Guest lecture on “Online Health Coaching” as part of the research focus Public Health (at the University of Klagenfurt)
On June 18, 2021, Prof. Elke Berninger-Schäfer gave a guest lecture on the topic “Online Health Coaching”. The guest lecture was initiated by Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Graf as part of the research focus “Public Health” at the University of Klagenfurt. Prof. Dr. Berninger-Schäfer is (clinical) psychologist, founder and owner of the “Karlsruher Institut“, and chief executive of the CAI GmbH. She is a leader in coaching practice, science and research, and a pioneer in the field of online coaching in the German-speaking world. In 2018, her book “Online-Coaching” was published by Springer Verlag.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.
Mark Twain
In her highly informative talk, Prof. Dr. Berninger-Schäfer first talked about health promotion, health management, and health coaching at an individual and structural/business level as well as the health models and criteria underlying online health coaching. By health coaching she means:
The use of coaching methods and coaching process control on health issues as resource activating, goal- and solution-oriented support of individuals, groups, teams, and organisations for health-promoting changes in lifestyle and working style as well as healthy management.
Elke Berninger-Schäfer
The transfer of coaching methods and coaching processes to the online segment is, according to Prof. Dr. Berninger-Schäfer, not to be taken for granted, but requires an extension of competences to be a serious, high-quality and ethically founded. These competences are:
- Coaching concept and factors of effectiveness in coaching and methodical know-how
- Power factors in online coaching and methodical know-how regarding the application of online tools
- Competence in media communication
- Technical competence (equipment, fallback scenarios, data protection, online tools, etc.)
To meet these requirements, Prof. Dr. Berninger-Schäfer started to develop an interactive and professional coaching platform called “CAI – Cyber Anthropoethic Intelligence” in 2013. The platform does not only offer simple and clear client management, but also the implementation, structuring and documentation of different processes (business coaching, conflict coaching, individual and group coaching). The versatile and extensive fields of application of integrated tools (such as sets of questions, whiteboard, inner team, system image/deployment, sociogram, resource tree, and much more – see photo gallery) were presented by Prof. Dr. Berninger-Schäfer with three examples.
With the help of this or similar platforms and tools qualified online health coaches can neatly use the empirical established power factors of online communication for their own purpose:
- increased self-disclosure
- high self-refleciton
- increased self-controlling/feeling of control
- high focusing
- transfer support
Contact information:
Prof. Dr. Elke Berninger-Schäfer
info@karlsruher-institut.de