The Coaching Alliance

 What is the Coaching Alliance ?

The Coaching Alliance is a coordinating agency for several centers and a fellows program that specialize in several aspects of coaching in organizations: the Center for Executive Coaching, the Center for Performance Coaching, the Center for Alignment Coaching and the Advisory Fellows Program. The Coaching Alliance also serves as a bridging agency between these coaching centers and activities and the parent organization—The Professional School of Psychology. Through this bridge, the staff of The Professional School of Psychology has been able to provide primary administrative support for both the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations (IJCO) http://www.IJCO.info and the International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations (ICCO) http://www.coachingconsortium.org.

What Programs Does the Coaching Alliance Offer?

While many of the programs of the Coaching Alliance are designed for and delivered to specific client organizations, there are several programs that are available to the individual coaching practitioner (at any stage of professional development). At the present time, the Coaching Alliance offers a distinctive training and certification program called Summitry Coaching in four locations: (1) Sacramento, California, (2) Washington, D. C., (3) Chicago, Illinois and (4) Harspwell, Maine. In conjunction with its parent organization, The Professional School of Psychology, the Coaching Alliance also offers a tutorial-based doctoral program (“Organizational Transformation and Leadership”) that is uniquely oriented to the interests and educational needs of senior-level, experienced organizational coaches.

The Center for Executive Coaching

The Center for Executive Coaching (CEC) was first established as a charter organization of The Coaching Alliance and The Professional School of Psychology in 1988. Its founders, William Bergquist and Ken Merritt, wished to provide advanced level training and education for those accomplished human service professionals who work with men and women in organizations faced with the daunting task of making decisions (the “executive” function of leadership) within a postmodern context of complexity, unpredictability and turbulence. Making use of an appreciative approach to coaching and a wide range of coaching strategies (including reflective coaching, instrumented coaching and observational coaching), CEC prepares executive coaches to confront a wide variety of organizational challenges that are being faced by the 21 st Century leaders they are coaching.

Since 1988, CEC has provided training to more than 400 executive coaches from North America and Asia, and has provided a foundation for the publication of five books on executive coaching—including Executive Coaching: An Appreciative Approach (Bergquist, Merritt and Phillips, 2004 –Revised Edition), Organizational Coaching: Resource Book 2005 (Bergquist) and Ten Themes and Variations for Postmodern Leaders and Their Coaches (Bergquist and Mura, 2005). In addition, CEC has awarded executive coaching certifications to more than 100 program participants, by authority of the Department of Consumer Affairs, State of California, and has conducted in-house peer-based coach training programs within both public and private organizations located in the United States, Canada and Taiwan.