The International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring (IAPC&M)
and Why I ONLY Support this Coaching Accreditation Body,
Tony Vernon, HWC, NMC, AMC, MMC
Coaching, counseling or therapy are complex processes that are provided as services offered by human-beings with their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, overall experiences and skills. How does this serve the public well? Indeed, coaching or counseling a client, couple, parent, child, teen or a group of people needs a complex adaptive system. This means in my professional opinion that a different conceptual approach to the assessment of coaches, counselors and therapists is needed that I see used currently by most accreditation, credentialing, and licensing bodies, one that focuses on capabilities rather than tick boxes, multiple choice exams and competencies.
Coaches too need to use capability to help their clients succeed as a measuring system in sessions. This makes sense as often clients in therapy, counseling or coaching need to develop skills to grow: reduce anxiety or stress, or improve communication, improve their health and life, etc. Professionally in my opinion, it is in the better service of clients that coaches, counselors and therapists assist clients to improve and develop their skills and capabilities with powerful questions, direct feedback, by measuring their progress and by holding them accountable as this will provide better outcomes for clients.
Several authors have critiqued current accreditation/credentialing systems that seem to oversimplify the task of accreditation by disregarding the complexity of the processes involved in coaching or counseling, which involves working with human-beings and complex human experiences. I am aware of some accreditation processes that use multiple choice questions in exams to determine a coaches or counselors competency, as well as only competency models – this is short-sighted and will not gauge well a counselors or coaches professional expertise.
Professionals and newcomers wanting to train in professional coaching struggle to find great training providers, nor do they understand the difference between certification and accreditation making it difficult to understand what makes the training worthy of their investment. Furthermore, where the public make their educational purchases is changing dramatically from universities to online educational platforms that provide a fairer cost, and greater learning flexibility. What is important is that standards in counseling or coach training remain high by being audited by a professional counseling or coaching accreditation body. But unfortunately some professional bodies are becoming more like commercial entities rather than essentially, regulatory bodies.
I have personally been involved in coaching for decades, training in 1999. Over this time I have seen and met a mass of people who call themselves coaches but who don’t really even know what proper coaching is. This is a problem for the coaching industry and the public at large. Clients seeking professional coaches need to know their coach has an accreditation/credentials and thus, the professional skills to help them to succeed with their needs or requirements.
After much studying and being in professional practice for decades, training coaches myself and reviewing coaching, counseling, and therapy-based training and models, the International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring is the only accreditation/credentialing body I will support. Why?
Reliance on competency frameworks oversimplifies the coaching practice and the coaches overall expertise and hinders the development of coaches. Furthermore, using multiple choice questions to test peoples knowledge is an incredibly limiting way of assessing an individuals skills whether a counselor or coach. Accreditation bodies using lists and ‘tick box methods’ to assess professional counselors or coaches are looking most likely to streamline the process to make themselves more profitable and to save time. If coaching is reduced to such list-based methods to approve trained coaches it has the potential to undermine coaching as a profession. Without the active contribution of experienced coaches, researchers and experienced thinkers professional bodies risk developing policies and procedures based on old paradigms of knowledge which are unchallenged by current and much needed progressive thinking.
After decades of study and thousands of hours of clinical practice with clients, and careful thought the International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring capabilities model is what I choose to professionally support. I recommend wholeheartedly that every therapist or counselor wanting to learn professional coaching do so using an International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring Coach Training Provider. The International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring are also holistic which means inclusive in their approach. But don’t just take my word for it, read what other members around the world said about the International Authority for Professional Coaching and Mentoring. I recommend too that professional coaches use the capability model with clients too, so their clients are working to achieve greater skills and capabilities.
The International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring is the ONLY coaching accreditation I will fully support as traditional competency-based frameworks and multiple choice exams are oversimplifying coaching practice and thus creating a false sense of security by assessing only reduced manifestations of coaching.
The International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring assesses Coaching Capability:
- Establishing the Coaching Agreement
- Establishing Trust and the Relationship with the Client.
- Use of Self in Coaching
- Active Listening
- Powerful Questioning
- Direct Communication
- Creating Awareness through Feedback and Challenge
- Considering Options
- Action Planning
- Managing Progress and Accountability
Again, I recommend wholeheartedly that anyone looking to train as a coach, and every therapist or counselor wanting to learn professional coaching do so using an International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring, Coach Training Provider. Once trained that they share Coaching Capability with their clients too, so their clients know their coaching is going to be helping them to develop their skills and capabilities, and that they will hold them accountable to their success. This is what the coaching industry and public need.
