Special Group in Coaching Psychology News

Vicky Ellam-Dyson

Hello and a warm welcome from the SGCP Committee and those involved with the work of the SGCP.

We have another busy and exciting year ahead and are well under way with working towards our aims for this year. We are committed to bringing our members even further benefits this year, in spite of the challenges of the current climate. Those involved in the work of the SGCP all give their time voluntarily, but continue to pull together during these difficult times to ensure that we can deliver what we commit to. Many many thanks to all those involved.

Connecting our members

One of our main aims this year is to develop channels for bringing together our members to create a strong community and network to enable debate and discussion of issues and ideas, swap information, practice skills, etc.

This will include an online forum for interactive discussion, which can be accessed via our website and will be launched imminently. The website in general is being given a new look and feel this year to provide a more attractive and user friendly source of information for existing and new visitors to the site.

We will also be supporting and developing guidelines for our members to create their own practice groups, where individuals can come together and discuss ideas and issues, practice coaching, learn from each other, etc. We have a working party that are currently scoping out the requirements and we expect this initiative to be launched by mid-2009.

We have other ideas in the pipeline that we are exploring too. We are pleased to have had some great input into ideas for events and networking from our Australian colleagues in the Interest Group in Coaching Psychology (IGCP).

Events

Our events team have put together another really interesting and engaging schedule of events for this year, including workshops with topics focusing on ‘Psychology of Wisdom’ with Julie Allan, ‘Working with Uncertainty’ with Ernesto Spinelli, and ‘Goal Setting’ with Bruce Grimley. The team will also be scheduling a number of tele-events this year. Details of all the events can be found on our website.

Conference

The conference team are in the throes of organising our annual conference for December 2009. This will be our 2nd European conference and will focus on Changing Perspectives, with particular themes including: Hope and Wisdom, Engagement, Transition, Performance, Health and Wellbeing, and Developing Practice. A call for papers has been issued, with a deadline of 15th June. Full details are available on the website.

Accreditation

It is now clear that we are not going to be able to offer an option for accrediting psychologists who work in this area within the existing structure of the SGCP. As the British Psychological Society moves towards accrediting qualifications, and HPC moves towards taking responsibility for certifying whether individuals are fit to practice, a two pronged development is going to be required to provide Coaching Psychologists with the full range of options that are open to other areas of applied psychological practice. In the meantime, we are looking at working with other accreditation providers for this area of psychological practice. For an update please see the SGCP website.

Relationships with other coaching psychology bodies

During the last year we had a great opportunity to develop some close links to the IGCP, with visits to the UK by Peter Zarris (National Convenor) and David Heap (New South Wales State Co-ordinator). It has been really encouraging to realise that not only can we learn from each other’s experiences, but also that both sides are extremely open and willing to do so. For example, the SGCP has had much experience with scoping out options for accreditation, which could be of great use to the IGCP in helping them make steps forward without having to reinvent the proverbial wheel. Whilst the IGCP have offered some inspiring and exciting ideas for how the SGCP can bring together members, particularly around networking. As Peter mentions in his news piece, there are also opportunities to input to each other’s events and conferences where we find ourselves on each other’s ‘turf’.

The SGCP has also developed close links with other coaching psychology professional bodies around Europe, including Ireland and Denmark. These links have proved really useful, again for the sharing of information and for strengthening the awareness of possibilities locally. We are happy to acknowledge that discussions are happening in other parts of Europe regarding the possibilities of developing local coaching psychology bodies.

Finally, on behalf of the SGCP I’d like to express many thanks to Kasia Szymanksa, who we’re sorry to say is stepping down from her role as Editor of The Coaching Psychologist. Kasia was involved in establishing and launching TCP and has done a fantastic job in its continued development. Kasia will, however, be staying with us as Book Reviews Editor, and we are happy to announce that Siobhain O’Riordan will be working with us as Acting Editor for TCP.

As always, we welcome input from our members and readers of our publications. Please do get in touch.

Best wishes.

Vicky Ellam-Dyson
Chair, SGCP
E-mail: sgcpchair@bps.org.uk
www.sgcp.org.uk

Interest Group in Coaching Psychology News

Peter Zarris

We are proud to continue our alliance with SGCP - our partners in the UK. This new bulletin offers a great opportunity for the National Committee to increase our communication with you, our members.

This new section to the ICPR allows us to share the key issues and ‘news items’ for the IGCP. We think this a wonderful initiative and sincerely thank Prof. Stephen Palmer for this opportunity.

The Symposium - past and future

As we have already communicated to you - the 3rd ICGP Symposium last year (2008) was a resounding success with nearly 200 delegates attending and a great response from all those who attended.

Next year’s conference will be in Melbourne and the head of the Melbourne Symposium is Nic Eddy - the Victorian State Co-ordinator. We are hoping to develop some innovative and creative approaches to the next Symposium.

As some of you may know the 27th International Congress of Applied Psychology will be held in Melbourne on 11-16 July, 2010. It’s expected that this event will attract many hundreds of overseas delegates, some of which will be travelling a long way.

We will be exploring the possibilities of linking our Symposium with this event. We will be calling for expressions of interest for presentations later this year. We are very keen to have a strong representation from the SGCP and other coaching groups as both presenters and delegates so start thinking now about coming down to Melbourne in 2010!

New Member Group and Changes

Canberra

Vicky de Praser has volunteered to convene an ACT chapter of the IGCP. This has been ratified by the National Committee. Vicky will be strongly supported by the New South Wales state committee and we hope they will continue to work in close alliance as we build our member base moving forward.

Nanette McComish has had to stand down as the state convenor for South Australia for personal reasons. Nannette has been one of the absolute rocks of this group - she has worked tirelessly and has so much fundamental knowledge about the group that we hope her absence is short lived. At a personal level she has been invaluable and I can’t thank her enough for her help and support.

We have a new National Treasurer - Mr. Henry McNicol who took over the role from Ken Richards. Henry now joins the National Committee and is another person who has extended his great contribution on a state committee to the national level.

Professional Development Events

I am staggered by the amount of volunteer work being done by the State Co-ordinators, symposium subcommittees, and National Executive team members. The amount of work and commitment these people put forward can only be described as inspiring.

We will continue our work in bringing you opportunities for development and the acquisition of Professional Development points but we need your support via attendance.

We also want your input and feedback on what you are seeking from IGCP and will be providing the opportunity for this via an online survey we will soon be sending out to a sample of our members. We are looking at some innovative approaches. Options including Webinars and other strategies to complement our existing events are currently being examined. The ICPR will continue to be made available to our members electronically. Again we encourage you all to take advantage of our website.

The December 2008 London Visit - David Heap’s report:

As part of our on-going commitment to developing our most important coaching psychology alliance - we had the opportunity to send a representative to the SGCP National Conference.

David Heap, our NSW State Co-ordinator and our last Symposium Chair was chosen to represent our group. This built on the development of the alliance with the SGCP via meeting I had with them in London last year and the visit by the then SGCP National Chair Dr Alison Whybrow, who was also a wonderful keynote speaker at our last IGCP symposium. David’s report to the national committee follows below.

Accreditation

This is an area we are going to be actively engaged in developing this year. We plan to liaise with the SGCP's Accreditation Working Party to see how we might build on each other’s work.

Conferences

I was very impressed with a number of the speakers (Prof. Stephen Palmer, Prof. Alex Linley, Dr Ho Law, Prof Siegfried Greif and Dr Michel Moral amongst others) at the 1st European Coaching Psychology Conference who would enhance our 2010 event. We should explore ways to increase the interchange of speakers and participants at each other's conferences. Most people I spoke to were very keen to come to Australia, given our strong reputation in the coaching world. Cost and distance are potential barriers, especially if we are all to become destitute as it would seem at the moment.

Publications and Research

Our joint management of the ICPR is currently covered under a Memorandum of Understanding, with Dr Michael Cavanagh and Prof. Stephen Palmer at the helm as joint Co-ordinating Editors. We will continue discussions this year about extending the distribution of the journal, including the possibility of providing printed copies to our IGCP members, subject to demand and costs.

CPD Events

A number of the speakers such as Dr Ho Law and Prof. Stephen Palmer will be travelling this way in 2009 and we made some informal arrangements to organise opportunities for them to speak or run workshops whilst in the country. It may worthwhile for us to set up some system so that visiting (in either direction) coaching psychologists who are interested in presenting a CPD event whilst in the host country could organise this through the IGCP/SGCP. We run many of our events in NSW this way but at a more opportunistic level. I don’t think this list exhausts the opportunities and I’d welcome suggestions for other areas of collaboration.

Other resources and institutions

There seems to be a lot more infrastructure for coaching and coaching psychology training and accreditation in the UK. This suggests a gap in the Australian market that may be an opportunity for the IGCP to fill. Some UK examples are below:

Coaching at Work: a coaching magazine published by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (AHRI/AITD). An easy read, rather than an academic journal.

Association for Coaching: An association for those who coach. Founded in 2002 in the UK with a full range of services. Seems to be a good alternative to the ICF. Impressive Honorary Officers include Cary Cooper, Marshall Goldsmith, Tony Grant and Stephen Palmer.

Routledge publishers had a big presence at the SGCP’s 1st European Coaching Psychology Conference. Wide range of relevant publications with two stand outs. You may already be aware of this but the Handbook of Coaching Psychology by Stephen Palmer and Alison Whybrow is a great ‘everything you ever wanted to know but …’ type reference. I bought one and I’d consider it an essential purchase. They also publish the Association for Coaching's journal - Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice. Also looks good. The site is: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17521882.asp.

We will be posting more information regarding David’s trip on our website over the coming months.

Our website

We will keep you posted on our website. To access this go to: www.groups.psychology.org.au/igcp/about_us/

Final word

As you can see there is much happening. Coaching Psychology is here to stay and it is one of the most rewarding interesting and untapped areas of Psychology. We encourage you to stay involved and come along to our local events and thereby support your local committees.

Peter Zarris
National Convenor, IGCP.
E-mail: Peterz@opic.com.au