invite CHANGE

Invite CHANGE

In Celebration of Coaching

by Amoráh Ross, MCC

Celebration is a hallmark of the coaching profession. As coaches we support our clients to remember to celebrate not only their accomplishments, but also the learning gained from failures and mis-steps. It is fitting, therefore, that the profession remember to celebrate itself, for its past accomplishments, its present focus and its future potential.

Celebrating the Profession of Coaching

When I entered coaching in 1997 the profession was just beginning to define itself as a distinct modality.  My chosen teachers were the coaching pioneers Laura Whitworth and Henry Kimsey-House, founders of The Coaches Training Institute and authors of “Co-Active Coaching” and Fran Fisher, founder of Living Your Vision®  and the Academy for Coach Training (ACT), which is the forerunner for today’s inviteCHANGE Transformative Coaching Paradigm. I aligned with these mentors/teachers because they shared my belief that coaching was something important whose time had come and that coaching had potential for enormous global impact.

In those early days of 1997 there were two ‘official’ professional bodies: the Professional and Personal Coaches Association (PPCA) and the International Coach Federation (ICF). The first coaching conference I attended was produced by the PPCA in Atlanta GA in the Fall of 1997.  It was here that board members from both organizations came together to finalize their merger into what has become today’s ICF. They demonstrated the power of synergistic collaboration that is the essence of coaching and the way in which heart-aligned collaborators can accomplish seemingly impossible goals using the coaching paradigm as a basis.

In 1998 the ICF established the initial criteria for coaches to become credentialed and awarded 50 credentials: 48 MCC and 2 PCC. During 1999, the year I became a credentialed coach, there were 228 credentials issued: 140 MCC and 88 PCC. As of June 2008, there are 3,851 ICF-credentialed coaches worldwide: 1,996 ACC, 1,232 PCC and 623 MCC.

It was also in 1999 that the first three accredited coach training programs (ACTPs) were sanctioned by the ICF, all within one day of each other: The Coaches Training Institute, Academy for Coach Training and CoachU. To-date there are approximately 53-56 ACTPs worldwide with applications in process for at least 34 others. There are also several approved coach specific training hours (ACSTH) programs worldwide as well as numerous ICF-sanctioned continuing coach education (CCE) courses.

In that same pivotal year, the founders of the first three ACTPs along with the founders of five other coach training programs established monthly conference calls to develop and build bridges with one another, demonstrating yet again the collaborative mindset that epitomizes this profession. They formally organized into the Association of Coach Training Organizations (ACTO) in May 2000 which currently has 34 member organizations.

Soon thereafter, the coaching professional standards and ethics were brought forward by ICF as part of the ongoing effort for our profession to ‘self-govern,’ as well as establishing a process through which a coach’s conduct can be reviewed if a complaint is lodged by a client. As a testament to the integrity of coaches, this process has been invoked only a few times since its inception.

As a vibrant and growing profession, coaching is now part of the corporate landscape with both internal and external coaches providing ongoing support for employees and executives at all levels.  IBM, Deloitte & Touche, Boeing and other organizations are among the early adopters reaping the benefit of adding value and meaning to their employees’ work experience through coaching.

We have much to celebrate as a profession…and there’s even more to come!

Celebrating the Passion of Coaching

In 11 years as a professional coach, I’ve met many other coaches and to a person we carry the same passions in life that inform our desire to serve as coach. Each wants to make a positive and powerful difference in the world; each unwaveringly believes in the inherent wholeness and capabilities of the human spirit; each creates the freedom to be fiercely independent and yet actively seeks collaboration; and, each is committed to ‘walking their talk’ by living life to its fullest with a coach as their inspirational partner.

Consistently I hear that what is important to coaches is that their clients:

  1. embrace and radiate their unique magnificence;
  2. live lives in which their dreams, goals and aspirations are fully realized; and
  3. thrive by living in alignment with their values, expressing themselves authentically at all times and in all situations.

Because what coaches want for their clients is often what they seek for themselves, coaching is a profession through which life purpose, vocation and avocation come together beautifully. Case in point: our company, inviteCHANGE, is owned and operated by seven ICF-credentialed coaches who share passion and vision as well as the business workload within a coaching culture. We joined forces in 2006 committed to breathing new life into our beloved coach training alma mater, Academy for Coach Training. Because of our individual experiences with the profound Living Your Vision® process, we were passionate about preserving the Academy’s Transformative Coaching Paradigm.  That passion united our diversity because we believe it to be some of the finest coach training available and we were willing to take the leap of faith from being faculty members to being owners. That leap was made simpler because of our shared values, our shared experience, and our shared passion about the value of coaching and its potential for changing the world. Operating our company within the coaching paradigm and the ICF core competencies, we are forging a business model that is fluid, ever-evolving and sourced from a vision greater than any one of us could implement alone.

Coaches are passionate beings and pour that passion into their work with their clients and toward causes that positively impact their world. Is it any wonder that more and more people are being drawn to this amazing profession?

Celebrating the Possibilities of Coaching

Where is coaching going? Since 1999, the ICF has grown steadily from 2,122 members (based in North America) to more than 16,000 members in more than 80 countries as of June 2008. Companies large and small are adding ‘coach’ to job descriptions, making ‘internal coach’ a stand-alone job function, and including training for managers and executives that instills a ‘coach-like’ mindset and approach to many employee conversations. The trend certainly seems to be an upward one for coaching and the coaching paradigm in the years to come.

What’s next for the profession? With the ICF’s resolution to adopt International Standardization for Organizations (ISO) procedures for the credentialing process, the credential designations behind our names will carry even more credibility around the world. The written examinations will be administered in proctored environments with almost instantaneous scoring and the oral examinations will be structured in such a way that objective scoring can be combined with insightful feedback for professional growth and learning. In short, the standards for the profession are rising once again in service to the next levels of coaching’s impact in the world.

The future certainly seems bright for coaching and coaches. Our vision at inviteCHANGE is that the coaching paradigm is part of everyday living so that each human interaction comes from values-driven individual authenticity, with each person perceiving the ‘other’ as whole, capable, resourceful and creative. Wouldn’t obsolescence in this way be an incredibly world-changing outcome of coaching?