Participants are expected to practise as coaches throughout the duration of the programme and participate in coaching supervision organised for them by Ashridge. You will be able to draw on the expertise and research of the Ashridge Centre for Coaching, run by Erik de Haan, author of many books and articles on coaching, and who is also a programme director on AMEC. On successful completion of the programme you will also become Ashridge accredited coach.

The programme is offered over a two year period on a part-time basis. In both years, you engage in workshops at Ashridge. In the first year, you are required to keep a reflective journal of your coaching work with clients. Over the course of the second year, you will complete a reflective inquiry into your coaching work and submit an MSc thesis based on real case studies. Also during the second year, leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of coaching are invited to Ashridge, to complement the skills of the Ashirdge faculty. All AMEC tutors earn their living as executive coaches and consultants and understand as much of the commercial realities as they do of the dynamics and patterns of organisational life.

The programme is underpinned by two distinct approaches. We see organisations as social processes in which we as coaches and consultants participate. This perspective releases coaches and managers from the tyranny of finding the right answers and challenges them to develop a reflective, inquiring and learning orientation to the practice of both leadership and coaching. The second is our orientation towards coaching as a relational practice. We take the view that the relationship between coach and client is at the heart of effective coaching and is therefore the central vehicle for learning and change. We see this as a mutual and co-created relationship rather than a remedial contract to solve a problem.