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An overview of our course
Our independently evaluated coaching skills course is designed to equip sustainability, climate and environmental professionals with high-level influencing and engagement skills to accompany their technical capabilities. Taking a systems change approach, our course offers coaching skills, underpinned by theories from the disciplines of change management and behavioural science.
This course is ideal for you if your role now requires you to influence at the most senior level, to lead colleagues you do not directly manage, and if you find that a large portion of your role is about engagement and unblocking barriers to progress.
The course is delivered through six modules of live virtual training in cohorts of no more than 25 people, supported by follow up theory and community discussion through our online learning portal. Each module equips participants with 3 new skills and techniques for managing change. Live module include practice in small groups with likeminded colleagues, followed by improvement advice from our experienced facilitators, and industry-sharing.
In 3 months you will become confident in using a coaching approach with a range of stakeholders, so that you are able to successfully handle politically or emotionally charged conversations, and overcome objections to change.
the course at a glance
- Six, 2-hour modules of live virtual training
- Additional self-paced learning to watch, listen and read
- A mix of teaching, coaching demonstration and live practice
- Certificate of achievement
- Facilitators who are qualified professional coaches working in sustainability and climate
- Join a network of over 450 sustainability, environment, climate and coaching professionals
Join us this November
- Module 1 - November 5th - 12-2pm GMT
- Module 2 - November 12th - 12-2pm GMT
- Module 3 - November 19th - 12-2pm GMT
- Module 4 - November 26th - 12-2pm GMT
- Module 5 - December 3rd - 12-2pm GMT
- Module 6 - December 10th - 12-2pm GMT
Fees and payment options
- Total fee of £1050 plus VAT
- Instalment payments are available
- Discounts are available when 4 or more places are bought together
- Complimentary copy of our book with every place
Join a LIVE taster session
Learn the top 5 psychological blockers that are stalling progress on your sustainability initiatives, in this practical, 45 minute online session
This course will help you to develop leadership-level coaching skills to more effectively further your sustainability strategy. Each module equips you with techniques that solve the real problems you face:
Climate Change Coaching Essentials
- Learn core behaviour change principles
- Identify the psychological blockers to progress
- Listen differently to create a superior thinking environment
Unblock objections to change
- Indentify the core values underpinning someone's objections
- Easily create common ground and bring people on board
- Harness good ideas to improve planning and implementation
Empower stakeholders to be change agents
- Diagnose someone's reasons for disengaging
- Formulate challenging questions that reactivate the brain
- Shift someone’s doubt, build agency and kick-start action
Shift mindsets from stuck to growth
- Safely challenge limited ways of thinking
- Use a researched technique that keeps your agenda on the table
- Learn how to change organisational stories of 'not enough'
Make climate transition relevant
- Learn 3 ways to inspire different personalities
- Connect better to stakeholders' existing interests
- Craft your own compelling sustainability story
Manage complexity and overwhelm
- De-escalate overwhelm, to return leaders to decisiveness
- Identify practical actions that motivate stakeholders
- Adopt an improved, science-based method of goal-setting
Ready to find out more?
assess your readiness to take this course with our 3 minute quiz
"
A fabulous and comprehensive course which exceeded my expectations. Lots of food for thought and practical skills to take away and practice.
Philippa Statter
Green Social Prescribing Lead, Natural England
why do sustainability professionals need coaching skills?
Most sustainability leaders know that the technical challenge is only one piece of the challenge they face. Studies are now showing that to achieve our ambitious climate targets we must take into account the psychological aspect of change and be able to help organisations to navigate complexity. Increasingly, sustainability roles are about driving the agenda and engaging in change management. This requires higher level influencing and engagement skills than ever before.
It is not the case that these skills are inate, with some people simply being influential and others not. Instead, these are skills that can be learned, and in learning them you put yourself ahead. For decades, senior leaders have given themselves the edge by learning to use a coaching approach. Now you can too, with ongoing professional development the perfectly compliments your technical skills.
Give yourself the edge as a sustainability professional and make faster progress on the green transition.
A course you can trust
Rigorously tested over four years, these modules have been deployed in multiple organisations, including those below. The course design is the result of multiple focus groups with sustainability and environmental professionals, alongside two years of research that went into the writing of our book, the first book written on this subject. The course is underpinned with the key foundational coaching techniques recommended by the International Coach Federation in their core competencies. Our modules are designed to take into account diverse learning styles and be accessible to those with no prior coaching experience. Unlike other coaching programmes, our course is tailored to the context of the green transition, and all of our participants are engaged in changing organisations and systems. These are targeted coaching skills to effectively address key problems, unblock barriers to implementation and fast track progress on climate goals. Our aim is to equip you with the kind of effective change management skills that coaches have, without you needing to become a coach or even hire one. Starting with the first session, this powerful new skillset will put you ahead in your work.
Continuing professional development that gets you ahead
This course is for you if:
- You see decision-makers getting overwhelmed as they grapple with complexity, but don't know how to shift them back into decisiveness
- You can't get colleagues to see the relevance of climate change to themselves or the business
- You feel shutdown when someone pushes back on your plans, and don't know how to win them round
- You get ground down by hearing there’s ‘not enough... money... people... time’, but you don’t know how to open people's minds to new ideas
- You need colleagues to believe that change is their job too, but don't know how to make them feel capable of making a difference
- You often think that people aren’t telling you what they really think, but you don’t know the questions to ask to find out
If you experience 3 or more of these problems, then this is the sustainability course for you.
Why we built this course
Over the last ten years we have coached sustainability professionals from around the world, who have shared their heart-felt challenges with us and inspired this course. We care deeply about your success, because you are changing all of our systems for the better. We also know that it can feel lonely, exhausting and disempowering, and that not everyone has the time or resources to have a coach. We want to put our skills into your hands so that you can be more effective and less over-stretched, and so that you can even coach yourself when the going gets tough.
We started the Climate Change Coaches because we saw that the climate crisis was also a human behaviour change challenge, and because we know that coaching skills change behaviour. We are a B Corporation, with a firmly impact-first mission to accelerate the green transition by putting coaching skills into the hands of climate leaders. Our co-founders have backgrounds in L&D, sustainability and environmental organisations, and saw how much more effective change initiatives could be when simple coaching skills were woven into them (and how often they failed without them). We are motivated by the same fierce purpose about the climate crisis as you are, and in giving you our skills, we are playing our small part in the big change needed.
FAQs
What if I want to work in sustainability but haven’t yet made the jump, will this course help me get there?
It’s got to be a resounding yes. Another way of asking that is ‘how can my CV stand out when I’m new to this sector?’ Showing that you understand that influencing a big part of the challenge for sustainability teams will help them see that you are already on their page. Because our course is live, you’ll also have a great opportunity to meet lots of industry insiders, who can share their insights.
I already use coaching skills a bit at work, do I need this?
“In one study, 3,761 executives assessed their own coaching skills, and then their assessments were compared with those of people who worked with them. The results didn’t align well. Twenty-four percent of the executives significantly overestimated their abilities, rating themselves as above average while their colleagues ranked them in the bottom third of the group.” Harvard Business Review
Perhaps you’ve been coached and now use the same kind of questions with colleagues? Or maybe you took a course in workplace coaching? This is a great start! Maybe you’ve also noticed that sometimes those traditional coaching skills don’t work when you’re talking about climate transition? Normal coaching programmes teach you how to work with individuals on their individual problems, but for systems change we need a different coaching approach. We’ve got that, and we can teach you how to do it.
Our course has also been designed to be applied climate change coaching, meaning that we have created coaching tools to solve specific problems that sustainability teams tell us they face. We’ve taken the coaching approaches you may know and have applied them both to internal change and to the systemic nature of the climate crisis.
Will I get a certificate?
Yes, you will receive a PDF certificate to say that you have completed the course and how many hours of training you received.
Is the course live or self-paced?
This is primarily a live, virtual course. To build your knowledge, we have additional self-paced learning in our online learning hub. While self-paced learning can be great for accruing hard knowledge, vocational courses are better learned live, where you can practice the skills and techniques that you're learning. A study in Science found that “52% [of self-paced participants] never even look at the courseware.” So as a B Corporation, focussed on impact, we want to ensure that you really get the most from this course. We teach you in real-time so we can really help you understand, not just broadcast to you.
Will the sessions be recorded, and will I have access to watch them back?
Yes, we record all of our trainings so that we can develop as a team and participants can rewatch the sessions. You will have access to ALL of the recordings until six weeks after the final session.
Do I have to attend every session?
If you want to get the most from the course then obviously we suggest that you come to every session. But life happens, and sometimes you’ll be needed in the day job. We record every session, so on the odd day you can’t make it, you can watch the session back. To get a certificate we ask you to fill out a simple form for any missed sessions, so that we know you took the main lessons from the module.
What if I buy a place and my schedule changes, can I get a refund?
Life happens, and sometimes you have to pull out of things even though you want to do them. In those cases, if you give us 30 days’ notice of the first session, we will give you a full refund. Should you cancel your place with less than 30 days and more than 14 days notice of the first session, we will give you a 50% refund. For cancellations less than 14 days before the first session we can’t refund you. You are however welcome to gift your place to a colleague at no cost. We’re not an airline: we’ll happily let you change the name of the person travelling with us 😉
