As well as being one of our programme tutors, Helen Leathers is an accredited coach with the Association for Coaching and is one of their panel of assessors for the accreditation process.
The Transformational Coaching Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine is a new programme that we introduced at the beginning of this year, which, as the title suggests, focuses on lifestyle medicine.
What is Lifestyle Medicine?
Lifestyle Medicine is an approach to healthcare that aims to support patients to prevent, manage, and reverse many chronic health conditions, and using supported behaviour change skills and techniques to create and sustained lifestyle changes.
Which sounds a little bit like coaching to us!
The focus is really on helping patients to eat healthily, exercise regularly, sleep well, have healthy relationships, and good psychological and emotional well-being. And to minimise the use of substances and behaviours that are harmful to them.
That’s the general concept of lifestyle medicine.
What lifestyle medicine aims to initially bring about is a change in thinking, and then that leads to a change in behaviour that will result in a healthier lifestyle and improved health and well-being overall. When we talk about transformational coaching, we’re also concerned with that generation of new thinking, which leads to a different way of being, and that brings about a desired outcome, so there really is a synergy between lifestyle medicine and coaching.
We found that there were a lot of medics coming to our doctor’s transformational coaching diploma that had an interest in lifestyle medicine. Many had completed a lifestyle medicine qualification, but then they wanted to know how to coach people around those lifestyle changes.
On most lifestyle medicine qualifications, for example, in the UK, the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine (BSLM), have a diploma qualification, while they touch on coaching, there isn’t any in-depth teaching of coaching.
So for those people who have done a Lifestyle Medicine, or other health coaching qualification and are wondering, ‘How do I actually coach people around the subject of Lifestyle Medicine?’, that’s where this additional training fits in.
The doctors interested in lifestyle medicine who attended our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma told us it was a perfect fit. They asked us ‘Why are you not taking this to the world of Lifestyle Medicine?’. So we started exploring the world of lifestyle medicine and its synergy with coaching, and we went along to the BSLM conference last year. We had a great time and a great response to what we were talking about. And now we’ve completed two full cohorts of the Transformational Coaching Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine.
You can find out about our next dates for this training here.
We’ve been delighted because it was something that only came about because our students told us what a good fit our form of coaching is with Lifestyle Medicine.
How is The Transformational Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine different to the Doctors Transformational Coaching Diploma?
Firstly, the core of the programme is the same. It’s important to say that because we’ve been running our Doctors Transformational Coaching Diploma for four years now, we’ve completed 34 cohorts of that particular programme, so we know that that works. We’ve had plenty of time to hone that and tweak it so that it’s a really successful course. And we have raving fans amongst our doctors that have completed the course. So, we’ve kept a lot of it as a foundation for this new programme.
Doctors and health care professionals coming to our programme have some transferable skills that we recognise, so we’re not starting from zero in terms of teaching communication skills. We’re able to move quite quickly on to the meatier topics. But our medical professionals also come with some ways of being that aren’t helpful in the coaching room, which they have to be able to flex away from. In terms of coaching people and having coaching conversations, we think it’s important to be able to step away from giving advice, which is very, very difficult for doctors, and just hold that space where people come up with their own answers.
And we know that they can overcome this with some persistence and some structured learning and guidance around it. So that’s where we start on our Doctors Transformational Coaching programme. It takes doctors who have very little exposure to coaching through a programme and by the end of it, they’re competent and confident coaches.
We really embed those coaching skills that are so important to have in great coaching conversations.
So that’s where we start from in terms of our coaching training on both courses. And, on both courses, we have a maximum of nine students, which for us is the optimal number. Any more than that, we start to lose some of the effectiveness of the coaching training. The teaching approach that we take is blended learning, it’s a mixture of theory and the application of that theory. We want people to be putting it into practise so it’s very experiential.
So, we’re keeping all of the great elements that we’ve tried, we’ve tested, we’ve tweaked, we’ve honed, we’ve pulled together to make the course what it is now.
If we think about Lifestyle Medicine, we’re talking about change in behaviour that leads to better health, so on this programme we really focus on change before we do anything else. As with the Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma, we introduce coaches to a framework to facilitate thinking and action towards change, the person-centered and the solution-focused approaches, and many of them are familiar with those, but we embed some coaching skills around that. And then, we add in more approaches, concepts and models that are specifically about bringing about behaviour change.
We have modules on:
- personality and behaviour change,
- motivation and behaviour change,
- emotions and behaviour change,
- and we also look at the neuroscience of behaviour change.
All of these elements feed into that, bringing about change for the person that we’re working with.
Sustainable behaviour change is going to be fundamental in a lifestyle medicine or health coaching context. That change for the client or patient is going to come about by the coach applying the coaching skills that we teach alongside the educational information sharing element that is taught on the lifestyle medicine and health coaching training.
Learning With Like-Minded Individuals
We know that doctors and other health care professionals coming to the Transformational Coaching Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine are all of like-mind; they’ve all got that interest in health and lifestyle medicine, they tend to be great communicators, they’re all great advice givers and information-sharers, and they like people, which is important.
They all have that in common. But they also have some similar problems, if you like, when it comes to coaching, in that they have to learn to step back a little bit, to allow their clients, their patients, to explore their situation for themselves. And, as a coach, they have to help to draw out the answers from their client, to help them find their own solutions, and use their own inner wisdom to decide what’s going to work for them. That’s where coaching fits, because it gives ownership and autonomy back to the individual rather that someone simply being told what they have to do in order to be fit and healthy.
Why Else Is Coaching So Beneficial In The Lifestyle Medicine or Health Context?
Using coaching helps to uncover the client’s:
- desired outcomes,
- level of commitment,
- best ways of keeping on track,
- changes that they want to make
- personal way of pursuing their outcome that is going to work for them,
- best way to hold themselves to account,
- inner resources,
- personal support networks
As you can see, there are lots of elements that coaching can really help to pull out and capitalise on to sustain that behaviour change.
The beauty of the Transformational Coaching Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine is that over the six months, the learning, the practise, the feedback, all really does allow our participants to hone their skills. And we know by the end of the programme that people are just so different in their approach to coaching and are absolutely able to do what they set out to do, to have those great conversations and to information share, but to support clients and patients around that change that they want to make. We know this works, and its wonderful to see that progression that people make through the six months.
Watch Our Testimonials
Here are two doctors that have been through the programme. They are lifestyle medics, so they are talking to their patients about behaviour change and lifestyle change. They found this programme quite a revelatory experience and now they have very different conversations with the people that they’re working with.
Which Coaching Diploma Is Right For Me?
If you’ve got a particular interest in lifestyle medicine and see yourself coaching in that space, then this is definitely the course for you. Or, if you’ve done a health coaching course and covered some very basic coaching skills, and want to enhance your skills, this is a great course to continue your training and help you to embed those skills.
Click Through Now To Find Out The Next Available Course Dates
It’s going to help you to embed some of those really important coaching skills, but also give you a way of working with Lifestyle Medicine clients or patients that isn’t about advising them completely. It’s not about telling them what they should be doing, but it’s really about drawing out of them how they’re going to move forward with their lifestyle changes. And, of course, we cover lots of different psychological models. So there’s definitely more to add to your coaching repertoire.
This course is also approved by the UK and International Health Coach Association (UKIHCA) as CPD, so if you are looking for accreditation through them, our course has already been pre-approved and can be used as part of the portfolio route of applying for accreditation, and we have got some health coaches on our alumni that have done just that.
If you’ve got a broader interest in coaching and want to use it in different arenas, then maybe the Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma is the right course for you.
We’re very happy to have a conversation with you and talk you through more of the differences between the two programmes and help you decide which is the right one for you. Just get in touch.
