The central question for CEOs and HR/OD departments is: “How to find a knowledgeable and qualified coach in whose care you can entrust your company’s most prized assets – members of your leadership team”? Coaching is a relatively new leadership development system, and is largely unregulated. Any number of people can start calling themselves ‘Coaches’ and start offering coaching services. Some of them may actually be doing a reasonably good job! But how can one be sure? It must be challenging for companies looking for coaching services to find the right coach. Despair not – help is on the way. I’ll try to make things simpler for you.
‘Coaches’ Without Systematic Training and Accreditation The only issue with such coaches is that you can never be sure of what they are offering. In all probability, they are offering a combination of training, consulting and coaching. Not a bad combination, you may think. The problem here is that, when coached by these coaches, the sustainable development, empowerment, self-discovery and behavioural change that ‘coaching’ can bring, may elude your leaders. Solution: Find a coach whose expertise you can trust because he/she is properly trained, certified and credentialed by reputable and renowned coaching institutions.
Training and Certification
You are in luck! There are a large number of coach-training institutions offering a variety of training options for would-be coaches. Predictably, the quality and duration of these training courses varies from one institution to another. When a coach-training institution offers a three-day training course (or two-day, or even one-day), it will issue a certificate of ‘attendance’ or ‘successful completion’ of the said course. With this certificate in hand, the course participants earn the right to call themselves ‘certified coaches’. Two more questions arise:
- Is there a way to find out about the curriculum, teachers and overall quality of the training institution?
- Are three days enough time for a participant to learn and practise the art of coaching to qualify for your attention as a coach for your leaders?
Unlikely! This brings us back to square one.
Approved / Accredited Training Institutions by a ‘Coaching Body’
Brilliant! Let’s find a supra-coaching body – an association or federation, which oversees the work of coach training institutions, giving them some measure of credibility. There are many – all claiming to be torch bearers for a noble cause. The question that arises here is about the standing of the coaching association itself. Don’t take me wrong – they may be doing a good job. But a lingering doubt remains. More questions:
- What subject matter should be taught during training?
- What is an appropriate duration of coaching training?
- How much experience should a coach have to qualify for your attention?
Enter the International Coach Federation (ICF)
Now we are talking. Don’t take me wrong. I do not represent ICF in any way – but it IS the largest, one of the oldest and the best organized coaching body. ICF has over 30,000 member coaches. (Criteria for becoming a member are quite stiff). It sets standards, accredits and monitors coach-training institutions. It has put together a list of 70 core competencies it wants its accredited institutions to teach, plus a Code of Conduct it wants all member coaches to adhere to. That is why certificates issued by institutions accredited by ICF have a greater value and credibility. However, some questions remain – how much training and experience should a coach have? Who is to decide?
Let’s Go One Step Further! ICF Credentials
The questions raised above have been answered by ICF. Its top decision makers have made things easier for corporate HR / OD departments. Coaches who have successfully completed a coach training programme of a duration of 125 hours or more, and have completed a total of 100 (or more) hours of documented coaching, qualify to apply for ICF’s ACC (Associate Certified Coach) credential. However, this credential needs to be renewed after completing additional mandatory training. It doesn’t stop here – there are higher level credentials. After amassing 750 hours of coaching experience, you qualify for PCC (Professional Certified Coach) credential. The ultimate credential is the MCC (Master Certified Coach), which requires 2,000 hours of coaching experience, 200 hours of approved training, 10 hours of Mentor Coaching and a couple of other performance evaluation measures.
So, if your selected coach has earned an ICF credential, you can be assured that he/she has undergone required training, supervision and has passed a standardised practicle exam. Plus a minimum level of coaching experience has also been verified.
Other Coaching Bodies
To be fair with other coaching associations, many of them have also set standards and criteria for membership and credentialing process, though their following is in no way comparable to ICF. The more prominent of those (that I have discovered so far) are:
- International Association of Coaching
- Association for Coaching
- Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision
- European Mentoring and Coaching Council
Experience and exposure of Coaches:
Having settled the matter of coach-training, certification and credentials, let’s move on to the matter of experience and exposure of coaches. Unlike a consultant, who is an expert in his/her particular field, and prescribes standardized solutions based on his/her knowledge and experience, coaches are primarily experts in coaching skills. (We already know how to verify approved coach training, certification and credentials).
Coaches believe that clients are the real experts in their respective fields. What a coach does is to empower them, support and guide them to crystalize their solutions and then helps them implement those solutions. This he/she does by removing real or imaginary barriers, by clarifying a client’s beliefs and by helping him/her discover and modify disempowering underlying beliefs. From this point of view, a coach doesn’t need to have technical or professional knowledge or skill of a client’s industry or trade. However, it helps if a coach has professional experience and life exposure to match that of a client. For instance, take Mr. A, a certified and credentialed coach with long corporate experience, who is being considered for coaching a senior corporate executive. He will definitely have an edge over other coaches if he has ‘been there’, by way of having worked in senior level corporate assignments during his professional experience in the past. Mr. B, a young and relatively inexperienced, yet certified and credentialed coach, may be able to do a good job of executive coaching. However, it may be too much to expect that he will command the same level of credibility, trust and success, as Mr. A does.
(Bakhtiar Khawaja, ACC, is Senior Executive Coach ↦ CEO with ‘Coaching Resolve’)
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