Coach Development

Metaphor can be powerful in coaching. It is part of ICF Core Competency 7, Evoking Awareness, a competency that I often sense is least used and yet can bring powerful insight and new thinking more quickly. Let's explore what it is, why it is so useful in coaching and how coaches, and indeed anyone, might use metaphor to deepen awareness and facilitate insight. What is a metaphor? The word metaphor means “to carry over”. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily means one thing can also relate to something else and therefore ...

As we have been planning programming for 2021, it's caused us to reflect upon our overarching philosophy and approach to coach development and maturity—which underpins and positions how and why these programmes have been created. Understanding our underlying philosophy will help you get to know us and how we work a little better and why we've structured our programmes the way we do. Our philosophy of Coach Maturity As you may know, a coach needs to have at least 125-hours of coach-specific training to be eligible to apply for an International Coaching Federation (ICF) Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential. Some ...

Welcome to 2021! What a year 2020 has been. Last year I wrote about ‘New Starts and New Beginnings’ and this year I would still encourage you to do that exercise again, however, I felt this year I would also invite you to celebrate ... Celebrate what is right with your world! I have taken the phrase from a wonderful National Geographic photographer, Dewitt Jones (www.dewittjones.com), who has an amazing Ted talk and I would encourage you, as you start to think about next year and the years ahead, to watch the Ted Talk .The essence for me of his ...

Imagine eating a lovely piece of carrot cake with no icing. It’s a good, well-made cake. There is a thin filling of icing in the middle. When we finish eating, we are full, but are we satisfied? There is something missing… It’s a bit like that when we don’t have a really well-established session agreement (sometimes known as ‘contracting’). So, how do you make sure your coaching session is like eating the best carrot cake you have ever had? What I am noticing is that there is some misunderstanding about what the ICF Core Competencies or the PCC Markers actually ...

As a coach, have you ever had a client look at you strangely or ask you to repeat a question? As a mentor, I listen to many coaching session recordings. Often in these situations, I notice that the ‘language’ the two people are using is not necessarily in synch. Let's take a look at the way we use language as coaches and where the ‘language of coaching’ may trip us up as we work with our clients. Language, in both its written and spoken form, is used for many different reasons. Its primary use is to be informative, expressive, and ...

Background The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the world’s largest organisation of professionally trained coaches, with members in more than 140 countries worldwide and over 30,000 credential holders across more than 125 countries. The organisation was first established in 1995 to provide a space for all coaches to support each other’s development and help expand the profession of coaching. The ICF has grown rapidly during the past two decades, reflecting the development of coaching and its professionalisation. The ICF launched a single credential of Master Certified Coach (MCC), the first 34 of which were awarded in 1998. The following year, ...

As you know, Hilary and I are both passionate about continuous growth and learning as coaches. Well, I will share more of my insights to help you mature as a coach in a forthcoming book co-written with psychologist and coach Jonathan Passmore. Becoming a Coach: The Essential ICF Guide is for a coach of any experience level. Not only does it provide a strong foundation for coaching basics and standards, but it also takes you deeper into the art and science of coaching. And, for those of you craving more on the updated ICF Core Competencies model, this book delivers. ...

Choice: An act or the possibility of choosing between two or more options. Over the last few weeks, the word choice has been coming up for me and I wondered what it was saying to me. The reason it became so important during the last six weeks was that at the beginning of May, one day before my big birthday, I tripped on the Thames tow path and ended up breaking my left arm (the humerus bone). Having got back home from the Accident and Emergency dept., I had some immediate life choices to make about how to manage this ...

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) has introduced an updated Core Competency Model that comes into force in January 2021. The model sees the introduction of a brand-new competency: Embodies a Coaching Mindset. This addition underlines the need for coaches to consider how they are ‘being’ as well as what they are ‘doing’ when coaching. This blog will provide you with the details of this competency and will also give you insights on how to meet its requirements in practice. I will also explore the context and relevance of this competency and how it also informs and interweaves with other competencies ...