Welcome to the

PMT Coaching Internship

supported by SACAP

Coaching at PMT

This is the purpose statement PMT has put forward for the Coaching opportunities that will be offered in the Coaching internship Will is doing with PMT.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a partnership between equals, focusing on existing strengths, potential and what each person uniquely brings to the table, in order to bring about the realisation of a specific outcome.

In this relationship, the coach assumes that both are experts – the client being the expert in their life and the coach holding the space and process for the transformation.

The International Coaches Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.

WillCoach is a certified ICF Coach.

Get your copy of the PMT Coaching Internship Brochure here:

Will is completing a post-graduate diploma in coaching at the South African College of Applied Psychology (SACAP) and is in his final year of these studies. This year involves a paid Coaching internship with an organization to put into practice, as a certified coach, everything he learned in the program. Prior to being allowed to embark on the internship, Will had to fulfill all the learning and practical requirements, including 125 hours of training, 10 hours of coaching mentorship with a Master coach, and 10 hours of group coaching. The program also required him to certify by passing a coaching performance exam with both COMENSA and the ICF on ACC (associate) or PCC (professional) level.

In 2021, Will completed the creation of a coaching model (see GERMINATE™ Coaching Model) that was reviewed and scrutinized by Professional Coaches. He also successfully passed on a PCC equivalent level, and proceeded to certify with the ICF as ACC certified coach, mainly, because the practical hour requirements of 500 hours to certify at PCC has not yet been met, but the 125 hours for ACC has. SACAP oversees the internship with Will and PMT in a three-way partnership. Will undergoes Coaching Supervision to ensure that the highest standards and ethics in coaching are practiced and upheld. The internship emulates, to the benefit of PMT and Will, what internal coaching inside an organization would entail.

Internship details:

• The internship runs for approximately 6 months.
• A minimum of 75 hours of active coaching is required
• A minimum of 10 coaching supervision hours are required between Will and his supervisor
• A minimum of 150 hours of research, active preparation, reflection and journalling is required from Will
• A minimum of 8 clients must be coached throughout the program
  • A client includes individual, group or team coaching
  • Groups and Teams as a collective count as one client
• A client journey must be selected for research in the required research paper for the diploma

What’s in it for me?

Coaching is a powerful personal and team development tool. In this context, we are all working to serve the growth of PMT towards that global stage. The aim here is to support your and your team’s development journey towards excellence of being and doing so that PMT can accelerate to the benefit of us all.

You will have opportunities to undertake individual coaching journeys, which may include tools such as 5 LENS Enneagram. You might also be invited to join in team coaching or group coaching. Whatever the journey you take, there will be a conversation with your leaders on how this relates and translates to the bigger picture of developing you, the team and PMT.

Group Coaching takes two approaches. In both cases the individuals who join are on their own journey of personal development and are open to working with others in the group as well as the coach in order to reach their outcomes.
Group coaching is usually centered around a theme or topic which is of interest to the group. Member of the group commit to completing the journey together. Group coaching accelerates change in both individuals and larger collectives like organisations or communities.

Individual coaching manifests as a one-on-one conversations that can be single session or a journey of several sessions. You set the direction regarding the outcomes of the journey and the sessions and you hold the content while the coach holds the process and tools.
Individual coaching can be supported with various tools in a consulting capacity as well as various coaching frameworks and tools to support your best thinking.

Team coaching focuses on the way the team works together. It focuses on the relationships between members of the team, and the team with larger contexts they serve. The focus is not in the individuals in the team, but rather takes a systemic coaching approach to look at both processes and relationship entities to support the developmental agenda of the team and organisation. This can also be applied in communities and other collectives like families, boards etc.

Part of the offering WillCoach will bring to PMT for the duration of the Coaching Internship, is an invitation, from time-to-time, to join in a sound-based mindfulness session. Using various Gongs, Rin Gongs from Japanese temples, tubular bells and singing bowls from Tibet and Nepal, Will facilitates these sessions. The use of sound in mindfulness supports neuro-plasticity and emotional resilience, stimulating creativity, innovation and wellbeing. Look out for invitations to these sessions!

Confidentiality and Coaching

As a coach, I am bound by the ethics and standards I subscribe to as outlined by the ICF and as defined in my practice. Coaching always takes the stance that what is discussed in the session is confidential with the exception of the following:

• Discussions about breaking the law, the intention of breaking the law, or any past or present illegal activities
• The reasonable awareness of intent to harm yourself, or others (including the organization)
• Any form of abuse or trauma visited on you or perpetrated by you on any others

Coaching is not a privileged relationship like the relationship with your doctor, therapist or psychiatrist is. That means that I cannot claim to have client-patient confidentiality to protect our conversations and should I be required by the court to provide testimony or documents about our conversations, I am obligated to do so.

Individual Coaching in the Organization

When conducting coaching inside of an organization, confidentiality is important to bring clarity. The same assumptions as the above apply in that what we discuss in Individual Coaching Conversations remains between us, unless any of the above issues come up and if any of the policies, obligations or agreements as an employer are contravened. If your coaching sponsor (leadership) requires feedback about the progress of coaching, they are welcome to discuss that with you as this is outside of what confidentiality entails in an organization.

The only feedback I will provide is:

• That you have undertaken coaching, and when / how many sessions we have had. This is typically provided to the Coaching Sponsor Co-ordinator and not to all leaders.
• If you have missed an individual coaching session or rescheduled it with less than 24-hour notice. This has financial implications and it also impacts the progression of PMT’s objectives to support you in your development journey.
• Should you choose to discontinue coaching at any time, for whatever reason
• If I need to terminate the coaching journey because the scope and nature of what you require is outside of the scope and nature of coaching, or if you have brought to light the intent to harm yourself or others.
• If it has come to our awareness that you have contravened the employment agreement and policies.

In most of these cases, I will indicate what had occurred in communication with both yourself and your sponsor and indicate my willingness to have a conversation about it with all parties present if required.

Team Coaching in the Organization

Team and group coaching build on what we have discussed above. Because we are working with a larger system, and because all voices in the organization form part of that system, I have to assume that anything that is said about another part of the system is relevant to the whole.

All of the above guidelines still apply for Team and Group Coaching Confidentiality. However, when team A talks about team B, or about ‘managers’ for example, then I will bring this information to light in the next conversation, or bring both parties together to openly discuss it. In other words, I keep no secrets on your behalf between entities in the organization because that serves no one.

When I raise these kinds of things, I still do so anonymously, or I bring awareness to Team A needing a conversation with Team B – not who said what in the conversation. As a team, I assume that you take responsibility as a whole for your development. However, if an individual speaks to anything in the sections above, I follow the route as outlined there.

That’s a lot!

Don’t worry too much about all the in’s and out’s because we will discuss this in our orientation conversation before we start our journey together in Individual, Team or Group Coaching. You can ALWAYS ask for clarity from your coaching sponsor and myself throughout the process. The main objective is to create safety and integrity throughout the process.

WillCoach Notes & Recordings

As a coach, I adhere to the legal requirements of POPI and the ethical practices of the ICF and COMENSA. This means that I will not keep notes on our conversations past the duration of our journey together or share these notes with anyone other than yourself. If sessions are recorded, they are only shared with you and are only used for my personal reflection and development.

PMT has already stated that they will never, under any circumstances, use my notes or recordings in any PMT-related employee processes of any kind.

Coaching Supervision

The only area where the coaching conversation is discussed is with my Supervisor. I do not talk about the person, or the details, and the focus of the conversation are about what has happened for me, what I was thinking, feeling, noticing, and doing. In rare cases where something serious comes up that has to be dealt with immediately, the professional coaches at SACAP might become involved. In all the years of SACAP offering this diploma and internship, this has only ever happened once. The process for this can be discussed with you should you raise this with the executive team.

Let’s look at the general process for the internship and how you can start getting involved.

General notes

Generally speaking, the Executive team is the sponsor for this coaching internship. Henning is the Coaching co-ordinator and has an agreement with Willcoach and SACAP about the process, and PMT’s responsibilities for the duration of the internship. If you want to receive coaching individually, or want to suggest a group coaching topic, or nominate your team for coaching, raise it with the Executive team or Henning directly.

We cannot accommodate everyone as you can understand, and the internship will look at specifically what will best serve PMT’s immediate needs to serve the Internship vision stated above. Any questions about the Coaching Internship can also be raised with Henning or the Executive team.

Process 1

You may be approached as a potential candidate for individual coaching. there is NO obligation for you to agree to undertake coaching and we also recommend that you assess for yourself whether it is the appropriate thing to undergo right now for yourself. (see coaching readiness guide).

Your team may also be nominated for team coaching, or you may hear about a group coaching opportunity related to a specific topic that you may want to participate in. Please note that team and group coaching journeys should be committed to fully. Once you’ve joined group coaching, you need to honor the place you’ve taken instead of someone else having the opportunity. Similarly, with team coaching, missing out on the work your team is doing will leave you behind and set back the whole team.

You will have a conversation about what outcomes we want to work towards for yourself, team, the group and ultimately for PMT. Be open, curious and engaged as this is your journey.

Logistics will be discussed with the relevant leader, exec, Henning or both, and you will identify what type of service offering you will undertake. Capacity, timelines, number of sessions and so forth may also be explored to be finalised later in contracting.

Lastly, talk up front about how you want to provide feedback to PMT about your journey, if relevant. The more we discuss things up front, the better for everyone.

Process 2

Process two is what we call contracting. We are not going to formally sign a contract, but we are making agreements about the coaching journey. Logistics, timelines, number of sessions, scope, tools, confidentiality, feedback and how we want to work together may come up.

We will set our starting date, and kick off the journey.

Throughout the journey we will re-contract as things arise. Your job is to ensure, in individual coaching, that you are clear on the topic you want to address in each session. You hold the content, I hold the process.

Process 3

We then do the actual coaching work.

Note that you will have action items to go and work on between sessions. This is YOUR responsibility to make time for, and to execute on. I will keep you accountable based on what you and I discussed in our previous session, but I will not go and tell your sponsor if you didn’t get to what you imagined you wanted to. The accountability for the overall journey results are yours to attain or realign as we go.

For the overall journey we have a goal and for each session, we will identify a specific goal that ties into the larger one, but that we want to address in that specific session. Any other tools like 5 LENS Enneagram we might use will follow the process specific to that tool and I will explain that to you if relevant.

Process 4

When our coaching journey is complete, I will ask you for feedback to help me grow and learn and I will encourage you to provide feedback to your sponsor as well in whatever way makes you comfortable. I can be in the conversation with you, or not – it’s up to you.

Now let’s look into the last part – the research paper.

I am the only SACAP student that has brought team and group coaching to the internship. Since this is rather new to SACAP and to the research department, I am not at liberty to use either group or team coaching for the research. I am expected to write a research paper based on data collected from an individual coaching client’s journey.

The Research Question

The research question is what I hope to investigate and answer at the end of my research journey. Answering this question contributes to my practice as coach, to my clients, the specific client that participated, and the whole coaching community world wide.

“What was my client’s experience of change throughout the coaching journey?”

This is the topic and the research question for the research paper. If you have undertaken an individual coaching journey and completed the journey, I may ask you if you are willing to participate in my study of this question.

What does this mean for you?

I will invite you to a 45 minute conversation in the format of an in-depth interview, where I will simply ask you to chat to me about what your experience of change was throughout the coaching journey you’ve completed. That’s it. The conversation is recorded and transcribed. I will anonymize you by changing your name to a pseudonym and any mention of specific things that may identify you will be removed.

No one will hear the recording except you, myself, and possibly a professional transcriber, and after it is transcribed it is password protected for us to use in a review process to verify the accuracy of the transcription. Once this is completed, we can discard the recording. The transcript will be used to conduct a qualitative study and by doing thematic analysis. I will go through the transcript and identify themes regarding your experience and regarding change. The possibility of a transcriber includes their non-disclosure and will be selected by a professional organisation if at all.

The rules on confidentiality remain the same as outlined above, and should anything come up for you in the session that requires further support afterward, SACAP, their supporting coaches, my supervisor and a team of therapists are available to support us if needed.

After my analysis of the data, I will playback the findings to you so that you can see what I’ve found, and also to validate and agree or disagree with the findings or interpretations. I am also working with a separate Ethical Research Supervisor who checks in on my process and work throughout the research process to ensure that I remain on the right track, protecting my client, PMT, and the practices of coaching and research.

Once my research paper is completed, I may provide you with a copy of the paper. You are welcome to share it with anyone you like, but I will never share it with anyone other than SACAP and my research supervisor. They in turn will hold the paper for their academic records, but it will not be published in any journals.

The benefits to you

The research on qualitative studies of this kind are very clear that the benefits to the participant when relfecting on their coaching experience provides these benefits:

• it deepens your learning about yourself, and the aha-moments you made throughout the journey
• it helps you to assess who you were before the journey and after – while looking at the steps you took and decisions you made
• this helps you to build confidence in yourself, your choices, and the change you’ve started
• in turn this increases the likelihood of permanent change, while also supporting your continuing journey of change within the relationships, teams, family, community etc that you are in
• you will likely learn more things about your journey through the process than you did in the journey itself

That outlines the PMT Coaching Internship Opportunity! So…