Coaching

The demanding world we live in does not lend itself to taking time out for lengthy teaching instruction. As effective but time-deprived individuals, we want empowerment. We want guidance on what to do to develop our competence. We want results and we want to be central to pulling it off.

The difference between coaching and teaching is that a good coach encourages your autonomy. Providing value, they help you to help yourself. Coaching lets you grow and achieve. It provides you with the objective support you need.

And it is firmly based in developing what you need in the workplace. Language coaching gives international people accurate expression, greater impact and confident authority. Colleagues, bosses and clients are impressed. Leadership and personal effectiveness are enhanced. Cross cultural divides diminish.

Awareness is the first step. You enter cycles of deconstructing and reconstructing. Habit management follows. Then a step outside of your comfort zone. And change is the reward.

Depending on your career and dreams, your dilemma will not be 'can I afford a coach?' but 'for my aspirations, can I afford not to have a coach?'. Coaching is available both in-company or privately, and either one-to-one or as a group.

Business coaching expertise
Language Coach for Leaders Method
Quality and ethics
How private coaching can help you
Private coaching terms & conditions
Central London Lexis Building Clubs

Coaching in business

20% of British companies are losing easy business

According to Professor Stephen Hagen, author and director of the Mercia Institute of Enterprise in the UK, not addressing language and cultural difficulties means companies are losing business.

Nearly half of British companies experience obstacles to international trade yet only 11% of them have strategies to cope. More than 20% recognise that business has been lost due to language and culture difficulties yet 40% expect to trade internationally in the near future.

Hagen believes, "There is a need for a new 'export culture' with international communications as its key feature". For international communications, Tony Corballis is an easily-contactable on-hand English language and cross-culture authority you can trust but who does not need to be in your constant employ.

Wide experience and proven techniques

"I have worked closely in group training, one-to-one coaching and distance mentoring, for twelve years with international professionals. My approach is fluid, human and natural while remaining challenging and rigorous," says Tony Corballis, The Language Coach for Leaders.

"I am experienced in working with diverse cultural identities: Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Persian, Gulf and Middle Eastern Arab, North African, some sub-Saharan African, Russian and Central Asian, Eastern European, and all western and central European and Latin cultural backgrounds.

I have lived and worked in four countries, visited 39 countries, speak two languages, and base myself in multicultural central London. But my approach is not just about language. I agree with writer Yang Sung-Jin who quotes Lee Chan-Seung, CEO of NeungYule, in saying that content and language development need to go hand-in-hand. 'The amount of exposure to English is small for [many international business people], so it's almost impossible to gain competence if we separate what we do in the workplace and what we learn.' A worker involved in business management will read MBA journals or relevant business magazines to get the best information about their area and their sector. This motivation means a content-based approach is the optimum for gaining higher proficiency and eventually bilingualism. 'What we really need is not those who are fluent in English only, but those who specialize in specific content while being able to speak English,' Lee says. Ambitious professionals don't want English; they want communication - global communication to succeed.

I have a range of proven techniques and approaches that I bring together to make this happen.

Tony Corballis: Expertise

Broadening your word-base
Confidence and authority building for bilinguals
Voice coaching

Presentation and interview skills
Professional or academic examination preparation

Media relations for small business and media release writing
Research and symmetrical public relations practice

Cross-cultural communication theory and practice
Identification of cross-cultural interference
Identification of second language linguistic interference

Business English for influence and change management
Language accuracy training
Organisational communication theory
Language support and on-call personal assistance for business units

Copy editing, proofreading, document screening and improvement
Copywriting and content writing
Advanced and specific writing skills development

Both structural and functional approaches to business text
The lexical approach to language
Rhetoric and subtextual awareness training

Motivational coaching for personal, study, work or career goals
Helping people achieve targets, dreams and turn visions into reality

The Language Coach for Leaders Method

Tony Corballis, The Language Coach for Leaders, bases his practice on an integrated blend of most areas of thinking about language and training methods, but has a special emphasis on the Communicative and Lexical Approaches to language acquisition, combined - surprisingly - with certain aspects of the old-fashioned audiolingual method.

The lexical focus means every session has a central and interesting theme that engages learners, while reinforcing a corresponding 'lexical field' (area of vocabulary and meaning).

While also informed by traditional structural approaches to language, he is firmly liberal in holding that English is primarily functional. As a means of communication, it is thus organic and now necessarily global, with terrific variation in convention. Influencers to Tony's approach are Tony Lewis, Steven Pinker, David Crystal, Guy Cook, Michael McCarthy and Noam Chomsky.

His practice is also informed by contemporary thinking on seeing learners as individuals (with different learning styles and 'multiple intelligences' and with learning informed by needs analyses), and by competency-based instruction and assessment, as well as less known areas such as genre in relation to Systemic Functional Linguistics, and the principles regarding the importance of our belief systems that are the basis of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and a part of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Then, integrated with a number of personalised high-level language enriching processes which exploit all four language skills (and a fifth, 'metacognition'), individuals' competencies are developed using a range of tried-and-tested training methodologies as vehicles.

These include frameworks developed by Stephen Covey in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by the great trainers and authors at The Mind Gym, and various other great thinkers on communication effectiveness and leadership development: leadership and language are thus bundled together as a single package.

Methods used by the coach are smoothly and flexibly adapted according to client needs.

Rarely do you find a communications and English language coach so enthusiastic about his work, so thorough and so broadly experienced to specialise so narrowly as The Language Coach for Leaders. In recognising and addressing a narrow market, Tony Corballis is currently virtually unique in London and is aiming to become the expert in the niche as it grows.

Learn more about the Lexical Approach and the Lexis Building clubs.

Quality and ethics

Tony Corballis The Language Coach for Leaders is guided by the code of ethics drawn up by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (The EMCC).

Tony Corballis guarantees to coach only within the remit of his expertise. Where client needs fall outside of this, he is ready and happy to refer the client to a third party practitioner, such as a therapist, psychologist, ear-nose-throat doctor or financial adviser. He guarantees not to exploit the client and aims to bring the greatest benefit (within the client's wishes) at the lowest cost possible.

Unlike many life coaches and therapists who see clients in long-term financial terms, Tony Corballis seeks to quickly and efficiently pinpoint key areas for improvement and finish the coaching course with communication improvements clear to the client. His practice is structured around objectives and is only satisfactory if those objectives are met.

Self-reflection

Ask yourself these questions:

Are you aware of the impact the order of your ideas can have?
Are you aware how different cultures do this differently?
Are you aware of the subtle differences in formality?
Do you understand why 'formal' to one culture is 'rude' to another?
Are you aware of tone in your voice and in your emails?
Do your readers, audience and you all see 'politeness' the same way?
How could a thinking communications coach add value to your work?

Are you worried about presenting at meetings?
Would you like to sound confident and knowledgeable?
Have you ever had a voice coach?
Do you find that there are obstacles to people understanding you, or vice versa?

Do you need to discuss ideas with someone who understands media, communication with publics and public relations?
Do you need to discuss communication issues with someone who understands leadership, team-building and change?

How private coaching can help you
Central London Lexis Building Clubs
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