An opportunity for coaches to develop their activity

One of main difficulties of being a coach is not being able to approach corporations the same way as consultants and trainers do. The choice of a coach usually remains the company’s prerogative.

The DHR selects professionals from among recognized firms and relies extensively on word of mouth.

So it is obviously important for a coach to belong to a professional association and to keep up with alumni from the business or engineering school, not to mention doing social networking.

What are the other means for increasing visibility?

Aside from isolated actions that a coach can always do, like write a book, be visible on internet, use all the communication techniques with Web 2 intelligence, have a blog, a newsletter and becoming an expert in interactive means in order to generate contacts with the public, it is well worthwhile to be a keynote speaker.

This profession is very organized and structured, existing throughout the world. There are such associations as National Speakers Association (NSA) in the United States, which has also created an international movement, International Federation for Professional Speakers (IFFPS), with a total of 5000 speakers worldwide. The French chapter, Association Française des Conférenciers professionnels (AFCP) was started in March 2008. This new chapter was present in New York City in August for the international convention at the Marriott in Times Square, which gathered more than 2500 people from 12 different countries.

James Dillon spoke on November 24th at La Société Française de Coaching about the market, expectations from various publics and the position of a keynote speaker. He focused on the two vectors that structure this international market. Content dominates the X-axis while emotional impact is expressed along the Y- axis.

He talked about five examples of keynote speakers who have clearly identified their position on this chart, a university professor, an American coach, an explorer, a politician and a conductor of an orchestra. There are many points in common between coaches and keynote speakers. Both professions must acquire specific knowledge, enrich their know-how, but especially reach a high level of self-awareness since both coach and keynote speaker is his or her own instrument, so to speak.

Not all coaches are made out to be keynote speakers. For example, a speaker must know how to make his or her public interested, providing testimony, telling stories that resonate, getting the public involved in exercises, moving their public, getting them to laugh, to commit to taking action. People in the room must sense how they can mobilize their own potential.

The speaker today has become more of an « EDU-TAINER » [« education + entertainment] educating his or her public while conveying key messages with impact.

A speaker can be quite visual, using techniques such as Pecha-Kucha, the Japanese art of calibrating a message that is expressed in 20 slides, with just 20 seconds per slide.

Making the adjustment to such a demanding activity can be a real challenge for coaches.

Each coach must reflect on how to be positioned on the market and search for what he or she has that is truly unique. James Dillon is convinced that coaches are particularly well placed for dealing with several issues, such as finding sense and balance in the world as it is, building cohesion around new values, both issues receiving high priority in today’s enterprises.

AFCP is holding its first international convention in Paris on March 11th and 12th.
www.association-conferenciers.com

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