Christmas is coming........

With Christmas coming up, it’s been an incredibly busy time – not just for me but everyone I know. And yet it’s also a time of memories and rituals. I’ve just been sent an article on ‘Why we party at this time of year’.

Did you know?
Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel. Today, many people in Western-based cultures refer to this holiday as "Christmas." Yet a look into its origins of Christmas reveals its Pagan roots. Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the "Invincible Sun" in the third century as part of the Roman Winter Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this Roman solar feast day was Christianized. January 6, celebrated as Epiphany in Christendom and linked with the visit of the Magi, was originally an Egyptian date for the Winter Solstice.

Most of the customs, lore, symbols, and rituals associated with "Christmas" actually are linked to Winter Solstice celebrations of ancient Pagan cultures.

Season’s Greetings everyone!

Here’s one turkey that got away – maybe!

Hard- and software hassle!

There’s only one thing I regret about being self-employed, and that is the need to source and sort out my own hard- and software – cars, computers, phones etc. I’m upgrading and re-organising various bits of essential office equipment right now, and am undergoing the frustrations of things just not working first time, or unexpected glitches turning up.

The one supplier service I never bemoan having is access to people who fix my computer. The guys at Soluxion www.soluxion.com look after me and my hassles - with a will and a laugh which always helps to defuse the accumulated tension. Computers are central to my life now so it’s essential keep everything working in synch.

Funnily enough, one of the outstanding improvements to work life when I went freelance in 1990 was getting my own computor for the first time, and no longer being dependant on the whims of typists to get my reports finished. Thank goodness computers have got more reliable and faster since those days.

Coaching Articles

I write articles on coaching for Dinghy magazine http://www.dinghysailingmagazine.co.uk/ .
I enjoy doing it since sometimes the simple subjects are the most stretching. The issue about to come out has my article on ‘What makes a good coach?’ and it took a bit of thought to get to the real core of what I believe is quality coaching.

I used three excellent sources for background material – Alan Olive the Coach Educator at the RYA http://www.rya.org.uk/, Ben Cowley, researcher at sportscoach UK http://www.sportscoachuk.org/ and the book ‘Coaching with NLP’ by Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages, ISBN: 0007151225.

I also thought long and hard about how coaches inspire people to do better. I thought about my old mate Jim Saltonstall, who is renowned for his ability to get his sailors to sail really well when it matters, and what shone though my thinking was the sheer force of his character that he uses to such good effect at critical moments to inspire belief. When being coached by Jim you get the feeling that he has faith in you, and because you trust him, if follows that you then have trust in yourself.

I had cause to look at this article again (I wrote it a month ago now) while preparing some work for the business consultancy I belong to, Berkshire Consultancy http://www.berkshire.co.uk/ . Reading it again with my consultancy hat on, a lot of what I have written rings true for coaching in business too – a proof to me that coaching really is a universal skill.

Parents & Sport

I was steered towards a great website the other day. www.britishtennisparents.com has advice which is relevant to parents of any sport. I’m a believer in having parents included in sport – after all they spend far more time with their children than coaches do, and are consequently far more influential.

What’s impressive to me about this website is that so much good advice has been captured and made accessible to anyone at the click of a mouse. I’ve done information sessions for parents all of my professional coaching life, yet I know the knowledge only every reached a few who were there on the day.

IOC Women & Sport Awards 2007 nomination

Rather fun! I’m being nominated for the IOC Continental Award for Europe www.olympic.org/uk/organisation/missions/women/full_story_uk.asp?id=1748
by the International Sailing Federation www.sailing.org for next year in ‘recognition of the significant contribution you have made to the sport of sailing’. Two other ISAF women are being nominated – Adrienne Greenward (NZL) for Oceania and Fiona Kidd (CAN) for North Canada/America. Nucci Novi Ceppellini (ITA), one our Vice Presidents won the World Award a few years ago.

Buddies

The International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Conference www.isaf.org is a big event that comes round inexorably every year. It’s always a time of frantic last minute preparation, lots of paperwork and intense listening to English with lots of difference accents. We are a truly multi-cultural organisation yet we need one language to communicate with.

It happens to be English, which makes it easy for me in some ways, but does mean that my spoken English must be comprehensible and spoken well, and that part of my role is to ensure that those for whom English is their second or third language get both opportunity and time to construct and express their thoughts.

Two years ago we formalised this need into a Buddy system for the female Committee Members. It has worked outstandingly well. I was delighted to note that in Women’s Committee, every single woman spoke and with effect. The contribution to the quality of the debate was evident.

And on a personal level, it’s great to make contacts and friendships across the world!

International Sailing Conference

I’ve just arrived in Helsinki for the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Conference www.sailing.org I sit on two committees at the current time – I’ve given my bit back to sailing for many years through this organisation.

The Youth Development Committee agenda seems thin compared to my other committee, the Women’s Sailing Committee. However I’m happy about that since it will give us more chance to work out ways to be effective across the diversity of the world while promoting the growth of a single sport. The ‘Connect to Sailing’ linkage is very important to our sport, both in the UK via the RYA www.rya.org.uk and in the rest of the world, linking as it does youth and the sailing industry.

The Women’s Sailing committee agenda is much thicker, dealing with a number of ongoing ‘hot’ issues. Women’s representation in the decision making layers of our sport, and the first flurries of submissions leading up to the choice of boats for the Olympic Classes for London 2012.

Key to our work is developing strategies, and I am particularly interested in progressing both women’s development worldwide and the women’s area of the ISAF website. For many years I was the moderator of the Women’s Website Forum until finally defeated by software issues.

I missed last year’s Conference due to breaking my leg 2 days before flying out. Since last year was the first time the newly elected committees met, I’m catch-up mode this year. I was instrumental in putting a Buddy scheme in place last year, which worked so well we were asked to repeat it this year. I’m looking forward to meeting my Buddies from Brazil, Italy and Turkey.

Girls Weekend pics

Junior Girls’ Camp

Its been a very busy few days. A project that I have been working towards for many months finally came off this weekend. 50 girls, one age 10, one age 11 and the rest 12,13,14 and 15 came to the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy http://www.wpnsa.org.uk/ to be trained by 11 top calibre women coaches – 2 of whom are currently campaigning for the Olympics in Qing Dao 2008.

This was the first event in a 5 year commitment by the Royal Yachting Association http://www.rya.org.uk/NewsAndEvents/newsroom/news/girlsdevwend.htm to invest in its up and coming young women. With a mix of sailing (in strong winds) and workshops this weekend focussed on the importance of friendships – making them, keeping them as they change squads and classes, and understanding the difference between friends and professional crew, squad and team relationships.

The initial feedback is good. The girls thought the weekend was fun, different, they learnt about assertion vs. aggression (an important difference in sport), they made friends, they thought the coaches were amazing and they want another weekend like it. They also wanted more sailing, which was to do with the way the scheduling worked. If being inspired to want more sailing was the only downside, then I’m happy!

The parents have told us that many of the girls chatted non-stop on the way home. One parent e-mailed to say “I think the thing that sums it up is that my daughter has come home saying she is now determined to get to the top and get an Olympic medal - whether that happens or does not is immaterial - its the fact that she has come away from the weekend believing anything is possible...previously it did not occur to her that that may be possible as she didn’t think she would ever be good enough -but this weekend has inspired her.”

We’ve learnt a lot from the weekend. Time will tell if the effects from the weekend are long-lasting, and I am well aware that if you change one part of a closed system, the rest will also shift so I will watch and listen with interest over the next year before preparing for next year’s camp.

Keelboat Coaches Course 2006

I was recently a Tutor on a ‘Train the Trainer Course’ for RYA Keelboat coaches. A lot of fun was had by all!

Junior Girls’ Only Training

Later this year, 21/22 October, I am Course Director for a rather special weekend. I am running a Junior Girl’s Only training weekend for the Royal Yachting Association www.rya.org.uk. This weekend will be repeated every year for five years with the aim of creating a lasting attitude change towards performance equality. 55-60 girls age 8-15 will be in Weymouth for the weekend with all the coaches and support team being women.

While the main thrust of the weekend is becoming a better sailor, we are also running some sessions on raising awareness of on social issues that we think are holding the girls back in their performance. We can identify this because this age group sail mixed in the boys – one of the few sports to do so. We’re also decking out the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy with posters of sporting women, and holding a Sailors Forum on Saturday night to introduce the girls to some of the current top women in sailing, to introduce role models into their lives.

I’ve just been writing the workshop briefs. The subjects are ‘Leaving and Joining groups – making it easier’, ‘Friendships and Performance Teams – can you have both in one crew?’, ‘Similarities & Differences between sailing boys and girls – what are the best parts to take into racing?’ and ‘Assertiveness training’. The coaches themselves will decide how to make these issues into workshops. I am welcoming the parents to come and find out what we doing, since the issues our young women face are not isolated from society.

I am putting in various measurements through which I hope we can track changes in both attitude and performance over the 5 years – it is 22 years since I went to the Olympics and proved women are as good as men, and its about time that pioneering stops featuring in a top female sailor’s campaign.

The whole project is starting to gather steam now. I’m really looking forward to it.

Fierce Conversations

I’ve just been doing some work with someone who finds it difficult to talk to people when they’ve let her down. It transpired that she becomes very confrontational or else avoids the whole subject for as long as possible. I introduced her to ‘Fierce Conversations’ – a lovely technique that gives structure to all those tricky conversations in ways that get people listening to one another. Through this, things start moving away from the sticking point, although sometimes in unexpected directions. She’s gone off to practice.

Susan Scott developed the concepts in her book ‘Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time’. This thought, amongst her many thoughts on conversations, caught my attention:
‘The conversation is a relationship – it is the tangible expression of the relationship. If we keep adding to the list of things we can’t talk about, possibilities in the relationship become smaller.’

Hmmmm……..food for thought.

Training for Public Speaking

I am just putting together a swathe of lectures for this winter, aimed at all three sectors of my business – Business, Sailing and Life. I have a lot of talks in the past and decided to upgrade my skills with a touch of training. I chose Cordelia Ditton of www.voicebusinesstraining.co.uk to help me, and I am so pleased I did! I had a great day, and the training tackled many more areas than I had thought may be on the cards.

Now, I know how and when to relax before a speech, how my voice works and to warm up my vocal chords (by singing in the shower!) and how to present myself in those oh-so-critical first minutes of standing in front of an audience. What was also invaluable that Cordelia helped me to put the whole endeavour in a strategic context, and showed me ways of creating a cohesive talk. I also learnt the value of ‘the pause’ in punctuation to generate the full effect of the words spoken.

Above all, I had fun! If public speaking is a chore for you, award yourself a spot of voice training to gain confidence and capability.

NLP by the Sea

In order to transfer my coaching skills from the world of sport to Life Coaching, I chose to empower myself by learning about NLP. I chose a great course - practical, hands-on and ethical – with Pegasus NLP www.nlp-now.co.uk , and what I have learnt fits me like a glove.

Last weekend, one of the Pegasus ‘graduates’ hosted a conference in Bournemouth. It lived up to its aim of being exploratory and fun. I finally started to get to grips with some of the language patterns which had eluded me before (Milton for those who know) and I learnt a lot about cooking with my senses ( I now know I never smelt ingredients before unless I suspected they were off, and only tasted food in the final stages before adding salt & pepper). Neil Connolly and Ben Reeve from www.idevelop.co.uk enabled me to discover all of this. I also met Wendy Sullivan www.smallchangecompany.co.uk face to face and what a professional lady! She led me through a ‘clean language – discover your metaphorical landscape session’ and was exceptionally clever in her questioning.

Of course the other great part was meeting with old friends and new acquaintances. The atmosphere at this event was so friendly it was like meeting people having shed that first defensive skin that we human beings tend to put up to the world. A lovely weekend!

The Past and History

When I want to stretch my mind, I turn to Science Fiction. I like the odd twists and alternative realities contained therein. I find myself diverted, astounded, shocked or smiling as the vehicle of fiction enables me to suspend my disbelief in what I am reading.

Mary Gentle’s books often deal with alternative realities, time travel and the ‘what could have been’ or ‘may be yet’ of history. I’ve just read a short story called ‘The Logistics of Carthage’, a pre-quel novella to her novel ‘Ash’ and in her afterward she gives her own definition of the difference between history and the past.

She says;
‘The past happened. It’s just that we cannot recover it. History is what we can recover, and it’s a collection of fallible memories, inconvenient documents, disconcerting new facts and solemn cultural bedtime stories.

….those inconvenient things on which history is based: memoirs, archaeological artefacts, fakes, scholarship tussles and quantum mechanics.’

Quantum mechanics? My mind is boggling.

My thoughts keep coming back to this definition, especially when I read of attempts to ‘re-write history’, or the publication of new school history books in new regimes in the world, or the jailing in Austria of the Englishman who denies the Holocaust happened. What are the facts on which I base my view of the world? What about other people? What is the boundary between fact and fiction? How did the writers of the history text books used in my schooling – the last time I am aware I read a ‘history’ book - decide which facts to put in, and which to leave out?

Wouldn’t life be boring if we were all the same?

Satisfying work

In the last couple of weeks a number of my Life Coaching clients have come to the conclusion of their issues. The journeys they chose to undertake have proved to be so rewarding that I find myself smiling just at the memory of those final moments. I do enjoy the work I do. I’m lucky.

Talent Coaching in Business and Sport

I am an Associate with Berkshire Consultancy Ltd. http://www.berkshire.co.uk/ Recently we’ve been working on delivering Talent Coaching for a couple of businesses. The companies involved have identified talented individuals that they wish to develop not just in process skills but also maturity of outlook so the programme is a mix of nuturing and hard challenge. The coaching is done in real time, with real projects so that the performance of these ‘Talents’ can make a real difference to their futures.

At times the role we play moves into education – especially about business processes, techniques and people management to ensure the projects do not fail from lack of knowledge. At other times, we may adopt the role of mentor to pass on experience. However the central approach is to coach these high flyers through the issues they confront – helping them make measured decisions in the face of risk, to reflect and to grow into their responsibilities and capabilities.

I am struck with how similar this is to sports coaching at elite level. Treating top talent as individuals and helping them realise their potential so that you see them begin to fly is the development nub of elite sports coaching. It is often assumed that sport has a relevance to business – in this case there is a direct parallel. High achievers in sport and business have lots in common despite the arena for action being so different. Certainly the coach's crux is the same - when to support or when to challenge your keen and driven charge.

RYA Junior Topper Squad 2006 at Lake Garda

Beautiful Lake Garda, Italy - Topper Worlds venue

Topper Worlds Lake Garda

I’ve been in Malcesne, Lake Garda, Italy at the Topper World Championships http://www.itcaworld.org/ (have a look at the photograph under ‘Racing’ to see a picture of this magnificent sailing venue) as part of the coaching team for the RYA National Junior Squad under National Coach Dave Cockerill. It has been a pleasure to coach so many talented young people (I’m not sure of their exact ages but I guess 13-15 year olds).

The Fraglia Vela Club has new premises, and although not quite finished yet, promises to be one of the best Championship venues on the Lake. A modern building built on reclaimed land it has a grass roof so that people on the mountain retain the impression of a natural vista when looking down on the lake. The Club Officials were friendly and the Race Officer was top notch. The boats have been re-vamped in recently to make them easier for the not-so-strong to sail well and the competition of 180 sailors was of high quality, and with good depth.

The only thing missing was wind for a critical 20 minute period during the very last race, which caused controversy as the championship lead changed twice. Andy Brown from Budworth put together an excellent series and then won the last race to tie for first place with Bleddyn Mon from Red Wharf Bay in North Wales who had started the event with an incredible five straight wins. The tie-breaker system awarded the Championship to Andy. Andy and Bleddyn will meet again at the Topper nationals in Weymouth in a couple of weeks’ time http://www.gbrtopper.co.uk Both are really good sailors, and worth watching in future.

Coaching sailors in this age group is a delight. The performance issues are generally the same – there is no difference in how the sailing as a sport is conducted for adults and children, and indeed this week was open to all ages. However the mask that goes into place with experience and years to hide adult emotions is missing, so each high or low is vividly broadcast. My heart went out to those experiencing desperate disappointment – very tough stuff - yet was uplifted by the spontaneous sharing of excitement and happiness by the youngsters when things went well. My best wishes to the Class and all the sailors.

General Sailing and Specialist Campaign Coaching

I’ve been putting together my thoughts about the work that I do in sailing. As I do it so often and so naturally, it’s been a good discipline for me to stand back and see the wood for the trees.

My definition of a sailing coach is to be a generalist at the sport. A good coach will have no voids in their knowledge or ability, and will have a few great strengths. Experience (personal sailing background, range of classes trained and regattas attended at home and abroad) also helps to build the range and reliability of the service. Some years ago I was running a Coaches Seminar in Poland on behalf of the International Sailing Federation http://www.sailing.org/ and I was asked to identify the number of ‘hats’ that a coach can be called upon to wear – 36 were identified!

Why do I find it important not to have a void? Because a Coach could be called to deal with any experience at any time - in the discipline of the sport or in the life surrounding it - especially when working abroad with teams. Sometimes coaches get together and swap stories (and learn from) our weird/difficult/outlandish experiences and some of the tales make your mouth drop open and the hairs stand up on your neck. Unless it’s your story, you come away thankful that had not happened to you – yet! The one thing that Coaches seem to fall back on is common sense.

What is common sense? I guess it is some kind of amalgam of experience (either first- or second-hand), the underlying moral code (society’s and personal) upon which so many of our behaviours are based, an instinct for danger which develops as you travel and compete, and the ability to assess the options reliably at some level and let only a few rise to the surface to be decided upon. Anybody else like to add to this?

At elite level the Specialist or Consultant coach is beginning to emerge as the circuit now demands nearly full-time sailors all fighting for advantage. For myself I am enjoying taking advantage of this by offering Campaign Coaching. I am known for the holistic way I have structured my own Olympic campaigns, and for my people and team skills which have been further honed by the business and life coaching I do. I use these strengths to help competitors to step up the professionalism of their campaigns.

I know that speed, that illusive ‘win all’ holy grail in sailing, comes from two component parts – technology and the sailors themselves. Yet in the ceaseless hunt for a technical edge, ‘sailor speed’ can get left behind. Any sailor who gets broken by the demands of competition or a team that breaks down under pressure knows the cost of not attending to this aspect. Good planning, dealing with stress, building the team, coping with the unexpected, handling conflicts, learning leadership, finding and managing money and contractors, climbing the pecking order, balancing compulsion with life………the list goes on. This is my strength. This is what I do as my Speciality. This is how I make a winning contribution to a competitor’s campaign.

Voluntary work

I’ve just been helping post the mail-out of a catalogue for the Art Gallery in my village - go look at the website www.artsway.org.uk to be surprised at what can turn up in the middle of the New Forest. I do it voluntarily, and the only tangible thing I get back is a cup of tea, yet I get enormous pleasure from being involved in keeping such an endeavour up and running.

What is it about volunteering that can do that? I guess for me it fulfils that need to be generous with my time and skill (although working a franking machine doesn’t take much skill I sit on committees where my skill usage is more evident). I like having a part of my life that is not driven by the commercial need to put a value on activities through which I make my income.

I know the Royal Yachting Association has been looking at ‘volunteering’ for a few years now, given the socio-economic changes in club member’s life-styles allied to the ever-restricting legal requirements. They’ve got some great Good Practice stuff on their website www.rya.org.uk/WorkingWithUs/volunteers/ and a key part is recognition for what effort, and I guess that’s why I enjoy the odd hour I give ArtSway – I feel appreciated by being given that cup of tea and the friendly welcome.

Contacting me

If you want to contact me, send me an e-mail on cathy@cathyfoster.co.uk. Otherwise phone me on 07771 784441 or +44 7771 784441 if calling from outside the UK.

Fitness, weight loss and life

I’ve had cause to think really hard about my fitness grounding from my sports background in recent weeks. I’ve been working with a couple of people on weight loss and trimming body shape. Neither have the sports training I’ve had, so what parallels could I draw that would be of use to them?

Alongside this, I have been reflecting on my own personal reluctance to follow the exercise programmes given to me by physiotherapists over this winter to help me recover from a broken leg. The programmes have made perfect sense, I have wanted to get back to full fitness and mobility as quickly as possible, and yet………I do them for a few days and then something gets in the way, and then I realise I’ve given up.

I have so wished for someone to coach me through this - to keep me on track and motivated!

I’ve concluded that
1. There are some issues that I cannot coach myself on, and fitness is one of them. Sounds crazy when I’ve been ultra fit for lots of my life, but my metabolism has changed now I spend more time at the computer. In addition the body requires regular routines to settle into if improvement is to be continuous – and I like bucking routine!
2. My failure to do the programmes is NOT lack of will.
3. The issue is not so much fitness as fitting it in with life. Everyone always says ‘it’ll only take…..(5, 15, 30 minutes to do). But every day! That’s a lot of adjustment to make to my life.

So much of sports coaching in this arena is based on monitering and results and seems to be confrontational, ‘succeed or fail’, judgemental. Yet what I really want is someone on my side – to converse with me regularly, to help me talk out the frustrations, to help me find solutions to the myriad of things that get in the way, to help me from feeling overwhelmed by guilt.

Now I find that joining people for a while as a friend in their journey to a different body shape seems to work. I never thought I would be grateful to my broken leg for something, but as so often happens, every cloud has a silver lining.

Rapport by telephone

It never ceases to astonish me what can be done on the telephone in Life Coaching. I’ve been having conversations with several clients recently which have been full of imagery and movement, and I really feel like I am there with them, yet in fact I’m miles away with all the mysteries of transmitting voices via physics in between.

However I’m not at all sure I’m looking forward to the day of telephone calls which include visuals. Sometimes the anonymity of voice alone is a good thing. If/when vision comes, I’m going to invest in a mask that I can hide behind, since one of the good things about working from home is that you don’t have to dress up for work every day - just like Wilma Flintstone (for those who go back that far!) Dabba dabba dooooooo……!

Competitive Behaviour

A couple of nights ago some things I had been mulling over for some time all came together. A group of people who have done their NLP training with Pegasus NLP Trainings www.nlp-now.co.uk now meet in Bournemouth every month to share ideas, progress and to practice what we have learnt. This time we explored the use of the TOTE technique, a tool for eliciting the strategies that people use in their lives. We focussed this time on ‘What do you do well in your life?’ and I did ‘competition’.

I know a lot about competition. I have played sports all my life, and won two World Championships, 15 European and National Championships as well as finishing 7th at the Olympics in 1984. I’ve also lost a lot – one of the truths about sailing is that it teaches you to cope with losing as well as winning. I know that the rewards of competing aren’t always finishing first – doing the best you can is often (but not always) as good. I ‘do’ competition well – I’m an expert at it.

In sport we often start work with an athlete by identifying strengths and weaknesses, and one of the patterns I have identified is that huge strengths in some situations are often massive weaknesses in others. This holds true for me about competition. Sometimes I end up competing against people in wholly inappropriate situations.

I have now gained a real insight into the issue. I understand far more about why I and others use competitive behaviour outside the forum of competitive events, and how, if selectively applied, it can be put to good use, but also not-so-good use. Now I recognise what triggers this response so that from here on, I can create that little bit of space in both myself and others I work with to judge whether the situation requires a competitive reaction or not.

I do enjoy these insights into the why’s, wherefore’s and when’s of life!

Race-training in a positive way

I was coaching on board a racing yacht at the weekend – a Mumm 30 for those that know about these things. My client – an owner-driver in this very competitive class – had identified that he could start well is there was a gap to go into, but if there were lots of boats around, then he tended to shy away . So the aim of the time spent afloat was to focus in-depth on the boat-positioning skills needed for the start of a race. I was the on-board-the yacht coach, and my old friend Jim Saltonstall was the coach-in-a-RIB (motorboat) videoing it all from off the boat.

Everyone enjoyed having the two coaches with contrasting but complementary styles there. My client made huge strides, ably assisted by his very willing crew, who worked hard when it would have been all too easy to switch off attention. So often in sports coaching its about taking people to the extremes they fear in the safe environment of a training session in order to develop confidence and flexibility in their reactions for the more normal operations of the sport. My client discovered he had less to worry about than he thought, he developed some techniques to help him to retain control of the boat and that he could trust his crew to help him get out of trouble.

I have been working hard to discipline my coaching style to work off the positives for some time now – and I find time and time again it just works. It never fails to impress me how people seem to be able to shift long-standing less helpful behaviours by keeping the atmosphere up-beat when working on some hard-edged and tricky stuff. This is not a soft, comfortable approach – quite the contrary. I’m finding an atmosphere of respect is generated in which solid work can be done, and consequently, people make greater progress than before.

Clean Language Teleclass

Blog 8May06

I’ve just done the Clean Language tele-class with Wendy Sullivan. Fascinating experience. I really enjoyed it. We got to practice a number of clean language questions on each other, which was fun. But just as good were the experiences of being questioned and observing the way it worked for others. It gave me the chance to develop a note-taking structure that I will go on to use when recording key words and phrases in conversations during life- and executive-coaching sessions.

It became very clear that it helps to use Clean Language in a way that addresses the outcomes that the person (client) is working towards, rather than the problems. Otherwise you and the client lead each other into less productive arenas. But the wonder of it all is how powerful peoples’ metaphors are – what a constant surprise to work with! That really appeals to me.

There’s a conference with David Groves in the UK later in the year – I wasn’t going to go but I may now.

News about past clients

It’s just great hearing good things about people I have been very involved with in the past. Vered Bouskila from Israel, who I coached throughout 2005, has just finished 1st as part of a new team at one of the Grade 1 international sailing regattas – Hyeres, South of France. The results are at http://sof.ffvoile.net/results/470w.htm

I am so delighted for her. She has had a tough time recently and it is just great to see her talent having a chance to develop in a new partnership.

At the same regatta, Annie Lush who sailed with me in our Olympic Campaign 2002-3 in the Yngling class, http://www.cathyfoster.co.uk, was sailing with Nancy Haberland and they finished 4th. Again great news for both. Annie is now an incredibly accomplished international crew, and a World Champion in her own right, while I coached Nancy as part of Carol Cronin's Yngling crew during 2004 after our own campaign finished early. Well done them.

Beaulieu Boat Jumble

I'm just recovering from a very busy weekend. I've been to the sailing equivalent of a car boot sale in an attempt to reduce 30 years worth of chandlery items. A very interesting experience. It is the first time I've been to Beaulieu Boat Jumble, and its huge! However there were lots of 'shamateur' stalls in amongst the boating enthusiasts looking to re-cycle their old sailing stuff.

I didn't sell much, and some of the more juicy items got stolen so I'm feeling a little bruised by the experience. The preparation and general organisation I put into it went very well, but I'm not an experienced retail salesperson and it showed. The whole thing has reminded me of a very strong lesson I've learnt in the course of my life - focus on what you are good at. In this case being super-organised was no substitute for a poor selling effort.

Hey ho - plans to go to a car boot sale for the next clear out of old worldly goods have been banned from my mind for ever, and eBay, here I come!

Hi. This is me - Cathy Foster, otherwise known as cathy-coach.

My biography describes what I do.

Clean Language

A fascinating week for me. I am exploring how NLP can be integrated into my sailing life and work as well as my Life Coaching. I went to an NLP conference last Saturday that while a butterfly experience was none the less rich for that. One of the ‘how to market yourself’ presentations encouraged us to try blogging as a way of establishing an internet presence, so here I am.

I picked up a number of NLP books on subjects that I find particularly intriguing – coaching, NLP and sports coaching and ‘Clean Language’ – and am now steadily working through them.

Clean Language is appealing to me since the many years of coaching sailing at elite level has taught me the power of asking the appropriate question at the right time and in the right way. I want to expand the skills I have already acquired to further effect.

Clean Language is a technique developed by David Groves in which he uses metaphor to ‘heal the child within’. The book describing what he does is ‘Metaphors in the Mind – James Lawley and Penny Thompkins. I may never use the technique itself – it was developed for psychotherapy use – but then again, I may. Wendy Sullivan www.smallchangecompany.com is the main proponent in the UK, and her website describes other uses of clean language in areas I’m interested in – Life and Executive Coaching - so I’ve signed up to one her free teleclasses to try it out. I’ll report back later!

Hi. This is my first ever blog. Very exciting.

I will write about the coaching I do. I've been a sail-racing coach for 16 years, and over the last 12 months have decided to take my skills sideways into Life and Executive coaching. I'm having a great time discovering whole new worlds out there!