QED has been involved in coaching in a myriad of ways since it began trading in 1988. Initially coaching was employed as an integral part of the delivery of various NVQs, management and trainer training programmes. Since 1998, when coaching made its’ way across the Atlantic from the USA, we have embraced it fully into all our services and programmes, with many trained coaches on our staff team and a coaching ethos throughout the organisation.

We are linked into the coaching community through the ICF (International Coaching Federation), which promotes ethical and high quality coaching and coach training worldwide and liaises with other organisations who deliver training across the spectrum of coaching including life, business and executive coaching areas.

We know from our own experience that coaching has countless uses and benefits in the development and success of individuals, teams and whole organisations. We have been particularly successful working in the small business sector. To date more than 100 individuals have been through the 12 month QED Small Business Coaching Programme for entrepreneurs with extremely positive results ranging from doubling business income, vastly increasing customer bases to reducing working hours from 80 to 40 per week.

There are however, gaps in the provision of coaching training across the UK and Europe. With so much emphasis on the American approach to coach training and the market focus on life coaching courses, we have been aware for some time that there was a need to provide both structured learning and recognised accreditation for those coaching in organisations across the public and private sectors.

We were therefore eager to take the chance to become a pilot centre for the new awards and were approved in January this year. We believe that these awards will fill the gap in provision and offer managers at all levels a comprehensive programme of learning and experience that will give them both the skills and the confidence to become effective coaches in their organisations and ultimately make a real difference to individual and organisational performance and help to tackle current employment issues such as work-life balance.

In addition to the ILM requirements for each of the coaching awards at Levels 3, 4 and 5, QED provides for every candidate to receive one-to-one coaching throughout their programme. Additionally we are now developing online learning for each award, which will be available from the Autumn, to give more flexibility to customers wishing to develop their staff as coaches.

It is true that everyone has the potential to be a coach and that coaching is an entirely ‘natural’ skill. We believe that thorough training and supervised practice are vital in the development of truly effective coaches.

Julia Miles, Managing Director, Quality Education & Development Ltd

If you would like to know more about QED’s services you can access them via www.qedcoaching.co.uk or by calling 0800 0938 419.