When I joined the ICA Balkans school, I didn’t have too many insights about what coaching is and does. The zillion of articles on this on the net and the reluctance of those being coached to talk about it, given its personal nature, makes it seem shallow and sound like a corporate benefit you get whether you like it and need it or not.
The reasons I chose to learn about coaching were just since it sounded like a nice to have appendix to my psychology school. And then there came change. And this is coaching itself, all about change. Serban Chinole knows about real change – and he is one of the few people I met in my life who has a real power to both inspire change and to teach you how to inspire change in others. He inspired the change in me and made me see things from a very different perspective.
He is intelligent, open to new, calm and mature, has loads of experience in business and in life, and more than this, enabled by Raluca, he shares it so naturally, it just sticks to you. He gives value and meaning to his profession and makes you want to follow on his foot-steps. ICA has indeed an advanced infrastructure and very good materials, they are a large community, but it all goes down to the people – Serban and Raluca are those who make the real difference.
The school model was set up ideally for the busy professional I am, since it’s a very healthy mix of group sessions and online training. In the group sessions you have the opportunity to talk, exchange ideas and there is a sense of community which develops – you see the change in the others as well as in you. The online sessions complete those parts and give you a start as a coach in the online environment a lot of us prefer right now.
I consider myself lucky to have enrolled in ICA Balkans, I learned a lot about myself and about coaching, I met a few wonderful people in the school and I am looking forward to more and more interactions as a trainee and later coach.
