Universal Coaching Alliance
Coaching Programme
Critical Thinking for Improved Systemic Coaching -
Assumptions & Philosophies
Accredited Enhanced Training for Coaches Qualification - AETC
This programme is designed to improve your systemic coaching. We examine a range of social philosophies (ancient and modern) and identify their underlying assumptions, situational strengths and weaknesses, and typical outcomes when they are applied in systems. Participants then consider the assumptions of their clients and their own implicit assumptions about systems, and the likely resulting impacts and risks. In so doing, participants can make their own informed choices and enable their clients to act systemically with greater awareness, informed choice and greater positive impact.
Advanced professional training for coaches and supervisors who want to deepen their systemic insight, challenge hidden assumptions, and elevate their coaching impact through critical thinking.
This is not surface‑level CCD.
This is deeper professional formation for coaches and supervisors working with complex human systems, polarised thinking, identity, power, culture, belief structures and organisational dynamics.
This qualification is designed for experienced practitioners who want to:
- Think more systemically
- Coach more ethically
- Intervene more intelligently
- Work more confidently in complexity.
It integrates social philosophy, critical thinking, systemic theory and applied coaching practice into a rigorous, reflective and practical qualification.
Purpose of the Course
- Systems can be natural (physical, e.g. cosmic), human (relational, social) or mixed (Earth’s environment, human biological processes, animal habitat, much human interaction). They can be complex and produce unexpected outcomes. If we are going to coach around ‘systems’, or call ourselves a systemic coach, we need to have some understanding of what systems are, how they work, and what impact our involvement in systemic coaching may have.
What you will gain
By completing this programme, you will:
- Think systemically, not mechanically — understanding clients as part of living systems, not isolated individuals
- Identify and work with hidden assumptions shaping behaviour, decisions and identity
- Coach across polarisation
- Develop critical reflexivity in your own thinking, bias and practice
- Strengthen ethical maturity in complex coaching scenarios
- Notice more background philosophy in real client presentation and conversations
- Increase your credibility in organisational, executive and supervision contexts
This qualification develops how you think as a coach or supervisor, not just what you do.
Qualification & Outcomes?
- Participants will be able to identify more of their own assumptions and preferences, recognise client assumptions more readily, challenge or support the implications of client mindsets, and achieve greater clarity and societal benefit in their coaching work.
- We learn more of ‘how’ we are a systemic coach. The course will strengthen your coaching philosophy, messaging and value to clients.
- Participants will improve their empathy and ability to depolarise sensitive situations, and have some fun doing so! Interesting and useful discussions will help participants improve their accuracy of thinking to put towards their coaching intent.
- By understanding systems and holding a range of social philosophy perspectives when working with client thoughts, ideas, issues and approaches, you will be better able to illuminate where assumptions might be originating, surface them, help the client to identify beliefs that are unhelpful for their systems, and assist your clients in their reflective and learning journey.
- The course creates the link between the course content and your coaching self-efficacy, fostering optimism, reflective growth, greater confidence and improved systemic coaching practices.
This is a qualification, not a webinar series or informal CPD.
Assessment & Qualification Structure
This is a formally assessed accredited qualification.
Participants will complete:
- Reflective learning logs
- Applied systemic case reflections
- Critical analysis of coaching practice
- Integration of theory into real client work
- Multiple choice responses
- One day – 6 hours – is allocated for your assessment preparation.
Assessment focuses on:
- Depth of systemic understanding
- Critical thinking capacity
- Reflexive awareness
- Ethical reasoning
- Applied coaching competence
Successful completion leads to:
Accredited Enhanced Training for Coaches Qualification (AETC)
Investment
£1,275 – UCA Members
£1,875 – Non-Members
(Non-members often join UCA first — it pays for itself quickly.)
Who is it for?
- You may be coaching individuals, teams, team-of-teams or meta-systems. This series is for coaches who want to be on top of their game throughout 2026, and be seen as current, relevant and with a strong theoretical and evidence-base underpinning the social philosophies that underpin coaching conversations.
- This UCA Accredited programme – AETC, is for experienced coaches who want to reconsider ‘systems’ and systemic coaching in more depth. Participants will gain both breadth and depth of ability to coach relating to human systems, fostering greater meaning and optimism in their work.
This programme is designed for:
- Experienced coaches (750+ coaching hours)
- Coaching supervisors
- Organisational and systemic practitioners
- Coaches working with complex client systems
- Coaches who want theoretical depth without losing practical application
This is for practitioners who want more than tools — and are ready for professional maturity, depth and intellectual stretch.
How it Works
- The sessions are experiential and co-generative as we work and deepen together in confidence. There are some slides. You may take your own notes. Any recordings are limited to viewing in the participants’ repository. Additional resources will be available. The programme includes a closed discussion forum.
- Together we put systemic coaching, related social philosophies, assumptions and critical thinking under the microscope. We discuss coaching scenarios and reflexive conversation. Colin will introduce ideas from many different systemic thinkers and social philosophers*, and from standpoint to evidence-based epistemology. We critique the claims of various ideas, in service of you becoming a better coach. Be prepared to have some of your ideas politely challenged – Colin’s too! And you don’t have to agree with everything, others or Colin – independent thought is the point. The programme will help you think, re-think, broaden and evolve your own positions and approaches, to best help your clients and systems.
- The Programme is limited to 16 places, so book now to avoid disappointment. Entry criteria: You are an Advanced level Coach (750+ hours of coaching delivered) or Coach Supervisor. If you are a less experienced Coach who is interested in this opportunity, we are creating a different version of this programme especially for you. Please contact us at events@universalcoachingalliance.org for details.
UCA Critical Thinking for Systemic Coaching – Assumptions & Philosophies Coaching Qualification
Classified as Accredited Enhanced Training for Coaches
- 42 hours in total: 18 hours together, 18 hours of self-study, and 6 hours for assessment preparation and submission.
- Each session is shared between a) stimulus material/theory, b) participant questions/exploration, and c) practical work.
* Our scope is not infinite, but we can critique and play with several leading ideas and thinkers from the major religions and Indigenous traditions, Greek, Reformation and Enlightenment thinkers, classical liberalism, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, Critical Theorists, post-Critical thinkers, social democrats, free marketeers, new capitalists, management cybernetics thinkers – and their implications and applications for coaching. Plus bring your own favourite ideas for critique.
Team and individual coaches are often trained that systems are complex and emergent. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this assumption?
Meet the Speaker – Colin Wilson
UCA is delighted to present Colin Wilson as our presenter/facilitator.
Colin is a twice Commonwealth Silver medallist in sport; coached England male and female teams and specialised in black, ethnic, female, neurodiversity and disability excellence. In the wider workplace he became a Senior National Manager and a National Head of High Performance Coaching in a national charity. He has been coaching and facilitating at senior level in corporates (7x FTSE100/Fortune 500), SMEs and non-profits for over 25 years, qualifying as a Supervisor of Executive Coaches and Consultants in 2013 – trained by CSTD and Bath Consultancy Group (Hawkins, Smith, Shohet, Ryde, Schwenk). He has delivered over 2,500 hours of executive coaching and supervision, and over 10,000 hours of high-performance sports coaching.
Colin’s technical background is in Economics and Statistics from University College London BSc which enables him to bring an analytical and critical thinking ability to his work on human and social systems. He is old enough to have been behind the Iron Curtain three times and has seen first-hand the terrible results of Marxism in practice.
Known for his engaging mix of conceptual and practical style, Colin seeks to help ‘coaches to become better coaches’. With thousands of hours of study into modern socio-economic issues, systems thinking and social philosophy, he makes complex or less visible concepts accessible, to assist coaches to think and feel for themselves and help their individual and team clients to greater awareness, achievement and fulfilment.
“Balancing feelings, high-quality thinking and appropriate empathy is the basis for coaching the success of any human system”.
Module 1
Systems and Coaching Sessions 1 and 2
Friday 17th April 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 2:
Friday 24th April 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 2:
Friday 17th April 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Our purpose – why this course, why now and why for the future?
- How did Coaching get to here? – a Brief History of Coaching Evolution.
- What are ‘systems’ and how do they work?
- Examples of systems.
- What is Systemic Coaching?
- Systemic Coaching Models.
- Social Philosophy?
- Critical Thinking?
- Ground rules – our social microcosm.
- Interactions, Relationships, Dynamics, Assumptions and Outcomes.
- Scientific Systems Thinking approaches.
- Introduction to Social Philosophies.
- Unseen influences on Coaching.
Module 2
Polarisation and Reflexivity Sessions 3 and 4
Session 3:
Friday 15th May 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 4:
Friday 29th May 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 2:
Friday 29th May 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
How Social Polarisation can happen.
- Polarisation and Coaching.
- Ourselves within Systems.
- Objectivity and Subjectivity.
- Reflexivity.
- Extremism and Moderation.
- Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism.
- Identifying abuses of democracy and individual rights by political Right and Left.
- Depolarisation Coaching.
- Mediative Coaching.
Module 3
Social Philosophies and their Impact on Our Coaching. Critical Thinking about Philosophies and Systems Sessions 5, 6 and 7
Session 5:
Friday 12th June 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 6:
Friday 26th June 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 7:
Friday 3rd July 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
If who we are shapes how we coach, this programme explores the philosophies that shaped us — and therefore our practice. We examine how social philosophies influence coaching across cultures, history and systems — from Indigenous traditions to Greek thought, Enlightenment thinking to Critical Theory, classical liberalism to postmodernism, and free markets to Marxist theory. At the heart of the work is the coach as reflective and thinking partner:
Participants explore:
This is about learning to think better in complexity — not just coach better in conversation. |
Module 4
Social Justice Perspectives Sessions 8 and 9
Session 8:
Friday 25th September 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 9:
Friday 2nd October 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Evolution of Social Justice perspectives through the ages.
- Assumptions and Outcomes.
- What is good?
- What has worked?
- At what cost?
- How much is too much?
- What is best now?
- Various client assumptions in DEI/EDI/JB, Climate and Ecology, Mental Health and Systemic Coaching.
- Importance of concepts of Prevention, Reduction and Scaling around Change in Social Systems. Two triangles. Perverse Incentives and Corruption. Pareto optimality.
- Participants practise Coaching Scenarios.
- Social justice and social good?
Module 5
Balancing Heaven and Earth:
The Transcendent in Coaching, Economics and Coaching
Session 10 and 11
Session 10:
Friday 9th October 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 11:
Friday 16th October 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Our deepest or highest concepts of the Universe.
- Concepts of God or transcendence and its influences on clients and our Coaching.
- Some common beliefs and worldviews unpacked.
- Acknowledging and challenging deeply-held beliefs.
- Balancing belonging and self-ownership.
- Coaching and Economic Systems.
- Indigenous, Agrarian, Enlightenment, Classical Liberal, Capitalist, Marxist etc.
- Poverty, Prosperity and Power.
- The recency of modern conveniences.
- Consumer surplus.
- Market failure. Economic externalities both good and bad (eg Climate).
- Government intervention and Government failure.
- The Economics of 2100 AD.
- Participants practice Coaching Scenarios around client assumptions.
Module 6
Putting
It
All
Together
Session 12
Session 12:
Friday 23rd October 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
Session 2:
Friday 26th June 2026
8:00 –9:30 am BST
What have we added to our personal ‘systemic coaching’ toolkit?
- Increasing client’s informed autonomy.
- Outstanding questions.
- Challenging the Presenter’s worldview – fun session!
- Summary of the Course.
- Bibliography.
- Assessment preparation and starting the Assessment.
- Conclusions, Ending our System Well!
1 Year of UCA: Celebrating Growth, Impact & the Future of Coaching! 