A Message From Gloria
Hi there! I’m Gloria Walker, a recovering academic turned Coach Educator, who is passionate about using my experience as a teacher, facilitator, and course and curriculum developer to provide high-quality professional development and ICF accredited continuing education courses for coaches.
Here’s a little bit about me and what I do…
After leaving academia, my desire to help others drew me to coaching. Over the years I’ve completed three intensive life coach training programs leading to certifications as a Martha Beck Life Coach, Martha Beck Certified Master Coach, and ACC certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. I can’t help but be a lifelong learner...
Focusing my coaching on effective communication was a natural fit. As an academic, it was vital for me to be able to communicate effectively with others – students, colleagues, and the non-academic public – and to teach my students how to do the same. Knowing your audience, public speaking and presentations, interviews, group projects, research papers, emails, and even resumes were some of the forms of communication and interaction I could expect to see and teach on a near daily basis.
But there’s a lot more to effective communication…
After reflecting on my experiences in the corporate world and as a teacher, I realized that so much of what adversely affects us is a lot more complex than just how we interact with others.
An aspect of communication that doesn’t tend to get much attention in the academic environment (or work world in general for that matter), but that I saw was desperately needed, is how we engage and communicate with ourselves.
Most of us experience negative self-talk of some sort, and I realized that dealing with this issue was an important part of how I worked with my students to help them overcome their fears and gain confidence. Without the ability to engage effectively with ourselves, it is often difficult to engage effectively with others and make progress on our goals and in our lives, whether personal or professional.
Many of us fall into the trap of not actually saying what we think we’re saying, saying what we need to say, asking for what we really want, or being honest with ourselves. We worry about not being able to manage a difficult conversation, what the other person will say or think, or telling ourselves a story about a situation that isn’t really true, and so on…
Learning how to avoid these traps, among others, is at the core of my work as a Coach Educator. It is also why I chose to focus on two course offerings: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Nonviolent Communication (NVC), complementary approaches, each with its own distinct framework and powerful set of tools. They help us, both personally and professionally, while being a useful part of the coaching toolkit we offer our clients.
As a teacher, I was passionate about helping my students navigate their interpersonal communication issues, negative self-talk, and how these issues affected their ability to take action and reach goals. And now, in this post-academic life as a Coach Educator, I bring that same passion to teaching coaches two incredible frameworks and tools that are not just valuable as part of their coaching toolkits, but also for their personal and professional interactions and development.