Last weekend in Germany triggered so much gratitude!

This last weekend I was invited to deliver a workshop by ELTAS Stuttgart about Integrating the ICF Coaching Competences into Language Learning. It was an honour to do this and grateful to all those who came to this mini event and grateful to Michelle Kremser and the ELTAS members for making it such a great event!

For me, coming back to Germany stirs up so many emotions! My gratitude to Germany and all my German friends, connections, former clients and in particular one person is immense!

I remember landing in Germany in January 2000 and arriving at my university digs in Bochum in a snowstorm. I remember walking to Ruhr Universit?t Bochum known as the “concrete jungle” and battling with the blizzard wind as I crossed the bridge spanning over the main road, apparently famous for the highest student suicide rate in the whole of Germany. I was there to do my MA in Human Rights second semester. Known as the EMA in Human rights and Democratization, it was a créme de la créme programme for elite law students across Europe and I was enamoured with Bochum as the choice for my second semester and thesis because of the Professor – an amazing expert in the Law of War, Professor Horst Fischer. It was going to be a tough semester, because I was also going to be working full time at a Business Language School in Dortmund, with owner Jim Hardie.

And that is where it all started! When Jim was onboarding me, he explained that he was doing Language Coaching! If you thought that Language Coaching is a new concept from now, actually this was in the year 2000, 24 years ago! I was intrigued as I had been language teaching since the age of 17 and for me, coaching was totally new! When I asked him what the difference was, he said “well just follow the client, lose the books and find out what the client wants to do”. Well, for me that provoked a great dilemma. As a language teacher I was getting one price per session, but as a language coach I was getting double and how could I justify that! So, I started adapting to my clients. I started to learn flexibility, I started to listen to them deeply and adjust to their needs. In 2004, I started attending coach training for ICF professional coaching and from 2004 up to 2011 I was continuously attending courses and developing myself as a professional coach, as a David Rock brain-based coach, as an ICF ACC and then later in 2019 as an ICF PCC credentialed coach.

I completed my MA in August 2000 and even though Jim wanted me to stay and become a business partner with him at that point, I returned back to the UK to do a Post graduate Diploma in Legal Practice and then 2 years in a Law Firm in the UK to qualify as a UK Lawyer in 2003. As soon as I had qualified, I went back to Germany to work with Jim to develop the concept of Language Coaching for top executives, Lawyers, Board Members, Management etc.

I will never forget my first client in a very big German Multinational – she was the PA to a top HR Director and I was so nervous and frightened – Melanie was absolutely lovely and we became very close through the years. Unfortunately, Melanie died at an extremely young age in 2012. Grateful to Melanie, as she was such a great support right from the start.

Those years in Germany for me were phenomenal years of developing my work, my business and the concept of language coaching. At the same time, I started with Jim, I was also offered the position as visiting lecturer at the University of Verona in Italy as a Legal English lecturer. For seven years I was commuting between Germany and Italy, which gave me the great opportunity to learn both these languages and enjoy two totally contrasting cultures.

But there is one particular person, who I have to thank the most!

In one of the companies where I was language coaching, there was a rather skeptical, critical L&D manager, who called me in for a meeting together with my secretary to “discuss” language coaching. He was not very nice, he fact he spent two hours attacking and criticizing, bordering on offensive and personal attacks – he claimed that “language teachers are like taxis, they just get you from a to b!” I confess I was pretty shocked at his unprofessional manner and after the meeting, my secretary and I sat in my car crying!

Now I look back and I am so, so grateful for that meeting! That meeting was the propeller and catalyst to the creation of the concept “Neurolanguage Coaching”. He was in fact right in the sense that “language coaching” per se can be, in fact, very unclear, with undefined differences between ESP teaching (which I also was with a TEFL ESP, plus legal English expertise from my legal background), glorified teaching as he called it and what language coaching is perceived to be. At that point for me it was extremely important to “crystallise” a concrete concept and that is how Neurolanguage Coaching was born! I now 12 years laster, it is a defined concept, bringing structure to the whole language learning process. integrating professional coaching as well as emotional intellligence and embodying the findings from neuroscience and neuropsychology.

I remember sitting in my German garden for 5 days over the Easter period in 2012 and writing the first draft of the course and the manual. I then applied for the accreditation from the International Coach Federation and in 2013 started to deliver the course with the accreditation. The first group was in Paris under the great organization of Mary Kennedy and Claire Oldmeadow (RIP Claire).

Through those years - 2000 then 2003-2017 Germany gave me so, so much and returning last weekend was a beautiful reminder of this chapter in my life that had so much meaning and depth for the future.

And now, July 1st 2024, I am on the edge of starting a new chapter and my gut is telling me that this next chapter is going to be “himmlisch und vielleicht legend?r”.

Stay tuned!

#language coach #languageteacher #languagetrainer #coaching #coachingineducation #languagecoaching #neurolanguagecoaching #neurohearteducation

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