model of  practice

   Behaviours not Self-Help
   Skills not Therapy
   Expertise not just Coaching
   Strategy not Wishful Thinking

The path to life transformation starts with a critical look in the mirror. What you see there - your greatest strengths, deepest values and highest objectives - are the foundations upon which you must build. It's a significant process, one that takes time, commitment and knowledge.

WSC believes that to achieve positive, lasting change in behaviour one must do the work required to make this happen.

Modern people constantly look for new ways to change as quickly and painlessly as possible. Self-help manuals abound. Success is defined in 5 or 7 or 12 simple steps or in highly prescribed effective habits. By dint of this environment of quick fixes, life transformation, even the more modest endeavour of change, is touted as easily achievable and long-term change automatic.

The self-help/personal growth industry worldwide is huge. A quick search on Amazon.com for "self-help" reveals 98,175 entries. With an estimated 2000 self-help/personal development books published in the US each year and $US19.5bn spent worldwide, self help, the idea that if you purchase this book, DVD, attend a seminar or whatever you can find your way to life transformation, is flourishing. The popularity of “self-help” owes much to the modern craze for easy answers.

"Self-help" contains many messages about how individuals can be more self-aware, to grow and develop as a person and to assume greater responsibility for his or her life design. Much of it contains untested theories about the nature or management of change and most of it lacks the explicit steps for achieving life transformation.

Whilst part of the WSC approach belongs in the contemporary landscape of personal development methodologies, WSC differs from most of these approaches in that it acknowledges that long-term change is difficult.

"Self-help" works best when a person who is ready for action, needs a nudge. However, no matter how many nudges one receives, many people find themselves going around in circles. They are simply unable to keep on track and achieve the goals they have set. They want change, they may even need change, but they are unable to maintain the focus, and do not follow through on the actions needed, to achieve transformation.

Often, the desire for life transformation is strong but the day-on-day aspects of one's choices, actions, behaviours and the quality of one's communications makes the path to achievement a difficult one to tread.

Whilst much of the "self-help" literature does help to identify that their present is not meeting their needs, it rarely offers a systematic and structured method for identifying exactly what the person wants and how to go about getting it. Nor does it monitor, assess or measure the desired outcomes against results.

It’s worth considering that if reading all the self-help dieting books on the New York Times Bestseller List made one thin, Americans would be the thinnest people in the history of the world.

A number of important differences lie between the WSC approach and therapy. Unlike traditional psychotherapy, which delves into the patient's past to identify and correct emotional problems, destructive behavioural patterns and other pathology, WSC focuses on the present and future.

Through the Pre-course Evaluation© process, students assess where they are in the present and, assisted by their programme facilitator and the WSC Transformation Plan©, identify the gaps between their present place and future objectives.

The WSC approach is neither counselling nor therapy, we do not explore intense emotions but, rather, use past experiences to understand context, explore established beliefs and identify specific behavioural change and skills development needs.

Coaching – life, executive, behavioural - is increasingly popular today, and for good reason: used appropriately, it can really boost performance.

Behavioural coaching can be defined as the science and art of facilitating the performance, learning and development of the individual in a way that achieves her objectives. To be effective, coaching must be based on scientifically validated methodologies, produce meaningful, sustainable, measurable outcomes and use a body of behavioural scientific knowledge, practices, skills and values.

Coaches, typically, do not claim to be specialists in human behaviour or to have the skills required to treat emotional problems and they usually shy away from providing solutions.

WSC believes that coaching can be the solution for poor performance in areas as diverse as conflict resolution, leadership skills, career management and helping people find the right partners but differs from the standard coaching approach in that it believes that to be able to build skills and modify behaviours, the “coach” must be, for most areas of change, a subject matter expert.

More than just partners, motivators and confidants, our facilitators and programme co-ordinators believe that mentoring and coaching will only get you so far in learning how to flirt; being coached by a natural flirt with years of successful flirting under her eye-fluttering belt works much better.

The WSC approach integrates approaches from many disciplines into a validated, user-friendly model of practice. It incorporates knowledge from psychology (behavioural, clinical, social, developmental, industrial and organizational), change management, existential philosophy, education and management and leadership literature.

This is not extreme therapy. We do not advocate overt acts of "assertiveness", pummelling a mattress to release pent-up emotion, forgiving your enemies, regressing to your childhood or nurturing your "inner child". Whilst Spa Camp©, is a 7 day, intensive, immersion course is does not involve excessively long hours, sleep or sensory deprivation or the exploration of intense emotions.

We also do not subscribe to the effectiveness of wishful thinking, positive affirmations, the law of attraction, mind power or any of the dizzying arrays of mantras, dogmas, diagrams and analogies that are prevalent within the plethora of ballyhooed methods of "self-help".

Our approach is effective and straightforward: build hard and soft skills, develop effective behaviours, establish meaningful objectives, create an action plan and break it down into achievable steps.

We believe that each of our students knows what they want. It's a process of re-invention and re-engineering. We enquire into your gifts, your hopes and aspirations. We believe in your ability to achieve everything but we temper this with a pragmatic approach to achievement.

We investigate your values, passion, creativity, emotions and judgement and stimulate you with new ideas and insights. Our approach is a powerful force for behavioural change.

You’ll re-energise your life with a new set of skills, a new "operating system" of behaviours and a tactical plan for achieving everything you want.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT WSC