In addition to those seeking an Executive Coach wanting to know the coach has the appropriate experience personally, the methodology, which comes from coach training and then experience, is a significant consideration.
Occasionally coaches who are untrained challenge the importance of training. Consider this: do you want to hire a professional who is offering services based on them doing similar work or on their training to offer the specific services? The bottom line is that every respected profession has standards for training, competency, and ethics.
Start with the firs
t level of training. Sometimes coaches say, “Well I have been coaching for a while and I want to start with training at a higher level.” Consider this: if a professional has managed a movie theater, are they ready to immediately take over running an amusement park? After all, both are in the entertainment industry and both involve management experience. It makes sense for them to learn about the equipment, inventory, facilities, staffing requirements, liability issues, etc. etc. first. The same is true for coaches – without the basic training they are unaware of what they don’t know. The basic level of training builds a solid foundation that is essential for effectively building coaching skills and awareness of ICF standards.
For example, the Certified Professional Coach class often includes coaches who have been doing the work for years. Consistently their feedback is that they learned a tremendous amount in the program. The next step is the Certified Master Coach training for solidifying the coaching competencies, expanding coaching strengths, and adding dimension to the coaching services such as group coaching.
Then the coach is ready for advanced training, the Certified Executive Coach program, where the focus is specific and includes expanding subject matter expertise through direct application tools plus additional techniques for coaching executives.
