02: Presence, Self-Care and Reflective Practice

In this episode, Dr. Natalie Lancer and her guests, Anthony Eldridge-Rogers, Maria Iliffe-Wood, and Dr. Iain McCormick, explore the significance of self-care, presence, and reflective practice in coaching psychology. They discuss the role of self-care in managing the challenges coaches face. The conversation highlights the importance of meaning-centred coaching and the impact of coaching presence on creating a nurturing environment for clients as well as coaches. Reflective practice is also examined as a tool for professional development. We explore:

• What is self-care, presence, and reflective practice and how are they linked?
• What’s the relationship between reflective practice and supervision?
• What is the significance of working with meaning for both clients and coaches?
• What is whole-person coaching?
• How can self-care help coaches build strong, co-created relationships with clients?
• How can we ensure that we are role-modelling self-care to our clients?
• How can we further develop our ability to be present to our clients?
• How can we counteract negative self-talk and ‘heroic thinking’ in order to be a better coach?
• What does the research say on the effectiveness of reflective practice?

In this conversation we ask what self-care, presence, and reflective practice mean practically for both the coach and the coachee, and the impact that they have on coaching outcomes. Furthermore, we can consider self-care, presence, and reflective practice as tools for professional development, self-improvement for our own well-being and as part of a duty of care to our clients. Our guests today are:

Dr Iain McCormick is the founder of the Executive Coaching Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. He initially trained in clinical psychology, working in the forensic sector, and subsequently completed his PhD studying work stress during a long overland traverse of Antarctica. Iain then moved into organisational consulting, becoming a Partner in Deloitte, working in Canada and New Zealand. He subsequently moved to Hong Kong where he helped build a consulting and coaching firm that was sold to a US multinational.

 He returned to New Zealand in 2000 and started the Executive Coaching Centre. He currently coaches a range of board directors, chief executives and senior managers. Iain has been running intensive reflective practice sessions for coaches since 2020.  In 2023 he published the book ‘Reflective Practice for Coaches: A Guidebook for Advanced Professional Development’. 

Maria Iliffe-Wood has been a leader, coach and mentor for over 30 years. She is also a Coach Supervisor. She is MD of Meridian Iliffe Ltd, a small leadership development consultancy. She helps business leaders with leadership, team and coach development. She has a broad experience working with a range of business sectors including housing, retail, financial, construction and charity sectors, both in the public and private sector.