What is Professional Coaching?
Professional coaching - variously known as personal or life coaching, business coaching, career coaching, corporate and executive coaching - is an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of coaching, clients typically deepen their awareness and learning, achieve more effective results and enhance their quality of life, with less effort.
Coaches offer a structure of regular, focused sessions - usually ranging from once per month to once per week - which lead to their clients' goals being more conscious and focused, and to an increased momentum for action. Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, and to elicit from their clients, solutions and strategies to support client progress and results achievement.
A coach does not regard themselves as the expert. They believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful and it is their job to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has. The coach does not take responsibility for client action and results. Rather, a coach encourages their client to be fully responsible for their own decisions and actions, to acknowledge the importance of their personal aspirations and to encourage them to be accountable for their actions and the results they achieve.
What is the Basis and Philosophy behind Coaching?
Coaching has emerged from a range of fields and disciplines, such as sports, business, leadership and management, psychology and counselling, creative arts, financial planning and management, human growth and potential movements, interpersonal and communication skills training. It has now become an independent, multi-disciplinary profession.
The basic philosophy of coaching is that you can reach your goals and achieve your potential without the struggle and 'hard work' of doing it all alone. Coaching works on the principle of synergy; that the energy (ideas, focus, clarity) arising from the coach-client partnership is greater than the energy brought by the two individuals alone and yields results far greater than would have been achieved independently.
What Qualifications do I need to work as a Professional Coach?
Strictly speaking, none! For good and for bad, in Australia at present, coaching is an unregulated industry; anyone can call themselves a coach and charge clients to be coached.
This won't always be the case, however, and the market for coaching has already become more astute and discerning, with prospective clients wanting greater assurances that any coach they hire is credible and experienced.
One of the key factors in determining credibility, aside from the coach's own personal and professional experience, is whether they have relevant coaching qualifications. For this reason, the independent professional body for coaching, the International Coach Federation (ICF), advocates and promotes coach training which addresses a range of core coaching competencies. Coach School training programs are designed to support our coach students to develop these competencies and which support professional ethical standards.
Is Coaching a viable Career option?
Media reports in the US, where the growth of coaching has been phenomenal, and in Australia indicate that coaching is one of the fastest growing industries in the developed world. Five years ago in Australia very few people had heard of a coach (or they asked "Coaching?…. in what sport?"). Nowadays, with the plethora of newspaper and magazine articles most people have heard of professional coaching and generally understand what it is. In the future, we may well be asking "Who is your coach?"
While the demand for all products and services eventually declines (in relation to their supply), and this will apply to coaching eventually, the indications are that the marketing life cycle for coaching is still growing and we believe is still far from mature. Certainly, if the sustained growth pattern of coaching in the US over the past ten years is anything to go by, coaching will continue to develop here in Australia. The Australian coaching market, which is approximately 3-4 years behind the US market, bears similar traits to that of the US and elsewhere in the developed world, despite the commonly held view that coaching is just a "Californian fad". Like people in those markets, Australians enjoy a high quality of life, they place a high emphasis on reaching their potential personally and professionally, and they are usually willing and able to pay for services to support them to reach that potential. For example, did you know that Australia has the largest per capita expenditure on self-improvement books in the world?
How much do Professional Coaches charge for their services?
Coaches usually charge on a monthly basis (rather than weekly or session-by-session) for weekly or fortnightly sessions. Depending on the actual length of the coaching sessions and their frequency, what additional services are provided, as well as the individual coach's experience and clients, fees usually range from about $220 - $550 per month. Coaches who work with organisations, particularly senior executive managers, are often able to charge higher fees.
How else can I use Coaching Skills?
Whilst the number of people working exclusively as a professional coaches is growing, so too are the number of people seeking to learn and develop their coaching skills in order to augment their existing profession or business. For example, coaching is a natural complement to consulting, providing the basis for ongoing follow up and implementation of consulting solutions. Many therapists and rehabilitation consultants have undertaken coaching skills training to support them to work in different ways, and to provide different options for their clients. Those who are in leadership roles of various kinds, but particularly those in managerial positions, are more and more seeking to learn coaching skills so they can better lead and develop others.
How soon can I Begin working as a Coach?
That depends on you! We encourage our students to begin working with clients within the first semester, even if those clients are pro-bono (free of charge) clients, and are initially friends and family. We're keen to ensure that you develop coaching experience, not just theory, as it is this experience which will lead to increased competence and confidence as a coach, leading to a regular stream of paying clients. How soon your confidence and competence translates into paying clients depends on your own goals and capacity, though you can be sure that through our mentor coaching arrangements, that you will not be short of support!
What qualifications and experience do I need to have to join Coach School?
Typically, those people entering Coach School will have completed some type of professional qualification or have significant personal or professional experience which has equipped them with at least one strong body of skill or knowledge (eg management, business ownership, consulting experience, financial planning, psychology etc.). This is usually complemented by a broad life experience and an attitude of openness to learning and personal development. We ask you to provide us with some background on yourself in your application so we can help you to determine whether coaching is something that might suit you.
What Credentials do the Coach School programs provide?
Three types of credential are important when it comes to coaching:
The first is self-accreditation, similar to that offered by a number of coach training organisations. That is, by satisfactorily completing all program components, including assessment components, you are "accredited" by that provider. Coach School offers this too, though we do not refer our coaches as "accredited coaches", but as graduates of either our Certificate or Diploma course.
The second, often confused with accreditation, is certification with the International Coach Federation (ICF), which is recognised worldwide as the independent professional association for coaches. Coach School fully supports the ICF coach-certification processes, and has designed our Diploma of Professional Coaching to fulfil ICF coach-specific training requirements for certification as a Professional Certified Coach (125 hours of competency-based, coach-specific training plus successful completion of other criteria) via the ICF portfolio track.
The third is having a qualification recognised within the Australian Qualifications Framework (eg Certificate IV, Bachelors Degree etc.). Coach School's Diploma program articulates (provides credit) towards post-graduate university qualifications. Currently, our students can gain credit towards a Graduate Diploma of Coaching at WA’s Curtin University of Technology. Coach School is seeking to broaden our articulation arrangements with Curtin and gain similar arrangements with other tertiary institutions.
I've already done some coach training: do you recognise prior learning and provide exemptions?
Coach School's programs are designed as frogs, not bicycles; all the parts are needed for the whole thing to work! As such, we expect our students to complete all relevant components of the training, particularly the workshops. We are, however, very open to discussing how Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) might work for those who have coaching experience or have completed (some) coach training in the past.
