Great question. While there are some similarities, the differences are important to recognise.

Training is about learning specific knowledge, skills, or processes. It typically follows a structured curriculum where an expert (the trainer) shares information with a group (the students), teaching them 'how to' do something.

Training is ideal when you want to build foundational knowledge or learn established procedures. 

Coaching, on the other hand, is a more personalised, exploratory process. Rather than providing answers, a coach asks powerful questions that help you discover your own solutions.

Typically, a coach  will work one-on-one or with small groups to help individuals unlock their potential and overcome specific challenges.

The fundamental difference between someone wearing a coaching hat and someone wearing a training hat is that a coach believes that you already have the answers within you - their role is to help you uncover them, while a trainer recognises that they have the answers you are looking for and their job is to share them with you and ensure you understand them.

Using a driving analogy, while training teaches you how to drive, coaching helps you decide where you want to go and the best route for you to take.

Both approaches have their place in professional development. Training is excellent for building core skills and knowledge, while coaching helps you apply that knowledge to your unique situation and challenges.

Training provides the tools; coaching helps you master using them in your specific context.

The fact that training and coaching can work so effectively together is why I offer the chance to combine both approaches - using training to establish foundational knowledge and coaching to support implementation and overcome individual (and organisational) barriers to success.

Absolutely. There is a group option for coaching and all the training programmes are delivered in a group format.

Each coaching programme is delivered on a one-to-one basis, but I also offer interactive Team Days, which are based on the output from the psychometrics used as part of the programme you chose. These build on the individual learning and insights and are aimed at helping teams apply their individual gains at a team and organisation level. 

When it comes to the training programmes, these are always in a group setting, which can either be exclusively for you and the group you put together (for example your senior leaders, your whole organisation, your networking group etc.).

Or, you can join an open group where you attend with people from all over the world and all different sectors, which offers a great networking opportunity and a chance to engage with the perspectives and knowledge those other people bring that you may not otherwise encounter 

In the main, coaching sessions are delivered online, although it is possible to have sessions delivered offline if that is preferable. Most people and organisations seem to prefer to have their sessions online, however, stating that it makes them less likely to have a detrimental impact on workloads and capacity as you and your team can schedule sessions at times to suit you.

If you take the team day option with your coaching programme, though, these are always delivered offline and face-to-face.

Training sessions are delivered online, too, which allows attendees to log in from wherever they may be. However, sessions happen at set times, so there is slightly less flexibility in terms of scheduling.

That said, if you are booking a programme for exclusive delivery (e.g. just to participants from your organisation) I will always work with you to ensure sessions are schedules at a frequency and at times that work for you.

All training programmes are delivered 'live' online. Each session is held via a Zoom Session, which allows active participation, enabling attendees to interact with me and each other.

Sessions are recorded and you have lifetime access to the recordings of your (and only your) group, enabling you to revisit topics as you need to. This also means that if you miss a session, you can still access the learning.

Each coaching programme uses a range of psychometric personality profiling tools, each of which has a coached debrief. Those sessions tend to be around 2-hours long. Once we move into actual coaching, however, the sessions are 60 minutes each.

Training programme sessions are scheduled at 2-hours each, but I always stay online for at least 30 minutes after the session officially ends so that you get chance to ask questions and, if you want to, network and share thoughts and insights from the session with other people in your group.

Absolutely. I always make myself available via email, so if you have questions or want to bounce ideas off me, all you need to do is drop me a line.

You also have lifetime access to all of the tools and resources linked to whichever programmes you have completed, so you will always be able to tap into those as and when you need to. And, periodically, I add new tools to the library, so you will also benefit from having access to those. 

The short answer is "No." However, while I have never been asked to provide a refund, I would treat every case on its own merits should that scenario ever arise.

The reason I have that policy is that I always engage with you before anyone signs on the dotted line and before any money changes hands. That enables us to get super-clear on what you want to achieve and how we will work together to deliver those outcomes.

This means that, unlike where you just take a punt at an online course that sounds OK only to discover it wasn't what you thought,  neither of us is going into the relationship blind = you have plenty of opportunity to explore what I am offering and whether it is a good fit for you (and, indeed, whether I am a good fit for you and your organisation).

That said, as an ICF (International Coaching Federation) accredited coach, I have signed up to the Global Code of Ethics for Coaching, so if ever a situation should arise where you were unhappy and wanted to explore a refund, we would have that conversation and be guided by what is set out in that code (you can see a copy of it here: https://coachingfederation.org/ethics/code-of-ethics).