Becoming a Coach
Becoming a Coaching Professional
One of the big buzz words these days is Coaching. I, myself, advise most of my clients to undertake a Coaching & Mentoring Course of some description because it looks superb on your CV. Big companies claiming to value true leadership and people management will want to recruit others with this kind of certification on their CVs.
If you have an Executive committee in your company, I would seriously consider having a training budget for the ILM Level 5-7 Coaching & Mentoring Courses (Institute of Leadership & Management through City & Guilds UK). Not only does it count towards the CPD (continuing professional development) of your senior team but their newfound ability to coach and mentor their teams well will pay dividends in your retention rates.
Apart from ILM however, are there other Coaching courses out there and how appropriate are they?
There are lots of courses being run out there at the moment, and many free courses to boot. If you are interested in finding out a little more without committing too much these are ideal. These won’t give you a recognized qualification, however.
On Saturday I attended a day long course which was the Introduction to the International Coaching Certification run by the SPEAKup Group. The group have worked with the NHS, the Cabinet Office and SKY for example. The course founder and trainer is the President of the Association for Professional Coaching. Ralph Watson, who trained with Tony Robbins and Tad James.
He informed us that the Coaching industry in the UK is currently unregulated due to the levels of complexity around it. However, if you wish to have a recognized qualification which would put you in the top 1% of all coaches worldwide you should consider one which is recognized by a regulating body such as EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council), ICF (International Coaching Federation), or APC (Association for Professional Coaching) to name a few of the more prominent.
This course was a mixture of Coaching, NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and Timeline Coaching. NLP itself is an interesting course to undertake. If it’s not offered as part of a Coaching course and you are interested in becoming a professional coach, you should definitely explore an NLP certification. My personal experience of this is that it is far better undertaken as part of an interactive group – don’t try to do an online NLP course on your own.
If you are interested in a bit of a refresher on the topic however, or a more in-depth introduction, David Keys online offers lots of different packages ranging from as little as 7 Euros. However, in order to be taken seriously in this field you really need to become a Certified Practitioner or Master Practitioner in NLP. You can research, for example, ANLP (Association for Neuro Linguistic Programming), ABNLP (American Board of NLP) or INLPTA (International NLP Training Association).
Personal CPD
There were 120 people on Saturday’s course run over Zoom. The layout of the course very much intrigued me and from that alone I learned a lot. I learned that you could create Break Out Rooms in Zoom which means you can have interaction with many of the course participants without it becoming a mass free for all. I also learned some good techniques for dealing with the no-showers and those who think that they can leave their cameras on and disappear for the day but still get a certificate! When you start to create courses using this kind of learning platform it’s useful to see how other people do it.
I was also intrigued by the way the course was packaged and if you’re thinking of branching out yourselves, offering coaching workshops, this method was successful. So, you sign up for the 1-day free course during which you get to know the person you’ll be trained by and see how his methods work. Before lunch you are invited to undertake the longer certification course which goes further in depth on each of the topics you have just explored, since you are on this course you can pay for the next one in installments and can take advantage of a lower price. The course continues and then before the end you are invited to undertake a Platinum package certification course which takes it to the very next level and of course you can take advantage of the next level. It’s a good selling technique and I’m sure they got some customers from it.
What next?
There are of course, many different types of coaches who use varied techniques. Perhaps ask yourselves these questions:
1. Who are you?
2. What are you?
3. What do you specialize in or what are you an expert in?
4. What makes you special?
5. Why should anyone want to be coached by you?
6. What are your values?
7. What is your Social Mission?
8. What’s in it for your clients?
9. What kind of sessions do you see yourself running?
Once you have a better understanding of what you want to do you can choose the best course and accreditations for you.
C&E Coaches:
Our Mentoring packages are based upon you having a dedicated mentor guiding you through at least a 3-month programme; during which time you will more than likely be referred to a Coach. The coaches we work with dedicate their time to helping you in a particular area of expertise. I call this the ‘Library of Minds’ – much of the time clients are being referred for Health & Wellness coaching as a compliment to their Mentoring packages. However, we also work with coaches in business, financial accounting, hospitality, working overseas and much more.
If you would be interesting in learning more about our bank of coaches and the kind of things they specialize in, please check out the Library of Minds page here.