Co-Active Foundations is Co-Active’s first step in every Co-Active coaching pathway. It introduces you to the relational frameworks that sit underneath all Co-Active coaching and leadership, without assuming you want to become a full-time coach.
Across 8 hours, you will:
- Explore a practical set of frameworks for how you relate to yourself, others, and your circumstances (the “3 Co-Active Relationships”).
- Practice core Co-Active skills like powerful questions, curiosity, and deep listening.
- Reflect on a real circumstance or relationship in your life and apply what you’re learning in real time.
It’s intentionally experiential: you’re not just hearing ideas; you’re trying them out in conversations, exercises, and reflections, with space for your own insights and style to emerge.
Who This Course Is Designed For
Foundations is meant to be accessible and useful whether you’re:
- A people leader, manager, or team lead who wants a more human, empowering way to lead.
- A professional considering a coaching path who wants to “test the waters” before committing to longer training.
- Someone navigating complex relationships at work, at home, or in community who wants better tools for meaningful, sustainable connection.
Co-Active Training Institute recommends Foundations to anyone seeking practical systems for managing relationships with others, even if your goal is not to become a professional coach.
If you do end up wanting to continue, Foundations is the required prerequisite for Ignite the Practice: Co-Active Practitioner Training and Professional Coach Certification because how we show up directly impacts how effectively we coach and lead.
What You’ll Actually Experience During the Day
In Foundations, Co-Active Training invites you into a unique, person-to-person experiential process, led by highly trained faculty and grounded in a clearly designed alliance, shared agreements about how you’ll be together so everyone can learn.
Key elements you’ll touch:
- Designed Alliance – You co-create how you want to work together: confidentiality, “everybody gets to learn,” respecting yourself and others, and anything else the group needs to feel safe and engaged.
- My Focus for the Day – You choose a real change you want to make in a circumstance or relationship and use it as a thread throughout the course.
- Being & Doing – You explore the tension and integration between who you’re being and what you’re doing, rather than choosing one over the other.
You’ll leave with more than concepts. You’ll have practiced them in real conversations, with real people, around real situations you care about.
How to Know if It’s Right For You (A Simple Check-In)
Consider this brief self-inquiry, inspired by the Foundations course:
- Is there a relationship or circumstance in your life right now where you sense you’re capable of more: more clarity, more courage, or more connection?
- Are you curious about the idea that people (including you) are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole—not broken, not needing to be fixed?
- Do you want skills you can use immediately at work and at home, not just in a future coaching practice?
So if something in you is saying, “I’m ready for a new way of being with myself and others,” trust that signal. Choose a date that works, bring one real circumstance or relationship you’d love to shift, and register for Human Being & Human Doing: Co-Active Foundations. You’ll walk away with practical skills, a clearer inner compass, and a community of people who are learning to lead Co-Actively right alongside you.