The 360 Within © - Applying the Arts to your Coaching Practice

DATE + TIME

6 Thursdays from February – April, 2022:

• February 3

• February 17

• March 3

• March 17

• March 31

• April 14

All session will take place from 8–9.30pm Eastern US 

Certified by the International Coaching Federation. 4.5 hours of Continuing Education Credit is available on completion of this course.

The discipline of coaching revels in its complexity. It resides at the confluence of many streams of enquiry—mindfulness, psychology, leadership theory, peak performance research, to name a few.

One field of human endeavor largely ignored in the teaching of coaching is that of the Arts and the Humanities. This session is designed to foster, encourage and share - coaches with coaches - how the Arts have influenced them as people and professionals - how they use the arts to renew themselves and to enrich the client experience. 

Learning and facilitation methods and goals: 

The 360 Within © will be exploratory and affirming - half formed ideas and methods will be allowed and encouraged, with feedback for possible improvements and broader application. It will build on the evidence-based and empirical work that supports coaching but, we will also emphasize what is less articulated around the Arts in coaching.

The session will include the Arts as part of the learning process, reflecting what is central to the thesis of the learning experience. Sessions will naturally involve serious dialogue, but also playful experimentation. 

Serious thinkers have looked at the connection between play and creative instincts:

Goethe wrote these words in Faust: “Formation, transformation, eternal mind’s eternal recreation.”  While contemplating these words, Jung wrote, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.  The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” From Living the Unlived Life, Ruhl and Johnson,  p. 174.

Is This Course for You?

• Are you a coach who already uses the arts in your work? Do you want more ideas and feedback on this work?

• Are you a coach who has a suspicion that you could readily move into more art-based methods given the right learning environment? 

• Are you an artist who is interested in learning how to use your skills in coaching?

This course is not for coaches who want to be convinced that the arts have an important part to play in coaching. You must have already come to the realization yourself that the arts have some part to olay in the whole coaching process. 

Course Requirements

This course is open to all who attended “The Inner 360”.

It is also open to those who did not attend and who are willing to “catch up” by watching the three part videos—a total of 3.5 hours (1 hour of discussion groups was not recorded). Additionally a 200 word summary of what you learned would be required.  

When you register you will receive a link to watch the three part Inner 360 course 

What You Will Learn

• how to advance your practice more formally by using the Arts as a part of your coaching repertoire - the Arts are a part of who you already are. 

• how to contract with, and get permission from, your clients to use the Arts for a variety of wide-ranging client situations and challenges  

• how to use the Arts for yourself as a coach to renew, re-charge and re-invent yourself as a coach and a professional

• how to “brand” yourself as a coach who is comfortable in using the Arts for client situations that fit

A Note on the Painting

You are looking at the most critiqued painting in Western Art History. You might have thought, as I did, that the Mona Lisa was the most talked about painting in the world, but over the three and half centuries of this painting’s life, more has been written about Las Meninas than any other work.

That is because it represents the first time that the painter features themself in their work in the history of Western Art. Velázquez is leaning back from the canvas, tools in hand, enquiring if you too are able for the task of standing back from the canvas of your own daily work. 

Velázquez was supposed to be painting a royal portrait of the King and Queen of the greatest empire in Europe at that time. You can just about make out their little blur in the mirror on the back wall.  This was his day job. He was head of galleries and chief portrait artist at the Court of Spain. 

 He has reached the pinnacle of his profession, and extraordinary feat for someone who was not noble born. And yet in devoting all of his artistic powers in the pursuit of this wildly provocative, even treasonous, masterpiece, he was risking his entire reputation, his good relationship with the King and Queen, and maybe even worse. 

 You, the viewer, have stumbled upon this scene, interrupting something, and you have caught the gaze of the little princess and her entourage. The painter stands back, the tools of his trade in hand, and says to you that if the gaze of what’s most precious in your kingdom is lost on you, then you are truly lost. 

 This little girl represents the power of your own artistry. The unquenchable flame of creativity that burns brightly and constantly within you, even through the darkest times in your life. If you wish to make a work of art of your life, then Velázquez shows you that that you must protect and honor that which is most precious - the child of your artistry. 

Instructor Biographies