in to action when needed.

Utopia Or Dystopia: Coaching In The Age of AI, Robots and Automation

In “The Glass Cage: Who Needs Humans Anyway?“, Nicholas Carr explores the darker side of the increasing move towards mass-automation in both industry and our everyday lives.