Advanced Coaching



Overview

Helping any coach deepen their practice in various ways: enhancing intervention skills, better understanding clients' needs, drawing on evidence, exploring attitudes to work/clients, and expanding client bases and professional standing.

This course promises to be an exciting departure from traditional advanced programmes that generally offer intense immersion in one particular model but do little to help the coach develop their own practice in ways that are critical to them.

You may be a business, life, sports, health, or financial coach; work in corporate, private or public sectors; with in-house, external, or assigned clients (paying or provided with your services for nothing); with years of experience, or just be beginning. Whatever your situation, your practice will be deepened and developed as a result of attending.

The course is particularly suited to students who have completed an initial coaching programme, whether recently or some time ago, and are keen to expand their practice.

Over ten weeks, you will be supported as you develop plans, identify key areas, gain peers to work alongside, and be guided and encouraged as you put those plans into practice.

There will be opportunities to enhance your intervention skills, better understand clients' needs, draw on evidence rather than hearsay, explore your own attitudes to work and clients, expand client numbers, and build your professional standing.

Programme details

Course starts: 20 Apr 2026

Week 1: Expanding our own definition of coaching / developing our USP.

Week 2: Reflective practice; journalling – for the coach and their client.

Week 3: The mindset of the coach; to themselves, to their client, to the world.

Week 4: Working with strategy; goal formation, thinking strategically, teaching someone to think strategically.

Week 5: Business development for practising coaches; word of mouth, social media, networking, publicity, profile raising.

Week 6: Coaching and education; a pedagogic style, how people learn, facilitating an executive's learning (insight, assimilation, integration, and behavioural change).

Week 7: Research, evidence, models, ignorance, closed minds, and snake-oil sales people.

Week 8: Motivation; current ideas, motivating yourself, motivating your client...

Week 9: Group dynamics, coaching and facilitating groups.

Week 10: Synopsis, consolidation, personal learning, and further steps.

Digital Certification

Credit Accumulation Transfer Scheme (CATS) Points

Only those who have registered for assessment and accreditation will be awarded CATS points for completing work to the required standard. Please note that assignments are not graded but are marked either pass or fail. Please follow this link for more information on Credit Accumulation Transfer Scheme (CATS) points

Digital Certificate of Completion 

Students who are registered for assessment and accreditation and pass their final assignment will also be eligible for a digital Certificate of Completion. Information on how to access the digital certificate will be emailed to you after the end of the course. The certificate will show your name, the course title and the dates of the course attended. You will be able to download the certificate and share it on social media if you choose to do so.

Please note students who do not register for assessment and accreditation during the enrolment process will not be able to do so after the course has begun.

Fees

Description Costs
Course fee (with no assessment) £450.00
Assessment and Accreditation fee £60.00

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, you are a full-time student in the UK or a student on a low income, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:

Concessionary fees for short courses

Tutor

Dr Graham Wilson

A leadership and OD consultancy/coaching career followed my behavioural science PhD. Since 2015, I’ve taught psychology, counselling, coaching, and photography at Oxford. Through teaching, writing (15+ textbooks), and conversations, I hope I help people understand these subjects' day-to-day relevance.

Course aims

This highly personalised and practical course aims to help coaches – regardless of their discipline, niche, extent of practice, and whether internal or external – to develop their practice in a number of ways – in terms of scope, market, scale, depth of interaction, quality of outcomes, rigour, visibility, profile, or impact.

Course Objectives:

  • To encourage participants to evaluate their own coaching practice against their evolving, personal vision for it.
  • To enable them, in a supportive environment, to explore opportunities for its development.
  • To provide a safe and creative space for participants to experiment with new and more demanding skills, techniques, and approaches.

Teaching methods

Using a virtual learning environment (Canvas), background notes will be provided shortly before each session so that you can read up on the week's theme in advance if you wish.  I try to make sessions interactive and dynamic - you won't find me hiding behind a lectern.  Classroom activities will be varied, involve a range of discussions and creative tasks, in both the full group and small groups. 

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will be expected to:

  • have experienced, and experimented with, new ways of looking at their coaching practice
  • have a clear understanding of the potential for their coaching work
  • have created a medium-term plan for the development of themselves and their coaching practice
  • have enhanced their coaching skills, and their presentation of them, through various forms of feedback.

Assessment methods

By assembling 4 short reflective pieces during the course, participants will create a personal, professional practice development plan.

Only those students who have registered for assessment and accreditation will submit coursework.

Application

To be able to submit coursework and to earn credit (CATS points) for your course you will need to register and pay an additional £60 fee per course. You can do this by ticking the relevant box at the bottom of the enrolment form or when enrolling online. Please use the 'Book now' button on this page. Alternatively, please complete an Enrolment form for short courses | Oxford University Department for Continuing Education

Students who do not register for assessment and credit during the enrolment process will not be able to do so after the course has begun. If you are enrolled on the Certificate of Higher Education you need to indicate this on the enrolment form but there is no additional registration fee.

 

Level and demands

The Department's Weekly Classes are taught at FHEQ Level 4, i.e. first year undergraduate level, and you will be expected to engage in a significant amount of private study in preparation for the classes. This may take the form, for instance, of reading and analysing set texts, responding to questions or tasks, or preparing work to present in class.

Terms & conditions for applicants and students

Information on financial support