The future of coaching

A client asked me yesterday about training to become a coach, and she wondered if coaching would be a fad and a qualification would not be worth anything in the long term. I made a number of points in reply, including:

1. There are no certification bodies for coaching. Just because a company sets itself up to sell certificates (you know who I mean) doesn't make them a professional standards body
2. Coaching isn't a profession and is unlikely to ever be in the same way that consulting isn't because that word defines such a wide body of knowledge
3. The majority of coach training today is aimed at selling the dream to would be life coaches. They do not provide value for people wanting to coach in a business environment
4. The coach schools don't understand how to judge performance on the client's results, so they fall back on the old habit of measuring the coach's behaviour. So the presumuption is that the coach follows the process he or she has been taught, and the client will get what he or she needs from that. The process is perfect, all the coach has to do is follow it. Unfortunately, our clients demand a great deal more than that!

Within excellerate, we are currently debating the issue of standards and how they apply to us. Our current thinking is that the pseudo-standards that some coaching schools have created do not apply to the high level that we work at. They would be akin to saying the quality standard for a car is that it must have four wheels. How does that then enable you to differentiate between a Hyundai and an Aston Martin?

On the other hand, I am keen for us to be open and receptive to scrutiny. All too often, people claim they are above the standards as an excuse for not living up to the standards. Therefore our intention is to put in place sound self governance procedures to ensure that our clients get a consistently high quality of service. These procedures will be based on the client's experience, not the coaching model.

The service that we deliver is not defined by somebody listening into a coaching call and ticking off competencies on a check list. For a start, only life coaches work by telephone. For another thing, you can't reduce the client's aspirations down to a supervisor's check list.

Another thing I said to her: I meet lots of people who spend a lot of money on coach training, only to say, "I realised I have always been a coach, I just called it being a good manager/listener/consultant/parent/whatever". So this tells me that the popular coaching schools are teaching a set of skills so basic that the only way people get value from the course is by paying so much money that they convince themselves it must have been valuable. After all, no-one is stupid enough to spend £3000 on training they don't need, are they?

So, we can separate coaching into two different things; the activity of working with someone to help them achieve what they want, and the label of coaching. The former has always and always will be around. The latter is a fad. When the next big thing comes along, it will be called something else and will have fantastic new techniques and will require lots of training. Perhaps it will be called person centred consulting, or psycho-transformational performance development, or humanistic guided learning or interactive personal learning? You heard it here first.

But one thing is certain for me; the results that we are able to help clients achieve will always be valuable, and the maintenance of our own ethical and professional standards will always be more important than a certificate.