Foundation Diploma in DEVELOPMENTAL COACHING
A research-based coach training program with vertical development at the core. With 92 hours of learning, this is the first developmental coaching program to receive Level 1 Accreditation from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). It offers a direct pathway towads the ICF ACC credential for coaches.
ADMISSIONS OPEN FOR THE July-Dec 2024 COHORT
Maximum 12 participants in a group. Scroll down for the full program brochure and, if this feels like the right learning for you, reach out to schedule an admission conversation. Live session times for this program are suitable for participants in the Americas/APAC regions.
PROGRAM BROCHURE
The Context and the Need for a New Approach in Coaching
Our world is in the throes of profound disruption. We are seeing technologies such as AI advance exponentially and transform the way we work and live. We are facing a global metacrisis of interweaving threads - from economic disruption, to geopolitical unrest, changing climate or profound shifts in ways of working - to name just a few.
As we navigate challenges no generation has faced before, knowledge alone is no longer enough and wisdom is becoming paramount. Wise, mature individuals can better navigate complexity and change and are better equipped to thrive in the unknown.
But how do we develop wisdom and maturity?
Coaching, with its focus on open inquiry (versus knowledge transfer), is a powerful tool for personal and collective growth, as well as fostering performance. The business case for coaching remains strong, with the industry continuing to grow, more coaches upholding professional standards by getting credentialed and more leaders than ever seeking to boost performance by bringing professional coaching tools into their day-to-day work with teams. Used skillfully, coaching can become a vehicle for wisdom and maturity building.
What makes coaching so impactful?
At its core, coaching is the art of using dialogue to unlock resources for growth and change. The coach creates a safe space for the coachee to inquire, explore and stretch their thinking, so they can find the best ways to achieve their goals and maximize their potential. Coaching supports increasing self-awareness and encourages reflection and positive action for both individuals and teams. It trains individuals’ capacities for creatively seeking solutions within complex environments and better dealing with change and ambiguity.
When it becomes part of an organisation’s culture, coaching can be transformational in driving organisational learning and innovation and ultimately helping build an adaptive culture.
Why (Vertically) Developmental Coaching?
Traditionally, coaches have focused on helping their clients access internal resources, remove obstacles and find pathways to achieve their goals. In this process, many coachees discover they are also changing more profoundly. Many use the word 'transformation' to describe the identity-shifting quality of the growth they are experiencing. We use the term 'vertical development' to describe the same phenomenon, which can be a by-product of any sound, well-held coaching process. However, vertical development is a much too important outcome to be left to chance or allowed to emerge accidentally.
Developmental coaching ensures that transformative growth becomes central to the coaching process, alongside goal attainment.
Developmental coaches are trained to integrate theories of adult (vertical) development into the coaching process. As they coach clients towards the goals that matter to them, they also identify coachees' 'edge' of development and support their vertical growth into more complex ways of thinking and being in the world.
By adding a developmental lens, coaches carefully calibrate and purposefully balance challenge and support through the coaching process. They accompany coachees in navigating developmental discomfort towards their next breakthrough in psychological maturity, while also keeping an eye on the concrete goals of each session and overall coaching process.
HORIZONTAL development is about WHAT we know. VERTICAL development is about HOW we know.
Developmental coaching helps people evolve HOW they think, not just WHAT they think.
WHAT makes this program unique?
The Diploma in Developmental Coaching is a new program, unique in its integration of original, peer-reviewed research in the field of adult development and proprietary developmental coaching tools, all within the rigorous framework of ICF coaching competencies.
The course builds on our research expertise in Vertical Development, 15 years of executive coaching and team facilitation practice, and extensive experience in training and mentoring hundreds of leaders and professional coaches on their path to ICF credentialing.
This is the first coach training program with vertical development at the core to be accredited as ICF LEVEL 1. It offers a direct path to the ICF ACC credential.
WHO is the Foundation Diploma in Developmental Coaching For?
This program will give you the knowledge and practical tools you need to become a credentialed developmental coach.
It has been designed for:
Purpose-driven leaders seeking to bring developmental coaching into their day-to-day work, thus more effectively supporting their teams and organization.
New or practicing coaches who are seeking their first ICF credential
HR, L&D, or other business professionals looking to become internal coaches in their organizations.
Group facilitators and consultants who are looking to broaden their impact by training as developmental coaches.
Prerequisites for joining the program
Given the extensive individual mentoring and feedback through the program, there are a limited number of places on each cohort of the Diploma (12 maximum).
All interested in joining are invited to an initial admission conversation with the facilitator Dr. Alis Anagnostakis (PCC) to explore their motivation for participating, clarify expectations, and ensure each future participant is supported to fully contribute to and gain value from the experience.
There are no previous coach training prerequisites for joining this program - you will learn all the fundamentals, as well as more advanced approaches, as you progress through this journey. However, given the depth and complexity of the program, we have found that participants with previous leadership experience and professional maturity benefit most from this journey.
We also welcome existing coaches without formal accreditation. You will broaden your existing coaching competencies while mastering the novel lens of vertical development and pave the path for your ICF ACC accreditation.
Credentialled coaches who are solely interested in integrating vertical development into their work and/or seeking to renew their existing ICF credential should consider pursuing our online, self-paced certification program, "Vertical Development Practices for Coaches" (offering 40 ICF CCEs). All the content of the online program is also covered in the Diploma. So if you have already enrolled in the online program and are considering deepening your learning by attending the Diploma, the cost of the online program will be discounted from the cost of the Diploma.
Participant Testimonials
"Coaching was the main pillar of the cultural transformation change we wanted to drive in IBM. We invested in a core team of coaches who went on a 6 month long coach-training journey. They lived their own transformational experience and continued to give back to our organization. After 3 years, the seeds that we grew with Alis' help and guidance flourished into a beautiful community which has measurable results every year."
ALEXANDRA BUZOIANU, HR Leader, IBM Consulting CICs CEE
WHAT will you learn?
Program Overview
92 hours - ICF Level 1 accreditation - supporting ACC credentialing path for coaches.
The program offers a rigorous intellectual journey, a safe space for practising and experimenting and meaningful challenges, mentoring and feedback, and stretching participants' coaching skills. Embodying the learning is core to the design of this program, so expect this to be an intense personal growth journey, just as it will be an ambitious coaching learning process.
Program Curriculum
“Alis' work has brought clarity to how we support leaders in developing their inner capacities to exercise more wisdom. Her work is generating rare and valuable evidence-based approaches to constructing leadership education programs with measurable impacts in accelerating psychological maturity. We need more peer-reviewed contributions such as hers in this field - without which practitioners would be left to continue guesswork.”
MIKE VIEROW, GM Transformation at Virgin Australia; formerly Dean of McKinsey Academy Australia & NZ
Meet the facilitator
Alis Anagnostakis (Ph.D.) is the founder of the Vertical Development Institute and an Adjunct Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She is a leadership development facilitator, executive coach, and researcher with over 15 years of experience working with senior leaders across multiple industries, sectors, and countries. She has dedicated her professional pursuits to supporting the development of leaders towards later stages of psychological complexity. Such mature leaders have been shown to thrive in the midst of disruption, operate with more wisdom, build adaptive cultures, and balance the inherent polarities of profit, people, and sustainability within their businesses and beyond.
Alis is certified by the International Coaching Federation (PCC). She has been training and mentoring professional coaches since 2015, with hundreds of alumni graduating from her ICF-accredited programs. Many of these coaches were also leaders, who went on to create communities of practice inside their own organizations and beyond, bridging across industries and sectors and generating ripple effects of positive change.
Alis has a Master's degree in Positive Leadership and Strategy from IE University Spain and a Ph.D. in vertical development and leadership from UniSC Australia, where she studied the lived experience of transformation as senior leaders go through long-form developmental programs. As a researcher-practitioner, her main interest is in translating the insights from adult development research into practical, effective coaching and team development approaches that can foster maturity at scale. She also focuses on studying leaders at later (post-conventional) stages of development, given the global need for mental complexity at the highest levels of leadership and the dearth of existing research focusing on these mature (and still relatively rare) stages of adult development.
Alis’ highest hope is to continue to walk the fine line between rigorous research and the practice of coaching and leadership development. She aspires to creatively cross-pollinate between these spheres of knowledge and help generate new insights that can inform ever more effective learning interventions for the leaders and workplaces of tomorrow
Considering joining the Jul-Nov 2024 cohort?
Here are the next steps:
STEP ONE:
PRE-PROGRAM: Participant interview
We meet with each prospective participant to discuss their motivation for joining the program and personal goals.
A maximum of 12 places are available on every edition of the Diploma.
Please get in touch to ask questions or schedule an admissions conversation.
STEP TWO:
LIVE PROGRAM
Jul-Nov 2024
Final dates to be determined in collaboration with the group of 12 once admission is complete (US, South America & APAC - friendy time zones)
The Diploma program runs for five months: with two learning modules, and one self-led peer-coaching session per month.
Participants have unlimited access to a comprehensive online platform with pre-work content for each module. They will be offered the Shifting Horizons individual assessment and will be invited to implement an individual reflective practice throughout the program.
STEP THREE:
POST-PROGRAM
Participants continue practicing towards the 100 hours required for ICF ACC accreditation.
Diploma graduates become members of VDI and its growing community of coaches and leaders. They will join the community platform to connect with other members and receive a 20% lifetime discount on all VDI resources and programs.
"Alis' research studying a flagship executive leadership program in Australia & NZ is quite simply the most sophisticated and comprehensive study in the world at present — in theoretical, methodological, and practical terms — about how to support vertical leadership development and organisational transformation."
WILLIAM TORBERT, Professor Emeritus at Boston College
Course Fee
Program Fee (includes full access to our "Vertical Development (VD) Practices for Coaches" online content. Existing participants in "VD Practices for Coaches" will have their fee deducted from this program)
Early bird until 30th of May: USD 4400
Full price (from 1st of June): 4900$
SCHOLARSHIPS
At VDI we are committed to democratising personal and professional growth by making learning accessible to participants in the government and NFP sectors - the people who often give so much (and so selflessly) to communities and are often locked out of learning because of prohibitive costs.
We offer scholarships on an ‘energy-exchange’ basis. This is how ‘energy exchange’ works: you tell us, in good faith, what you can contribute to the cost of the program. We suggest you choose a contribution significant enough to help you value the learning (and motivate you to put in the work) and affordable enough to not be a burden on your finances. We commit to covering the rest.
We offer one scholarship for every Diploma in Developmental Coaching Group and an unlimited number of scholarships for all our online, self-led programs and webinars. Contact us to learn more.