Well, what an incredible few days it really has been. Yesterday especially!

Yesterday started at 7:30 AM with a trip to the television studios in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania in Romania..I have to say they looked after me incredibly well and were so professional and friendly. We were on air for about 15 minutes discussing exactly what coaching is and how it benefits people. It was broadcast nationally.

Then it was a mad dash taxi drive back to our hotel to prepare for our introduction to coaching event. We had a packed room, and the event was very well received. People travelled from many parts of Romania some over 400 miles way !!

When that finished at 5:15 PM it was then a case of reset the room and prepare for the

Noble Manhattan Coaching Support Group. The group in Cluj is run by Monica Ichimescu, our senior coach and group president in the area.

Monica Ichimescu

There were well over 35 people from all around the Cluj area and the main topic was spirituality in coaching, which of course I love 

Then, a short trip to the Toastmasters club where I was given a most wonderful reception, I gave a short talk on Communication Skills and Public Speaking.  what a fantastic group of people This had been organised by Irina Irimia, our coordinator in the Transylvania area, who has done an incredible job.

Irina Irimia

Then eventually a hot cup of mint tea and bed !! After a long and eventful day.

I wonder what today will bring ??

Gerard

Another use for our Company Brochure

Well, I flew back in yesterday from Romania to a winter wonderland Snow everywhere and white forests and trees as far as the eye could see. It did look absolutely beautiful.
Unfortunately when I arrived at my car, which had been parked in the airport car park for nine days, I was in for a little bit of a shock.
The first problem was finding the car, every car was simply covered in snow, in fact it was so thick and deep it was difficult to tell where one car finished and another car began.

Eventually I located my car ( thank goodness for remote unlocking !!- it was the beep that finally helped me to find it)
Then began the real adventure.
You know that snow sometimes can be light and fluffy and dry, and you can just blow on it and it will fly away.
Well, this wasn’t one of those times !!! The snow was rock hard, Icy and freezing.
I could barely get the door of my car open and after five minutes of futile effort trying to scrape it off with my hands, Which turned to blocks of ice. I finally hit on an idea.
In my case I had some of our Noble Manhattan company brochures.
What a wonderful tool. Because they are quite firm and hard it was one of the best ice scrapers I have ever found, it cleared the snow and ice in about five minutes.

So, not only will our brochure act as a gateway and a pathway to a whole new life and career as a coach it will also come in very handy as an ice scraper

The reason I had been away was to run a residential course for our diploma students and a number of other seminars and meetings with our team in Romania.

After an initial three days in Bucharest
We then spent four days in the tiny town of Predal in the Carpathian mountains just south of Transylvania.
We had people from all over the country and some of our training team had flown in from other parts of Europe.
The scenery was spectacular.
Here are some photographs from my bedroom balcony.

The course went incredibly well and it also gave me a chance to observe some of our new Romanian training faculty in action.
I am delighted that we now have a full faculty of over 20 people in Romania.Filling such roles as

Country manager, administration people, trainers, mentors, final assessors, markers of written work, webinar leaders,

We are also now beginning to take on board a number of strategic partners throughout Romania which is proving to be very successful for everyone concerned.
In fact we have created a special website for people who are interested in becoming a strategic partner
www.noble-partners.com

It was so lovely to work with our Romanian team again and also to get to socialise with everyone.
Here is a Team Photo of those on the course.
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( the Romanians do love to socialise )
In the evening we had some wonderful music and dancing -here are just some of the team enjoying themselfs on the dancefloor-

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I’m looking forward to my next trip on 17 January 2011.

Back at home at last.

WOW what an adventure trip. I arrived back on Sunday night having spent the last 16 days travelling around Eastern Europe on my motorbike.

Went through the following countries

However it has made me realise that one trip isn’t enough I now need to plan for more

Here are our bikes parked outside our Frankfurt hotel at the end of our first long day of riding . Mine is the white Honda on the right-hand side (the mighty Honda !!)

I will upload some photographs and journey details in my next post

Warmest

Well, what an interesting and fascinating week it has been so far. I am writing this from my hotel bedroom in Bucharest in Romania. Packing right now and getting ready to go to Warsaw in Poland.

 The last week has been just so jampacked !! From the moment the plane landed on Monday afternoon it has been meeting after meeting briefing after briefing. We did a very large introduction to coaching event here in Bucharest and had some amazing people.

Then we flew to the northern city of Iasi in Moldova. This was a first for me and I had been looking forward to it quite a lot. I was not disappointed, the city is so incredibly beautiful with dozens of magnificent churches , Museum’s, palaces etc

We stayed at the Ramada hotel and did another ” Introduction to Coaching” event.

What an eye-opener !!! We had so many people arrive we didn’t have enough chairs or space and had to do some rearranging ( very quickly) the response to what we are offering is just magnificent.

So it looks as if I shall have to go back to Iasi on a regular basis.

 Then we flew straight back to Bucharest just as a large three-day Mind Body and Spirit exhibition started. We had a large exhibition stand there and have about 12 of our team helping.

I ran a workshop on Friday afternoon on ” Spiritual Coaching” the room was full.

This week we also had our first coaching support group meeting in the city of Timisioara (29 people came to that first meeting) this is run by our new coaching support leader Vali, what a great job he has done.

 I have to say huge thanks to our country head here in Romania, Valerica Cojucaru , she is doing a magnificent job.

Where do we find these incredible people ???

 Well, I have to go now to catch my plane to Warsaw.

Lots of love

Gerard

In fact one of the most hectic times in the last year. I am currently at the residential training course at Eynsham Hall near Oxford .(http://www.eynshamhall.com/)  

We have fantastic men and women who have flown in from all over the world, Deborah from Canada Lavinia from Romania, Monica from the south of France,Lukasz from Warsaw in Poland to name just a small few.

As well as our intensive coaching residential program we also have a large exhibition happening at the Olympia in London being run by Emma and her team

while at the same time Vali and her team are running a five day exhibition in Bucharest.

The head office team are also preparing for our five day exhibition in Orlando in Florida which starts the day after tomorrow so I have to fly over early tomorrow morning with Gordon and Christopher and others to oversee that.

I have to say though that I am really looking forward to it. I am bringing my family with me so that we can also have some holiday time together and possibly go to Disney World etc.

Well, today in Weymouth it is wet and windy and dreary.Not quite like the subtropical paradise we are usually familiar with.

Today and yesterday the team in head office have been working with Iain Alexander,putting together a whole new interactive online mentoring system that we can use within our company to more effectively look after our coaching students worldwide.

The students will also find it far more effective and helpful. They will be able to login to their own university to style classroom.

And record every piece of work that they do there.

 I am also getting ready for my next trip to Romania on Tuesday ( one week today) I only got back from Romania and Poland last week!

It is almost becoming like my second home.

I will be running an introduction to culture and in Bucharest and then going to the city of Iash in Moldova,to run another introduction to coaching and event there.I haven’t been there before so I’m looking forward to it.

http://www.romaniaandmoldova.com/iasi.htm

 We will also be running an introduction to event in Canada later this month which should be great fun.

This coming weekend we have a lot happening in London. Three events all over the same weekend

1) NLP practitioner programme ( the first three-day part) Friday Saturday and Sunday

2) introduction to coaching on Saturday

3) building your coaching business Day on Sunday

They are all happening at the Thistle Kensington Gardens Hotel on Bayswater Road

 Thinking of taking a day off tomorrow,if the weather is good. I might even go out on my motorbike.

 One of the things that we’re beginning to do quite a bit of now in Noble Manhattan Coaching is to appoint licensed distributors in different parts of the world.

So far we have distributors in Turkey, Poland, Romania and more recently Canada.

This is a business model that actually works incredibly well for all parties concerned

Us, the distributor and our student Coaches.

If you would like to find out more e-mail me at

gerard@noble-manhattan.com

Well I think that’s enough for now.  Gerard