An Interview with Susan Britton, Founder/CEO of The Academies

So many of the coaches that we speak with have this Herculean task of back-to-back appointments, and especially during the busy time of year when there's extra recruiting going on and conferences for students to attend. And they are under such pressure to have the right answers, the right wisdom, the right resources, the right networking connections. And what can end up happening is that the coach then starts to feel like a vending machine. So coaching helps because it bridges that knowing-doing gap. There's the knowing of what the coach really knows needs to be done for the student to be successful, and they tell them to do it. And then there's the doing of it by the student, and oftentimes that's where things fall through the cracks because the students are so busy. They are— they've got priorities, they've got projects, they've got conferences, they've got networking, they've got all of these things that need to to be done. And sometimes the things that are asked to be done of them are things that may be uncomfortable or unfamiliar territory for them. And so coaching really bridges that gap between knowing what needs to be done and doing what needs to be done. What makes the Academy's program different is that we really specialize in that brain-friendly coach approach. And boy, that's the secret sauce these days. There's just so much research out there now that really underscores and emphasizes how our brains work and how our biology impacts the way that our brains work. If our biology is in that sort of hyperdrive, overachiever, push, push, push mode, what ends up happening is that we miss the bigger picture. The student misses the bigger picture. It drains their cognitive capacity and their relational capacity. If they're in sort of problem mode as opposed to opportunity mode, or it's on top of me mode as opposed to I'm on top of it mode, And so we teach some very simple brain-friendly techniques that help kind of shift people from that space of fight, flight, freeze, appease into flow, flourish, calm, connect. So yes, the Academy does have a very unique distinction in that it was the first program that was approved by the International Coach Federation as an ACTP and ACSTH program. And that sounds like a mouthful of alphabet soup. I know. The nice part about that is that when you go through a program that has an ACSTH or an ACTP or this type of ICF credentialing, it makes it a much easier and smoother path to actually getting and earning your ICF credential. So one of the things that we notice about bringing coaches together in these group trainings is that they start to recognize that from school to school to school to school across the country, across the continent, that there are common challenges that every one of them face. And to find that common challenge and to find a collective voice and to find creative solutions for the things that their students are struggling with has been really exciting and energizing because, boy, collective intelligence is a cool thing. You get a couple of people together in the room and all of a sudden the IQ just goes through the roof. And it just feels like really good energy and good things are being created because of that coming together. Yeah, it's just a fascinating trend to see the growth in coaching over the last number of years. I remember going into Georgetown, and you really credit Georgetown with their vision for trying out coaching with their traditional career advisory model. And back in 2008, when they started and had the vision for that, there were like 5,000 coaches on the planet, and today there are some 20,000 5,000. So that's a big increase, and the reason there's such an increase is because it works. It really taps into the wisdom and the strength and the power of choice that students have, and when they get a hold of that, they're unstoppable.