There are students who are just looking for a professional insertion. They want a well-paid job in an industry that will hire.
And there are those I have been coaching since 2004, who are looking for much more than that and for whom the usual methods with tests and assessments of coaches, psychologists and HR can do nothing.
Coach and Author, graduated from the University of Paris VIII in work psychology, ergonomics and coaching. He has worked at the University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle and the University of Paris Orsay, in a training program for graduates and doctoral students to help them optimize their communication and identify their career goals and future jobs.
He has helped thousands of students, teenagers and adults to find their jobs intelligently, with the main concern of offering guidance without influence.
Président and founding member of the French Association of School and Student Coaching, he is regularly solicited by the media and has been interviewed by French newspapers, including "Le Monde" and "Le Figaro".
Interviewed by : (Click on the logos to download the PDF's)
Avoiding influence in guidance has always been of paramount importance to me and even more so in recent years when everyone has a theory or advice to give you and many ways to spread it.
17 years of experience in a guidance program that does not influence you, with personal development, where each personality can express itself autonomously in search of meaning and at a price accessible to all.
Academic and Student Coaching is a type of individualized support that favors questioning in order to allow the student to identify and resolve his difficulties and to reach the objectives he has set for himself by promoting autonomy.
Coaching will focus on the student's specific problems, as a whole, and the coach will adjust his or her support so that the student can find solutions and overcome his or her current difficulties. Depending on the issues, the coach may be more like a trainer than a coach.
Why do I specify the posture of the coach?
Simply because when we talk about coaching, it refers to a very specific method. This method is based on questioning in order to bring the client to question himself and to find ways to solve his own problems and this without influence. In short, the coach must ask neutral questions that do not influence and must not give advice!
The coach intervenes at a crucial period of the studies during which many problems can lead to discouragement which are of course also influenced by the personal and sentimental life of the student.
Certain choices must then be made according to the situation and require various and often complementary actions according to the individuals to advance, improve or surpass themselves. This sentence may seem vague, but it means that very often the problems are multiple and interrelated, such as
- problems of self-confidence and orientation
- problems of motivation and organization or work methods
- self-confidence and difficulties in public speaking
Coaching is the engine of this change, it serves to find solutions to make it work. The coach has the duty to adapt and to propose a support specifically designed for his client and his situation.
Problems can also arise later, without the source being really obvious or identified.
Being oriented without building a well thought-out professional project can lead to various problems (concentration, organization, motivation, absenteeism) that seem to be dissociated, but which often have a single cause: how can one be motivated, work and advance with desire in one's studies without having a clearly defined objective?
You have to ask yourself the right questions at the right time. Before the baccalaureate, students tend to consider that they have time to worry about it, then time passes and they end up making a choice by default or taking a broad option that will eventually allow them to orient themselves more precisely later on. This lack of in-depth reflection on their future life and professional project often leads them to question their choice, after one or two years of study and sometimes even up to the doctorate, to take only the example of a university career, making them lose their time and their motivation as they go.
Coaching is today the only valid method to define one's career orientation. That is, when it is really coaching and the student has not been influenced!
The figures are indisputable and come from the Ministry of Education, concerning the current orientation services such as tests, assessments and advisors: 50% of failure or abandonment in the first year after high school.
I recommend that you read my articles entitled: "How to choose a school and professional student coach" and "How to choose a guidance service" where I explain in more detail how to analyze a profile and a guidance service and what you need to be careful about.
The profession is not regulated, and some people call themselves coaches of anything and everything. You can't fail to be vigilant, especially for teenagers or young adults who are easily influenced and sometimes lack lucidity and critical thinking.
Here is a humorist who has better understood and defined the problem than many journalists even specialized, I invite you to laugh (If you understand French, unless there is subtitles):
You want to choose a REAL professional coach?
You must, in a rigorous and thorough way, verify what you are told. It is not because it is a firm with many coaches or an organization with a certain notoriety that you will have the quality and the expected service.
From one day to the next, sites appear presenting coaches with years of experience, an activity as a teacher, trainer or coach in dozens of different schools... above all, look for tangible elements.
2 quick tips for independent coaches:
- Check the SIRET via company information sites to find out when the activity was created. (You will find my SIRET in the footer of my website)
- Check the WHOIS for the date of creation of the website of the coach or the service, if you do not find the SIRET it can enlighten you.
Beyond the story that is told to you :
- Check the coaching training followed and its content, the diplomas of the coach and their date of obtaining (some coaching trainings deliver a diploma after only a few hours)
- Check the coach's membership to an association, the only guarantee of control of his professionalism, deontology and ethics (because at the time of his admission, a file is required verifying many prerequisites).
Unfortunately, some coaches claim to belong to an association, but it is not true! Only a quick search in the directory of coaches of these associations via their website will allow you to be sure.)
Be vigilant, don't be fooled by the image/marketing/speech and the statements and slogans of all kinds. If you can't really verify what you are told...
Be careful, do not choose an individual coach or an organization, even a recognized one, offering academic or student coaching, in a hurry, the stakes are high so I insist once again, take the time to check.
To go further, notably by having more elements on the necessary verifications when it is about a big firm or an organization and to have an example of dangerous usurpation having deceived the vigilance of the journalists of the TV Show "Zone Interdite" on M6, I invite you to read my dedicated article : How to Choose a Professional Academic Coach ?
Academic and student coaching is a problem-solving method based on questioning, rephrasing and projection, and is based on the student's own resources.
It is a method that brings concrete and measurable/verifiable results,
Coaching is a short, productive, efficient, empowering and focused action,
It makes the student active and responsible,
The work is based on the specific situation of the student, it is a personalized approach,
The field of intervention of coaching extends to a large number of problems.
It is truly a student-centered problem-solving method and a process of reflection and introspection, aimed at finding solutions or making choices. This method makes the student ACTIVE by pushing them to reflect on themselves, what they are doing and what they need to do and this helps them to overcome their difficulties, find their way or reach a specific goal.
Coaching is a type of "à la carte" support, which is based on the student's specific problem and which aims to mobilize his resources, to apply his solutions and to make him autonomous with regard to his problem AND the coach.
In the majority of school or university problems, coaching unblocks the reflection or the problems, in 3 to 6 sessions on average.
Coaching can be proposed for all problems related to the following dimensions, for example:
Orientation,
Professional project,
Reorientation,
Preparation for exams, competitive exams, oral exams,
Work and writing of thesis,
Motivation,
Organization,
Methodology,
Self-confidence,
Preparation for job search or internship,
Preparation for job interviews.
The above names of the different types of coaching and their main purpose are somewhat artificial and are only framed in this way for the sake of a presentation that is intended to be as "meaningful" as possible. In most cases, in a concrete case, we may have to combine several actions to take into account the student's problems as a whole and to reach the set objective.
Moreover, when the student is asked to identify his or her problems and define his or her need for support at the first meeting, it is not uncommon for the problems to be multiple.
The effectiveness of coaching is based on a targeted and relevant reflection between the coach and his client, on a situation, to define potential solutions, to make choices and to implement them in order to progress towards the objective. Coaching is based on concreteness and tries to bring concrete solutions to be implemented between sessions to validate them. It is quite simple:
diagnosis > search for the best solution > test > validation
and if it doesn't work, we start again.
The personal investment of the student is really the key.
Therefore, when the student is forced to follow a coaching program and does not invest himself, it is common that the coaching is ineffective.
Again, coaching is a short, productive, effective, empowering, focused and concrete action that can occur at any time of the year.
The number of sessions is limited in time and depends on the issue. It varies from 3/6 sessions to a maximum of ten sessions. The duration of the sessions I propose is one hour, but can vary if needed between 1 hour and 1 hour 30 minutes.
As you can see by doing a search for the creation of the domain name of this site "coaching-etudiant.net", it is online since 2007, three years after the creation of my activity, you can check it here : WHO IS data for coaching-etudiant.net
The texts of the original site were transferred to this site in 2012, during the redesign. Being part of the pioneer sites on the web, I observe with regret that many freelancers or large groups or their partners are inspired to present their services and to confuse the issue they modify the text but the idea and the way of presenting it remains. Sometimes some coaches do not hesitate to make simple copy / paste.
I hope you've looked at the link above, as it provides definitions from the Intellectual Property Code and from Geneviève Koubi, professor and author of books on plagiarism.
The Wikipedia definition traduced, "Plagiat" in French, (accessed on 05/10/2021) seems to me particularly relevant: "Plagiarism is a moral, civil or commercial fault, which can be penalized. It consists in copying an author or monopolizing the work of a creator in the field of arts without quoting him or her, as well as in being strongly inspired by a model that one omits, deliberately or by negligence, to designate. It is often equated with intangible theft. Some make a distinction between plagiarism, which is crude borrowing, and "markdown," where the text undergoes various modifications to confuse the issue."
To you dear colleague, I ask you not to base your articles on my texts or more precisely to quote me and remind you that all the content of this site is protected by copyright.
I therefore suggest you to use the "Harvard reference system" for all your quotations! I intend to start using it too. Of course, they are done for all electronic sources and therefore for website or blog articles.
There are generators that you can find through your favorite search engine, that said you should at least indicate: Last name, initials, (year of publication), "Title of the article", Available on: full url (date of access).
Here's an example of what this might look like for one of my blog posts:
Vivier, P.V , (2021), "Critical review of Simon Sinek Start With Why book and concept", Available at: https://www.coaching-etudiant.net/the_article_URL.html, (Accessed 02/11/2021)
Fact checking, a very fashionable term, is one of the tools at the disposal of critical thinking. It allows, in particular, to quickly verify the hidden face of a situation or the veracity of a statement. It has become indispensable today, whatever the subject.
This article is largely composed of an excerpt from the first part of my book where, as if we were not sufficiently influenced by our biases, I deconstruct a certain number of beliefs that influence our choices: “Overcome Influence And Thrive - The Career Change Program for Employees”. This will allow you to see how fact checking, even more than elsewhere, is essential in career change.
I will just deal with this subject in the form of concrete and real examples. As always, the amalgam or the simple bullshit is a formidable tool of misinformation and the time needed to correct them plays in favor of their authors who can say almost anything as long as they are not part of a scientific approach and their work will never be reread by a committee of experts in the same field, and that most people will not verify. This is also an effect of authority bias.
Authority bias is a tendency to overestimate the value of a person’s opinion because of their status, eloquence, type of argument, tone or image in relation to us. Many external elements can influence it, such as the tendency to repeat certain key phrases two or three times in a speech or presentation. It is a manipulative mechanism that contributes to producing an
As we discussed in the article “Can we control our choices?” that I invite you to read first, a choice is an undefined mixture of emotion and reasoning that is totally dependent on the context and the type of choice to be made. To simplify, a choice is mainly the result of emotions and processes that we do not control, combined with more or less thinking conscious and unconscious.
We make many unconscious choices all day long. You also make some choices that involve conscious reasoning, whether it is a choice you have to make in the moment, or a choice you have to make later.
In order to rationalize a choice, it is necessary to implement a voluntary reflection. It is essential to have as precise an idea as possible of what one really wants and to be as objective and rigorous as possible in the nature and elaboration of the arguments but also in the evaluation of the consequences, and finally to accept them.
You are invariably looking for the most acceptable compromise.
Making a choice is, above all, choosing a consequence.
We can dissociate certain contexts:
To make a choice alone, which engages only us, including in its consequences like choosing a strawberry or vanilla scoop in its ice cream cone.
Making a choice alone, but one that has consequences for others, such as a career choice.
Making a choice together, where it is a search for compromise so that the consequences suit both parties in roughly equal and acceptable proportions such as an amicable divorce or the choice
I chose to write this article because I have long been aware that many clients make temporary or definitive choices that they sometimes find difficult to explain and we often find ourselves having to deconstruct elements that were based on perceptions, beliefs, etc., revealing a lack of reflection. As we will see, there are many explanations for this phenomenon. Education is the first of them, thinking, analyzing and reflecting is learned, and on the other hand, the brain naturally tends to make instinctive choices.
I’ll stop you right here, our relationship to life is not only commercial, fortunately, I won’t deal with this issue from a marketing or only influence point of view, because the act of buying is a specific process that is not at all the main point here and because a choice involves emotions, therefore they are inevitably influenced. I have decided to approach the question of choice in its globality and without compartmentalizing the approach in the manner of economics, psychology or philosophy, which would be far too reductive for such a complex phenomenon for which having indisputable proofs seems impossible. It is for me totally absurd, whatever the approach, to want to normalize, categorize or predict a choice according to predefined parameters or a priori consensual scale of value, each individual having his own history, education, values which affect his emotions and evaluation criteria. This should not necessarily be taken as irrationality, since a choice is
Here is a non-exhaustive list of some indicators that I have quickly put together for parents that will allow them to identify that the school is not taking care of their gifted children as it should and is not adapting its methods and supervision. This is despite the fact that the national education system claims to do everything possible to support them according to their needs and the recommendations of specialists.
Of course, nothing dispenses with having a good knowledge of the specificities of your gifted children, particular or shared. I therefore encourage you to get information and training on the subject, as this is probably the best way to accompany your child serenely and intelligently into his adult life.
It is not a question of defining how many indicators you need to take into account to be sure of the situation and determine if your child's needs are known, taken into account and provided for.
It's about using common sense, because not everything is necessary and just because you identify a few things in this list doesn't mean that your child is not being properly supported.
As you will see from some of the indicators, it is necessary to know your child's specificities, but above all his real level of knowledge, especially in the different subjects, which invariably involves personal work, on weekends and during the vacations, via revision books and exercise books allowing him to progress at his own pace and to set himself challenges. This will allow you to
