CBT Coaching Techniques

 

Rabbi Joshua Ritchie MD   •   November 16, 2014

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CBT Coaching Techniques

 

 

Man 2: Hello?

 

Ritchie: Yes, hello.

 

Man 2: First of all, I wanted to mention before I get into my question, I remember seeing, I don’t remember who it was that told a pharmacist that whatever you do it’s also a hasset.

 

Ritchie: Oh of course. A lot of these people use these skills without making it into a commercial profession of it. I think it’s very respectable – it’s very respectable, like any physician, a coach or therapist is very respectable if you’re very effectively helping other people, and I think people should be compensated for their time. But there are people who offer this as part of their career as an educator or as working in keru as a community rabbi or it might be a part of their professional services, that they’re just increasing their skills – or they add it as an adjunct income, on top of what they are doing and see a few private clients – so it can be used in a many number of ways.

 

Man 2: I wanted to ask you – I just came online half an hour ago – what are usually the rates that one can charge initially?

 

Ritchie: Well that really depends on the community that you’re working with – if you’re working with an upscale community who can afford it, they’ll expect you to charge a lot. If you’re working with an impoverished community who really can’t afford anything, you now, I as a physician, I am a retired physician, I used to come and visit when I was still working in the states, and I would come and visit Jerusalem and I’d meet people and they’d ask me for medical advice and I’d give them free medical advice and I’d write them a prescription the I’d have to give them money to buy the prescription.

 

Now it depends on their situation, and those people were struggling in Jerusalem and it wasn’t enough that I gave them free medical advice and gave them a prescription, I had to actually pay for the medicine. So it depends – now, as I said, Stewart Hirsch, he’s charging – he’s not allowing me to say how many hundreds of dollars but it’s hundreds of dollars an hour, so it really…

 

Man 2: So whether it be the states or Canada or London, what is the average?

 

Ritchie: Again, really there’s no such thing. Your community that you might be serving, what income do they have? What are the costs of the homes they’re living in? It depends on their – it really completely, almost entirely depends on that. What is a therapist getting in your community? It will be similar or better than what your therapist makes. Coaches often get paid better than what therapists make, but therapists make as little as $20 or $25/hour or they might make $200 or $300 an hour depending on who they are and where they are located. Coaches can make anywhere from $50-$500 an hour but it depends on who their clients are, and you certainly can’t expect to get a high fee from people who are on welfare.

 

Man 2: What is the average time for sessions that the coach gives?

 

Ritchie: So different people have different ways of doing it – many people work on an hour, an hour usually weekly. There are people – especially good people in the executive world – often only do half an hour at a time. They’re so good at it, and the executive’s time is so precious to them, and they’re so good at learning and working that you can accomplish a tremendous amount in half an hour. It ranges usually from half an hour to an hour, but that’s agreed upon between the coach and the client and it depends on you as a coach and your style and of your client, and their ability and style and preference. So it varies, some people do half an hour, some people do 40 – 45 minutes, some do a full hour. Sometimes the initial session goes an hour and a half, but it shouldn’t go more than an hour and a half even for the initial session. You do need to learn how to control and pace that – that is something else you will also learn.  How to summarize towards the end of a session. How to end a session and prepare for the next one. Those are all parts of the skills of learning the profession of coaching.

 

Man 2: So the word coaching, obviously you’re not coaching someone telling them what to do. How would you explain to someone – a new client – what is involved with coaching? 

 

Ritchie: That’s a good question. I don’t think I’m going to be able to take enough time to answer it for you, but that is a good question and that is something we do teach you – that you need to learn how to communicate to the community, first of all, because coaching is not that well known, it is certainly getting better known, Refuah has become well-known and through that, more and more people are beginning to appreciate what coaching is, but it’s still not as well known in the secular world, so you’ll need to educate your community and your specific clients and that is something that we will help you do. We will give you written material that has it, we will give you forms that you can use, and we will describe it for you, we will discuss it, we will role play it, and that’s a very important part of the training, it’s a very important part of the course.

 

Man 2: So if I want to find out more information about instructing someone, I would call the number either in America or Israel?

 

Ritchie: Yes, the American number is 646-395-9613 and the Israeli one you have is 9722 and the rest of it, so you can call the Israeli number Israeli hours and the 646 any time, but you’ll usually reach us – the office here in Jerusalem is usually open from 10am – 6pm, but you’ll often catch me or you make an appointment to talk to me later in the day.

 

Man 2: What do you charge usually?

 

Ritchie: What do I charge for my clients?

 

Man 2: No for a phone appointment. If I want to call about the course.

 

Ritchie: No, if you’re interested about our course, I’ll discuss that with you. If you have submitted an application, which is no charge or obligation, I’ll be happy to have a discussion with you about our program and about what coaching might mean for you. I’ll be glad to coach you through the steps of whether you want to be trained as a coach and whether you’d want to be trained by us.

 

Man 2: Ok, very good. Thank you very much.

 

Ritchie: You’re very welcome. What is your name?

 

Man 2: Fryan.

 

Ritchie: And where are you located Fryan?

 

Fryan: In Canada.

 

Ritchie: Very nice. We have trained a lot of people from Canada. We’d be glad to talk to you.

 

Man 3: Professor?

 

Ritchie: Yes.

 

Man 3: It’s Douglas Cinnamon.

 

Ritchie: Yes, Douglas.

 

Cinnamon: Is there a special course for CBT training?

 

Ritchie: No, CBT is what you’ve been learning and it’s part of what they’re going to be learning. There is advanced stuff post finishing the one year of coaching – there’s no obligation, you’re certified, you’re deplumed but what we will be offering are advanced courses, half-year courses, for those who want more of this or more of that – sort of more specialized things, but you’re going to learn all of this CBT, it’s going to be a part of what you’ve already learned.

 

As Sara was saying, you have already learned NLP without our telling you that every time I teach NLP, that’s NLP. You’ve learned CBT and you’ve learned solution-focused and you’ve learned reality therapy, and that’s all part of CBT and we haven’t every time said, now I’m teaching you CBT, so that’s what you’ve been learning. But we don’t always label it, and I don’t think it needs to be always labeled, but some people, I think, feel more empowered and more competent if they know what they’ve been learning which is CBT, which is a very respected and there is a form of coaching that is called CBT coaching which is basically what we’ve been teaching – a broad form of CBT coaching, there’s also NLP coaching, and there’s also solution-focused coaching. We’re actually teaching all of those.

 

In England, there is an association for coaches that is a very good organization. They put out a book where they describe CBT coaching, NLP coaching, and solution-focused coaching, and we’re teaching all of those integrated into our program.

 

Cinnamon: Are we certified in CBT when we finish the course?

 

Ritchie: You’re certified as a professional coach.

 

Cinnamon: A coach, right.  It’s true because I was reading the book about CBT, one of the books for dummies, and I was reading it and was very familiar – exactly what you’ve been saying and to what we’ve learned.

 

Ritchie: Yep, that’s exactly what we’ve been teaching. I don’t expect you to have to memorize and take a test and tell us which is CBT, which is solution focused and which is NLP, which is Freud, and which is…I don’t think the labels are important. The skills are important – the techniques are important that you have in your tool kit all of these skills. It’s not that you know the name of the tool, but you need to know how to use the tool well and hopefully have a sense of when to use it, but it’s not important to know the name or well I could the course would probably take twice as long if you had to memorize and take written tests which was what’s the difference between CBT and solution focused and reality therapy and so on and so forth. I think that’s unnecessary academic approach – if you’re really interested in it, we do provide you with a bibliography of about three hundred sources of reading material so that you can read up a lot more – as much as you want – we encourage you to learn more, but you don’t have to memorize that to learn to be a good coach and to be good at using CBT and all of these other techniques.

 

If you want to learn more, there will be advanced courses for those that feel who want to learn more advanced techniques, we will offer that at times, but only to our graduates – we’ll only offer those advanced courses to our graduates of our one year coaching program.

 

Cinnamon: In fact, the more and more I look for, it’s endless – it’s really endless. It’s amazing. It’s so amazing.

 

Woman 10: Yes, I would like to know if you’re having your advanced course – when you’re going to be having that?

 

Ritchie: OK, why don’t you contact us? Who’s speaking?

 

Woman 10: Goldie Sturds.

 

Ritchie: Ok, probably in a few months and we’ll be sending out notices on that. Why don’t you make a phone call or send us an email and tell us that you’re interested, and we’ll be sure to send you the information as soon as its available.

 

Goldie: Thank you, I’ll do that.

 

Ritchie: Good, glad to hear that you’re in touch.

 

Goldie: As a matter of fact, I’m almost close to finishing to graduating.

 

Ritchie: Very good.

 

Woman 11: Dr. Ritchie, this is Sarah Brockman. I was just wondering – earlier there was the kind offer to do a NLP class, and I was just wondering if that is something that we could feasibly put together – is that something that I would be emailing her directly or if we would email Refuah?

 

Ritchie: No, you’d have to email Refuah. Refuah is developing a NLP course that will be a half-year program. It will include NLP and some other related things, and it will be an 18-session program with practicums. It will be similar to the advanced counseling program we did recently, so it will be a half-year program that will occur some time in January – some time in the next year three months from now. We have already lined up quite a number of teachers – we have quite a few people and Sarah was on my list as one potential and now she’s offered so we will have her do one or two of the presentations as well.

 

Brockman: OK, so in other words…

 

Ritchie: NLP is too complicated to learn in one lecture – in the coaching course, you’ve already had dozens of courses on NLP but to learn anything more significant, you’ll need at least another 18 lectures and practicums to begin to move another step. If you want to contact her by phone, please do, you can reach her in London. We would integrate her into a program that she can contribute very nicely to, but I don’t think one lecture is going to – and she won’t think one lecture would do it. She took quite an extensive training, I’m sure, and most NLP courses are rather extensive, she could just learn the material quicker because she learned it with us. If you’ve already had a year of our coaching, then you’ll be able to – in these 18 sessions plus practicums – will be able to get a fair amount of advance in your NLP skills but it will take at least that.

 

Brockman: OK, very good, thank you.

 

Ritchie: OK, we have to sign off. It’s very late for us here, and we have another program to do in about ten minutes or so, so I’m going to bid you farewell. Please be in touch. Thank you for the beautiful help all of you gave us. All of our graduates that spoke up really appreciate hearing from you and it’s wonderful to get your positive feedback and please, those that have more suggestions, questions, need more information, want to join our program, please be in touch with us. We are starting our next program the 30th of November. It’s going to be a Sunday – two weeks from now. You just have time now and should hurry to get registered so you can get your materials and so on and instruction and so on so you can get set up and off and running when we start November 30th.

 

OK, look forward to you all joining us and thank you for this stimulating evening. It’s been fun talking with all of you, and thank you for joining us. Sorry I didn’t get to introduce Yashai, Hashid and my wife, sorry I got carried away, but we are actually going to have another review session next week, where you’ll get to hear the graduating class that finished two weeks ago, and then I’ll also answer questions again so anyone who wants to listen in to that, that will be next week. Then, when we start the program in two weeks and during the course, you’ll get introduced to the other faculty members as well, which include a number of outstanding people, as you know, including Rabbi Zoec and Stewart Hirsch and Schafers and a number of outstanding people, and someone who’s going to be teaching tonight, Rifka Hinkle. OK, so I hope we’ll be staying in touch and thank you all and keep doing the wonderful holy work that you’re doing.

 

Thank you all. We are going to have to switch to our next lecture that will begin in about five minutes. You can call us, we will be glad to hear from you.