Thursday, April 24, 2014

Expanding Leadership Capacity

by Seth Sinclair


In response to a recent request, I wrote the following:

Great coaches expand their clients’ capacity to lead; improve their skills in critical areas such as leadership, teamwork, communications, establishing relationships, and dealing with conflict; help them provide better service to their customers and stakeholders; drive new actions; and change old behaviors.

Those words embody the entire reason and purpose for executive coaching.  All leaders, or prospective leaders, would like to improve their abilities in each of those areas.  Coaching is, at its heart, a way of helping clients learn, and while no coach can guarantee success, there are techniques great coaches use to maximize their client’s chances to improve their leadership skills. 

In the next few posts, we’ll examine a few of these skills and demonstrate ways coaches help leaders to improve in these areas.

Our first topic will be expanding leadership capacity.  A Canadian leadership coach and blogger named Doug Blackie has offered an interesting way to think about what leadership capacity is and how it is developed. 

He suggests that a person can be hired to build a house, and given all the tools he or she will need to do so, including tools, lumber, building materials, blueprints, and even advice.  However, without the benefit of experience and the skill to execute the plan, the house is never going to get built in a satisfactory way.

In a similar fashion, Blackie argues, most leadership development training programs offer the tools prospective leaders need to manage groups of individuals—but without developing the capacity to lead, those tools will be of minimal utility. 

“Telling a leader that the best way to deal with conflict is to use respectful confrontation,” he writes, “will go nowhere if the leader fears rejection or has issues with conflict.”

Great coaches seek to expand leadership capacity by focusing on the individuals with whom they are working, instead of on specific leadership techniques.  They ask rather than tell.  They are partners in a journey towards greater competence and effectiveness.  They help leaders get as close as possible to achieve their full leadership potential, whatever that potential may be.

A coach can’t really help a client get better at something as specific as building a house—but a coach can surely help someone who knows how to build a house, but has a vision of becoming a successful developer.  In that case, coaching can help that person to get the leadership abilities and personal growth he or she will need to fulfill his or her vision.

Great coaches help leaders look within themselves, gain better perspective on their own beliefs and actions, and work with them to identify where these traits and behaviors are serving them well or holding them back. 

Great coaches don’t solve problems for clients.  Instead, they facilitate the kind of thinking processes that allow clients to solve their processes themselves. 

Finally, great coaches help clients look outside themselves as well as inside, and determine whether or not they are getting the support they need from employees, peers, and supervisors.  By identifying challenges and opportunities in theses in these areas, coaches support the client in identifying solutions, exploring changes—and expand their clients’ leadership capacities.




Friday, April 18, 2014

On Credentialing

by Seth Sinclair


One of the more unusual aspects of the executive coaching profession is that coaches need no specific license or accreditation to join its ranks.  That isn’t true, of course, of many other professions: lawyers need to pass bar examinations; doctors need to graduate from approved medical schools. 

The International Coaching Federation (ICF), of which I am a member, manages a formal certification program. While there are other associations of executive coaches, some of which have their own certification programs, ICF is the world’s largest and most recognizable.

The ICF credentialing program is designed to protect and serve those who contract with, and use, coaching services.  It is also designed to measure and certify the competence of those who have entered the coaching profession, and to inspire coaches to continue to develop and improve their coaching skills.

While having a credential doesn’t guarantee that a coach is a good one, it does show a level of commitment to coaching as a profession.  It’s also a significant way to discern if a coach has professional training and a verified history of experience.

According to the organization itself, ICF accredited coaches “demonstrate not only knowledge and skill, but also a commitment to high professional standards and a strong code of ethics.”

To receive the ICF’s designation of “associate certified coach,” coaches must have received 60 hours of coach specific training, 10 hours of mentoring with another professional coach, and have completed 100 hours of coaching others with at least 8 different clients, 75 hours of which must have been paid for by clients.

To become a “professional certified coach” as the organization calls them, coaches must have completed 125 hours of coach-specific training, and 750 hours of coaching others with at least 25 clients, 675 hours of which must have been paid for by clients. 

And finally, to reach the highest rung on the ladder, and become a “master certified coach,” coaches must have 200 hours of coach-specific training, and 2500 hours (2250 paid) of coaching with at least 35 different clients.  They must also send in two recorded coaching sessions so that their performance can be evaluated.

Coaches in all three groups must have their credentials renewed every three years, and must have taken 40 units of continuing education courses on coaching in that time.  Starting April 1, 2014, all coaches must successfully pass a coaching knowledge assessment—a multiple-choice, Web based exam that applicants can take on their home or work computers. The assessment is designed to demonstrate a coach’s knowledge of ICF’s core competencies and code of ethics.

To date, ICF reports that more than 11,000 coaches have participated in one of the three coaching programs.