Our Vision. Our Mission. Our History
Erickson College has been a worldwide educational organization since 1980, providing professional training programs in coaching and human development across the globe. Erickson is dedicated to expanding the key technologies of Coaching & Business Leadership.
Under the direction of Marilyn Atkinson, PhD and Lawrence McGinnis, LLB , the Erickson team has developed a range of innovative technologies, solutions and programs with the aim of defining the 21st century paradigm for Business Coaching, Innovation, and Leadership development.
Our Mission is to create improvement in the lives of everyone on this planet. We believe that the practice of true coaching, giving a person the experience of finding one’s inner genius, and the utilization of solution focused coaching methodologies to produce improved, authentic and ecological results is so powerful as to be a breakthrough in our civilization.
People who are being coached experience, often for the first time in their lives, a space of being listened to wholeheartedly and non judgmentally. In this space, ideas flow much more clearly, easily and aligned with deep values. This is a powerful experience, and when it is accompanied by elegantly framed questions asked in a systemic manner that produce deeply insightful answers, it produces over time a deeper awareness in the person of more effective methods of communication.
This awareness, and the coaching attitude is then often taken into their families, friends the workplace and the world at large. We want the values inherent in coaching and practice of coaching to spread throughout multiple cultures and nations and become a way of being for all humanity.
Erickson College is a member of the International Coach Federation, provider of Continuing Coaching Education for Coaches and member of the Association of Coach Training Organizations.
History
Erickson College International draws from over 20 years of experience in the field of human development. Today, Erickson’s International Coach Federation Accredited program, The Art & Science of Coaching is the most recognized coach training program in the world.
This achievement stems in many ways from the persistent research and experiences of Erickson’s founder, Marilyn Atkinson, PhD.
Dr. Atkinson was part of the gestalt movement in the ‘60s and spent time with Fritz Perls, and then in the ‘70s with Virginia Satir. She worked with the primal approach to psychology and was very much interested in the rise of the commitment frame in large personal workshops where people were able to commit to taking control of their lives and moving forward.
Dr. Atkinson was particularly attracted to the work of Dr. Milton Erickson, an American Psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, who was noted for amazing results with patients. He had a brilliant inquiring mind and was the foremost of the expert therapists studied by the early students of the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) community. Erickson had evolved a number of precepts through practice and observation which, while at first hearing were surprising, actually turned out to be true. Many of Erickson’s precepts which when applied both in and outside of hypnotherapy, were highly effective in counseling.
Dr. Atkinson then developed her own seminars through those years, working with NLP and Ericksonian hypnotherapy, solution-focused methods and accelerated learning, which were all major learning frames for her and many of other people.
Opening the BC NLP Institute in Vancouver in 1980, Dr. Atkinson became the first person to bring NLP to Canada. She then opened the NLP Institute in Toronto, Ontario, and conducted multiple public courses and private courses for over a 5 year period engaging both public and corporate clients, and doing large projects with corporations such as IBM.
Dr. Atkinson discovered that although she was teaching people what she called genius skills; they did not have a forum to continue to practice these skills consistently such that they deeply integrated these skills. To answer this need, Dr. Atkinson established Erickson College in 1995 as a place where students would have adequate time to develop that quality of integration necessary for their continued development in the field of counseling.
As Erickson College developed into a recognized centre for learning, Dr. Atkinson refocused the school away from counseling, and instead began the development of a coach training program. This was an easy transition, as much of the effectiveness of Solution Focused Counseling came from its focus on the future, and highly elegant questioning models that focused on the solution to problems, rather than the problem state.
This model, with its emphasis on visualizing the future, the use of NLP models and NLP processes that Dr. Atkinson had originated, a questioning structure that is based on how the human mind actually functions; was welcomed by both apprentice coaches and experienced coaches as a significant contribution to the coaching movement.
Building on that initial model, Dr. Atkinson launched The Art & Science of Coaching in April 2000 as a course address the needs of the burgeoning coaching movement. In 2003, the 16 day Art & Science of Coaching program was accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF) as an ICF Accredited Coach Training Program (ACTP).
With a mission of truly connecting the heart and the mind for all of humanity, Marilyn Atkinson and the Erickson training staff are continually breaking new ground and bringing the coaching movement to the world. Erickson College International now offers training programs in over 30 countries, as well as online. With an expanded training faculty and new virtual resources, Erickson College is proud to maintain a reputation as the ‘Gold Standard of Coach Training’.