Pictures: EDelia celebrates its 32 newly qualified coaches in Blackrock

Cork-based EDelia Group has held its first-ever graduation ceremony of education-based practitioner-level coaches at Blackrock Castle.

A total of 32 people graduated, some in absentia, from Ireland, South Africa, France, Germany, and Barbados after completing the course which was delivered online.

Present on the day was CEO EDelia Ruairí Ó Ceilleachair, Glasgow University Professor Dolina Dowling, EMCC Master Coach Practitioner Shelley Crawford, and President EMCC Ireland Patrick Meehan.

Speaking to The Echo, Mr O’Ceilleachair said that they had “the perfect day” for the graduation which he said was made extra special with the backdrop of Blackrock Castle and a string quartet from Cork School of Music.

Mr Ó Ceilleachair founded EDelia — the name of which is a tribute to his own parents whose names are Edward and Delia — in 2015. He said that the business “fell off a cliff” when Covid-19 hit but that when he took the business online he had a global business and is now working to attract more coaches from other countries.

Speaking about the graduates, he said that they are now equipped with a globally recognised accreditation in coaching and this EMCC accreditation allows them to set up their own practice, but also to use the skill set in their professional lives as teachers, healthcare professionals, managers, or executives.

“Awareness of the value of a coaching approach is growing globally and EDelia is finding the demand for coaching courses is increasing.

“People are finding more and more that the levels of stress that we’re witnessing amongst managers, students, teachers, healthcare professionals, really have gone up and Covid hadn’t helped,” he said. “What a coach will allow people to do is to notice where a persons’ attention is.

“When our attention is on things that we can’t control we get anxious and when we can notice where our attention is and put it on something that is useful, and over which we have control, it tends to reduce the anxiety dramatically.

“Some people won’t go to counselling because it’s seen as a deficit model, but coaching is about ‘Where am I now? Where do I want to go? And, what are my options to get from one place to the other?’

He added: “Most people, when they get clear about what they want, can usually figure out how to get there themselves.

“We seem to love problems, whereas when you ask people to focus on what they want to happen it’s very often followed by silence because they haven’t given it thought because they’re so focused on what they don’t want.

“And coaching helps to reframe and helps to get clarity on what they actually want and to do that you created a psychologically safe space to allow people to speak out loud without feeling judged and that’s essentially what they do for people,” Mr Ó Ceilleachair said.