About the founder

Cara Hooper - personal & executive coach

• Relevant qualification: Open College Network awarded Diploma in Life Coaching
• Professional memberships:
  • Executive Coach for TWP - behavioural change specialists
  • Associate Member of the Association for Coaching
  • Community Member of The Coaching Academy
  • Member of the Brighton Coaching Exchange
• Creator of the APT Coaching model

Interview with Cara Hooper (personal and executive coach), founder of Effective Thoughts

What led you to Life Coaching Cara?
I come from a corporate IT background, via a training job in further education so many people have been surprised at my seemingly opposing career choice. I was a senior analyst programmer and project manager and got to the point where I felt I was no longer enjoying my work or developing myself. So, I examined what I loved best about my job, about previous jobs and what my ideal situation would be. Emphatically I wanted to support people in their own personal development. My experience in training and mentoring people had shown me that I got the most job satisfaction when someone became self-sufficient and confident in their new development area.

I had a gut feeling that Coaching was my vocation but I needed to investigate it further so I researched the field and the colleges available. I spoke to Coaches, but best of all I was Coached myself. I was stunned that such an apparently simple process could achieve such great results. It was the Coaching itself that really persuaded me that this was what I wanted to do.

How did you train to become a Life Coach?
I chose to train with Coaching and Mentoring International (CMI, formerly UK College of Life Coaching) as I was very impressed by the depth of their training and their professional approach to Life Coaching as a profession. It was also important to me that it was a recognised qualification and the CMI Diploma has Open College Network credits that are equivalent to half a master’s degree. My training took a year and involved 1 residential weekend of tutorials, 9 written modules that took around 10 hours each, 6 additional hours of tutorials, 35 hours to complete a reflective essay, 15 mentored practical sessions as a Coach (including the practical exam), monthly Coaching forum meetings, plus I did over 50 live Coaching sessions whilst training.

What are your personal Coaching ethics?
To be the best Coach I can possibly be. To remain non-judgemental. To allow people to learn new ways of life and reach their goals in a non-directive way.

I am an ethical, professional and enthusiastic Coach. I have a real passion for Coaching and strive to do all I can to uphold the image of the Coaching profession. I ensure my work with Clients adhere to my current membership Code of Conduct, and to my own personal values. I continue to belong to a Coaching forum, with whom I meet monthly to exchange ideas and keep up to date with Coaching related issues. Despite being fully qualified I persist in learning and progressing my Coaching knowledge through reading, workshops, Coaching feedback sessions with peers, and through evaluating my performance after every Coaching session.

• to sort out my business development aims
• to accept something that has happened in my life over which I have no control
• to organise my thinking around approaching a tricky personal conversation that I needed to have with a loved one

How would you advise someone to find the right Coach for them?
Sadly Life Coaching is not yet officially regulated despite the efforts of organisations such as the Association for Coaching and Coaching and Mentoring International. This means that anyone can call themselves a Life Coach without qualification. I would make sure a Coach has a recognised Coaching qualification and is a member of a professional body. A professional Coaching association will require proof of qualification as well as references before accepting a member. They will also be your point of contact should you have a complaint against your Coach.

A Code of Conduct is a useful reference for you to judge the professionalism of the business. Rapport and trust is also paramount so make sure you can talk to them before booking, whether it is a chat over the ‘phone or a formal trial session.

What is the APT model that you have developed?
Life Coaching models allow the Coach to guide a session to its most productive conclusion without risk of diversion or of missing out key components. Although my training provided many useful Coaching models and frameworks, I found that many of my Clients reacted well to an additional model that I developed through experience and used in conjunction with other frameworks. The APT model, when applied to cases where a Client has a block that is stopping them feeling happy or achieving their goals, has had great success every time.
The APT model (© 2005 Effective Thoughts):

• Awareness – Finding out what the block is, whether a negative inner-voice, perfectionism, procrastination or limiting beliefs of our own abilities, can be curative in itself. We can then start to recognise that it is this block, or symptom, that is standing in our way rather than any real lack of confidence or ability. Awareness can lead to acceptance, where we can let go of the struggle against having the block and look to how to positively override it in the future.
• Perspective – This is one of the most useful words in Coaching. Often when trapped in our own patterns of thinking we do not realise that our thoughts have become a distortion of the truth. I often use quick and easy exercises at this point to enable the person to view their perceived situation from a third-person perspective, which is without the attached habitual thoughts that cloud the judgement. This can lead on to comparisons with their purpose in life and an evaluation of the degree of importance their limiting thoughts really have in their future.
• Tools – We can all, with the creative thinking encouraged in Coaching, come up with our own tools and strategies to override our blocks to happiness and achievement once Awareness and Perspective has been achieved. As a Coach I can offer suggestions, with my Client’s permission, to add to the list of options as this is often a great way to generate your ideas of what will work best for you. A Coach will not tell you what to do because the tools may not work for you, nor will you really own your tools. When it is you that decide, you can then take away tools that are realistically going to work.