Coaching Chronicle by Gerard O’Donovan

Although we are now only at the beginning of February it actually seems as if Christmas was many months ago.

Our International Distributors strategy is going very well.As many of you know we have opened offices in Romania within the last couple of years and also with our partners in Poland, Turkey and Canada and we now have the opportunity to partner with two more companies Internationally this year.

So if you know of any organizations or well-placed individuals that would be interested in talking to Noble Manhattan Coaching about partnering in their country, please let us know.

 Our support group division is growing extremely well with five new support groups starting in Romania and five new in Poland within the next two months as well as that we are on target to launch at least 10 to 12 more in the UK by late summer.

Allan in Canada is doing extremely well and has got 3 regular meet up groups getting together every month in different areas south of Toronto with a total of over 60 people committed to coming each month.

 The biggest stage of my recent book ” A Coach’s Story” is now complete. I am so glad that all of the writing has now been done.:-) Now we have to get it proof read, edited and then of course published. All being well it should be done and dusted and on the bookshelves by Easter.

 We are also delighted to be able to announce that we have partnered with ” Catalyst Coaching” in the London area. It has been a real joy working with Catalyst, and over the last few months I have got to know their owner Nick Horan very well, in fact we have become good friends.

So from this month onwards we are delighted to be able to shoulder the burden of taking on all of the delivery of coach training for Catalyst allowing them to develop even stronger in their learning and development arenas. A partnership made in heaven

 And as if all of that wasn’t enough we are just about to launch a most incredible face-to-face coaching course in London.

It will be 10 days face-to-face over a one-year period and we are calling it “A Coaching MasterClass with Supervision”

It will be suitable for All Coaches, All managers from organisations and even student coaches.

To find out more about this incredible course contact the office. ( very very special deals just for the first few!!)

 We are also delighted to be able to announce that we are taking on a new general manager for our Noble Quest.

http://www.noble-quest.com/

 Our Coach Radio Division is building furiously right now under the leadership of Greg Evaristo. www.coachradiointernational.com

 Greg is fast putting together an international team of business development associates,programmers, designers and professional broadcast trainers. It looks as if we will be able to launch properly at the end of this month.

 I have also decided to take on some new Personal Coaching clients over the next few months. I will be doing this in a highly dynamic interactive online group environment.( it really won’t be for the fainthearted ) This will be for people who really want to move forward and make 2010 the year when their life really starts to take shape and they achieve the success they wish to.

If you would like to find out about being coached by me for one hour once a month then please get in touch with Stacey Melvin at staceymelvin@noble-manhattan.com

 Lots of love

Gerard

Last week my wife and I were in London for the weekend. I had to deliver two different keynote speeches one on Saturday and one on Sunday so my wife joined me,as we thought it might be a opportunity time to spend some time together (away from the children !)

On Sunday morning we went for a walk along Bayswater Road to look at the beautiful Art exhibition which has taken place there every Sunday since 1963.

For at least half a mile the railings on the north side of Hyde Park are sectioned into approximately 10 foot pictures and artists are allowed to license these pitches from the local council.

As we were walking along admiring the huge amount of different art and styles we came to a large pitch actually a triple size one and we were both struck by how beautiful the paintings were.

We all must say to each other at the same time ,” you know, this looks just like the work of David James”

Now David James is an artist that we have both admired for many years. We first came across David James over 25 years ago when I was a Royal Marine grain-based in Poole.we would sometimes go into Poole Art Gallery based on Poole Quay and admire the paintings.they used to display some of the work of David James and we liked it very much however we just could never afford to buy any even a small one of his paintings 12″ x 12″ was in the region of £400 and that was back then.

As we were having this conversation I leaned closer to look at the paintings on the railings and was astonished to see the signature of ” David James” just at that moment a voice from behind and said ” can help you” and we turned around to find the man himself !!!!!

He is very distinctive in his late 60s with a long flowing white beard.

We were so delighted we ended up talking with David for quite some time we told him how many years ago we had come across his work but could never have afforded it back then. He told us where he was living and we spoke about many things.he talked about how the galleries make a lot of money out of Artists and take by far the bulk of all the purchase price.

He gave me his e-mail address and we agreed to keep in touch.

It was quite a coincidence, because he very rarely displays his work now on Bayswater Road, being so internationally acclaimed, and having such little time.

 Gail and I then continued our walk through Hyde Park, stopping for lunch etc. About three hours later as we were heading back to our hotel I said “let’s make a quick detour and see if those paintings are still there”. We got to his pitch just as he was getting ready to pack up and go home.

 He smiled when he saw us and we spoke again for some time. As we were looking at his paintings and he was explaining to us what lay behind some of them he asked ” are there any that you like” we both admitted that there were a couple that really took our fancy. Two beautiful Winter landscape scenes in light brown.

He put them side by side and we admired them and he explained about his use of light etc. Then he said “would you like to buy them” I replied that actually I would love to buy them but I didn’t think that we could probably afford his prices. He paused, and smiled, and thought for a while and then he said ” I tell you what” I will let you have them both for £90. I couldn’t believe it !!!!!!!! I was so incredibly pleased and surprised. Obviously I said yes.

I am now the proud owner of two beautiful paintings done by an artist that I have now come to know.

If you go to this website you’ll see the two that I purchased

http://www.davidjamesart.com/content.php?page=new_work

 Isn’t life wonderful the way it brings you these great joys and surprises

We have three completely separate courses and seminars running simultaneously in London.

All at the same hotel.

 First of all there is the beginning of our new NLP Practitioner Programme being run by Aina Egeberg. This is happening on Friday and Saturday and Sunday at the Thistle Kensington Gardens Hotel on Bayswater Road in London.

 On Saturday I am running an “Introduction to Coaching” seminar for people who are considering coaching as a whole new career.

I have to say I really do love doing these days they are soul satisfying and rewarding.

Then on Sunday were doing a very special event. We are calling it a” Build your Coaching Business Day”

This is really going to be a jampacked day teaching Coaches how to raise their profile, generate business, increase their income, attract more clients, use effective networking and using cutting-edge IT online media techniques to generate a huge amount of enquiries.

I am going to be joined by George Metcalfe one of the U.K.’s greatest coaches and an absolute expert in networking, 

also by Mindy Gibbins-Klein

, one of the most successful coaches in the UK an accomplished author who is going to be doing a marvellous session on how to raise your brand.

 I’m also very excited by the fact that yesterday we took delivery from the publisher of our two new DVDs

1) The Seven Secrets of Super Achievers

2) Outrageous Marketing Techniquess to Build Your Business

 We will give these to every participant on Sunday free of charge ( a special gift for them )

 I am really looking forward to it

Gerard

Got up at 3 AM this morning in order to get a taxi to the airport and fly back to Luton.

Arrived back at the office at 12 noon. This has been my longest extended trip without a break for quite some time, (13 days) and it really is nice to be able to see everyone in the team again. ( even though I don’t suppose they really missed me)

Last night I attended the Coaching Support Group in Warsaw. I have to say it was the best run group I have yet seen. Adam, is doing a magnificent job. It was run like a military operation. In fact he had to turn people away, over 40 people wanted to come and there was only room for 35.

http://www.coaching-support.com/group.php?MemberId=596&Town=Warsaw&Country=Poland

He is demonstrating real organisational skills and great leadership.

I did a presentation on Shamanic Coaching and the power of energy when working closely with the client.

I also took the opportunity of letting everyone know that they can now have a free membership of Big Lif3e (www.biglife.ws)

And the fact that we will be launching Colour Coaching early in the New Year.that went down really well.

There are many different beliefs in the world.  Religious beliefs that is often being practiced by different people with different religions. And so, what are these beliefs that are being observed around the world?

There are many different belief based religions. The most common throughout the world are Islam, Judaism, Buddism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Jainism. We will briefly discuss what these religions believe.

Islams bases its beliefs on the following: God Angels,Scriptures, Prophets, Resurrection, and Divine Creed. While Judaism is a monotheistic religion which believes that the world was created by a single, all-knowing divinity, and that all things within that world were designed to have meaning and purpose as part of a divine order. Buddism believe that realization of the Four Noble Truths is the first step on the path to cessation of dukkha.Christianity believes in one God, while the central figure in Christianity is Jesus (or Christ). The core of Hinduism is the belief in Brahman, the underlying universal life force that encompasses and embodies existence.Jainism preaches that the fundamental purpose of life is to free oneself from the soul’s existing karma (action) by obtaining extreme asceticism in one’s life. Jainism teaches the purity of thought, ideas, soul, and body. The only way to achieve this is by the rejection of the desires of the materialistic world. These are only a few of the many practicing beliefs in the world today. There are other practices such as scientolgy. So while it is common for every living individual to have beliefs it is expected that their different beliefs will vary widely from person to person. Some people are even atheist. While is means they don’t believe in a higher power not believing in something is still a belief in and of itself.

Listening skills are a very important part of the communication process making them essential for your job and education. If you can improve your listening skills by following some of the strategies outlined below you. You will be able to see a major improvement in your day to day life. For example: if you are a student you should see improved grades due to your being able to retain more information. If you are in work don’t be surprised if you get noticed for the improvement in your performance.

So here we go, these are just a few very effective strategies you should try. Focus on content, not the delivery. Have you ever counted the number of times a teacher or boss clears his/her throat in a twenty minute period? If so, then guess what, you weren’t focusing on content. You also need to use the gap between the rate of speech and your rate of thought. You are able to think faster than the lecturer can talk. That’s one reason your mind may tend to wonder off on to other things. Avoiding emotional involvement is also a major part of listening skills. When you are too emotionally involved in listening, you will tend to hear what you want to hear not what is actually being said. Try to remain objective and open minded and maintain eye contact with the person you are listening to. Of course if you are using your listening skills for school then you will need to look at your notes to write down the key points, but eye contact keeps you focused on the job at hand and keeps you involved with the instructors content. All the above strategies will help you keep your mind occupied and focused on what is being said. You can actually begin to anticipate what the person speaking is going to say as a way to keep your mind from straying. Your mind does have the capacity to listen, think, write and ponder at the same time, but it does take practice.

As a teacher, motivational speaker or a counselor, it will be prudent to note that developing effective questioning skills is highly essential for you to be productive. In  a classroom situation, you will only be able to  test and determine the extent by which the students are  able to  grasp whatever you are teaching them if you make a point of asking effective questions which are geared towards achievement of that objective.

As a teacher, you will be able to contribute to developing high level thinking skills in your students if you are to utilize the skill of questioning effectively.

Questioning will also be very vital for emphasis. You can emphasize a point effectively and create that interest in getting it embedded in the students if you are to use the questioning skills effectively.

Nobody was born with the skills to question. The skills are basically learnt through experience and digested by people who have an interest in acquiring them

It is a necessary for every person wishing to be an effective motivational speaker to have the skills to use questions effectively. The good thing is that one can bridge the gap which is filled by experience though getting a good training on questioning.

The following are vital tips on how to use questioning skills effectively in a normal classroom situation:

Establish good rapport with the students

My experience in classroom teaching has taught me that you do not become effective in questioning without having good rapport with the students. You will need to ensure that you are able to sustain a good dialogue with your students in the first place before embarking on using the questioning tool for your benefit.

Let all answers be taken positively

You will motivate your student to answer to your question if they see that you have a way of encouraging their answers. A student should never have fear of answering or consider that they will be ridiculed when they answer.

A teacher has no option but to cultivate the questioning skills to make the teaching and learning process effective.

Dear Big Life and Business for Coaches Members,

Announcing the merger of web companies Big Life and Business for Coaches.

I am writing to confirm the merge between our two organisations is complete as well as formally introduce myself and our group of companies.

Please read the press release below for more information.

Thank you.

Gerard

Announcing the merger of web companies Big Life and Business for Coaches

Self development and coaching web based companies www.biglife.ws and www.businessforcoaches.com merge creating the largest international community dedicated to supporting coaches and clients alike.

One of the many initiatives aimed at encouraging and developing coaches to come from entrepreneur Gerard O’Donovan, CEO of Noble Manhattan, Europe’s leading coach training provider, is Business for Coaches.

The Noble Manhattan group of companies and Big Life share a philosophy of life time care for their members. It was this philosophy that was the catalyst for establishing Business for Coaches as a medium for supplying the ongoing support, education and training of coaches globally.

Business for Coaches is the most comprehensive global one-stop-shop resource centre. Therefore, when the self development web based company Big Life in the US came on the market, Gerard knew this was a perfect match.

‘Big Life offers Business for Coaches members the social platform and the ‘find a coach’ service we’ve been looking for.  Conversely, Business for Coaches offers Big Life members a greatly improved range of back office support functionality. This merger strengthens the aims and objectives in supporting coaches in achieving their aspirations’.
More specific information will follow via a series of weekly e-mails and a conference call Thursday 24/9/2009 @ 8.30pm BST (check out www.worldtimeserver.com to convert time to your area) on Tel +441305 769 411 for international callers and T: 0800 191 011 for UK callers.

Everyone is warmly invited to join Gerard and Dawn Campbell (who will be managing both sites) in the conference call to hear their plans to ensure the continued success of both these communities.

In the meantime, I would like to share with you some key contacts and points of reference in the event anyone has an immediate query.

• Dawn Campbell: E-mail dawncampbell@businessforcoaches.com T: +33 2 43 64 37 48 for membership & financial queries
• Oliver Thomas: E-mail oliverthomas@noble-manhattan.com T: +44 (0) 1305 769411 for technical queries
• Stacey Melvin: (Gerard’s PA) E-mail staceymelvin@noble-manhattan.com T: +44 (0) 1305 769411 for other queries.

I’d like to take this opportunity of wishing everyone all the very best with their ventures, in particular Brent Goodman for his support during the transition period.

I look forward to networking with you all in due course and perhaps meeting some of you soon.

Gerard O’Donovan

Get Coaching Leads

Noble Manhattan, the recognized leader in life and Executive coach training in the  United Kingdom and Europe has launched a new initiative to help qualified coaches to improve their business.

Gerard O’Donovan the C.E.O. and founder of Noble Manhattan while announcing this new initiative said that not all good coaches can become successful in developing their coaching business.  The initiative taken by Noble Manhattan is a step towards helping trained life and Executive coaches to develop their coaching business.

A key part of this successful programme is a new website, http://www.getcoachingleads.com which will enable people interested in being coached or improving their lives in any way to access 4 incredible reports which help them to understand the power of Coaching.  The reports have a combined value of over $1000.

While downloading the reports they only need to share their contact details and answer few simple questions which will help the Noble Manhattan staff to understand their coaching requirements. This information is shared with the trained coaches who can align themselves to one or more interested people and further discuss coaching requirements.   http://www.getcoachingleads.com has been designed to generate genuine enquiries for trained life coaches. A successful pilot run for the last 1 year has generated over 3700 enquiries from all over the world.

Mr. O’Donovan has also personally trained a team of 12 selected coaches over the past 2 months to help them understand the techniques used to generate these qualified leads.  They have now gone on to achieve a very high level of success using these unique cutting edge techniques.

The lead generation strategy adopted by Noble Manhattan through the new website is not a generic exercise targeting a mass audience.  The campaign has been specifically targeted towards people who are genuinely interested in personal life improvement. They can be people from any profession or industry. What is common among the group is the desire to improve their lives by taking help from professional experienced life coaches who are trained in NLP and many other coaching techniques.

The new initiative was a much publicized affair during which Mr. O’Donovan reiterated his commitment to help trained coaches develop a successful and profitable coaching business.

It is a dual strategy to inform people about the benefits of life coaching and also getting them connected to life coaches. He said that the downloadable life coaching reports are on subjects like “How Coaching Improves Lives”, “How executives use coaching to improve performance”, “The Positive impact of coaching in the corporate world” and “How coaching can be a force for good”.  These comprehensive reports have been developed by experts who have spent many years in the coaching business.

Anyone who downloads and reads these reports will understand the true benefits of life coaching. They can further have a coffee over telephone with a trained life coach or a free 30 minute Coaching session without any obligation to take it further.

This approach to generating leads will focus on a limited group of people. It will help coaches to quickly connect with the group and get their coaching business started very quickly. Mr. O’Donovan said that this program is a win-win proposition for coaches as well as people who are interested in self improvement and building a better life  but were not getting the support to start. He expressed hope that tangible benefits of this initiative will be visible within a short time with many life coaches setting up their own successful life coaching practice.

For more information please contact Noble Manhattan at info@noble-manhattan.com or on 0800 19 10 100

The fact that people lack perception and discernment. It means that they are unable to tell good from bad, right from wrong, and very  importantly truth from lies.

Which means they end up making the wrong decisions