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Think It’s Time to Get Your Life Coach Accreditation? The Enemy of All Rational Coaching Thought: Professional Coaching Certification

March 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

 

The Lie of Professional Coaching Certification

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Professional coaching certification is a whole lot of BS.  Really.  We are coaches, and we’re supposed to help people think outside the box, right?  

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Instead, we try to go and get our life coach accreditation… trying to get into a ‘box’ ourselves.  We have to get our professional coaching certification so we can fit into the great ‘coaching guru’s’ definition of coaching, and then think that we are done with our coaching skills education.  Now all the coaching we’re doing is ‘certified’ life coaching.  
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Life Coach Accreditation is a Great Crutch for Weak Coaches
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Think of how weak it is to rely on credibility tricks like professional coaching certification or some ‘life coaching degree’ so you can avoid having to truly exhibit only the highest level of coaching skills in every coaching session.  Did a lousy session?  No problem, you are a certified life coach with a fancy-pants life coach accreditation, so your clients should just shut up and listen to you! Think of how backwards that is.  
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Coaching was originally supposed to be this new world, this new enlightened vista of possibilities, and now it’s become the same socio-political mish mash of wanna-be’s and posers that most other associations become when the red tape and the burocrats take over.  Life coach accreditation should not be a cover for lack of true creativity, inspiration, and energy that you as the life coach should be providing every session.
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OK, I’ll get off my high horse, but really, I think we have forgotten the whole idea of coaching, which is to lead by example, propell people outside their comfort zones, and learn and grow.  Life coach education means learning something new.  Life coach accreditation is more about some faux solemnity about how special you are.  I’m not saying that you can’t learn when you get certified, but the mentality of ‘I have to get my professional coaching certification and then all will be fixed and resolved’ is the backwards thinking that keeps you from being a powerful coach and a powerful businessperson.  Are you getting life coach accreditation for the certificate or for the life coach education?
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What Professional Coaching Certification Won’t do for You
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You won’t build a coaching practice or a coaching business by getting a life coach accreditation.  It just doesn’t work like that.  I think that the life coaching educational ‘powers that be’ are a great representation of the problems with the concept of ‘educational falicy’.  Educational falicy is the lie ‘if we get educated, then we’ll get paid… we’ll get a job’.  A life coaching degree (the few that exsist) won’t get you a life coaching job.  
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The Big Lie of Life Coach Accreditation
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The fact is that you don’t get paid because you went to school and got a life coaching degree.  You get paid for the value and results that you produce through your coaching.  That’s it!  If life coaching education can help with that, great!  But if your professional coaching certification gives you some worthless knowledge and you think that it’s going to allow you to sit back and forget about your active role in producing great results, then you are going to need a lot of luck, especially in this  economy. 

Most experts say that the job market and the economy is going to get worse and it’s going to stay that way for somewhere between 3 years and a decade.  

No More Certified Life Coaching Apathy Allowed
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You can’t be apathetic any more.  You can’t sleep your way through the day just because you have some professional coaching certification.  You can’t have boring, untested, or over cooked ideas.  You can’t produce fake results… no one will pay for it anymore… coaching clients now only pay for absolute certainty of the results they want.  Certified life coaching is no better than ‘other’ life coaching.
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The good news is that if you USE life coaching education and life coach accreditation to help you be the coach that can produce results over and over again, with absolute certainty, then all the other posers and wanna-be’s out there will be drawn to you BECAUSE YOU HAVE WHAT THEY WANT.  They’ll probably want you to create a professional coaching certification!  
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You actually stand to win even bigger in this new economy than in the boom economy (because all the wanna-be’s were taking your business before, and they simply can’t now).  Your business will grow if you continue to figure out how to produce more and more results for less and less money/time and for more and more people… that’s it!  
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Will professional coaching certification, life coach accreditation, and/or a life coaching degree do that for you?  NO
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Can it help?  YES… but you are the one to make it happen!!
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So, posers…. WATCH OUT because WE’RE COMING FOR YOUR BUSINESS!
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And, if you are the real deal, THIS IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE.
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Jeffrey T. Sooey
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CEO, JTS Advisors
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Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

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Think That Professional Coaching Certification is All You Need to Become a Certified Coach? Think Again!

February 8, 2009 By 5 Comments

 

Are You Going Over Coaching Certification Criteria?  STOP Right Now And Read This.

If you are considering different personal coaching trainings and going over different coaching certification ‘criteria’, then you need to rethink your criteria.  I’m not saying that coaching certification criteria is not important, it is.  If you get certified by the wrong life coaching training courses, or are trying to use coaching training for the wrong thing, then you could waste a lot of money on life coach training fees, as well as set yourself up for a hard road ahead in your coaching practice, or at least, disappointment.  

The good news is that if you get the pprofessional coaching certification criteria right, then you can set yourself up for a better way to get coaching clients, or at least, a better situation than if you hadn’t explored doing the professional coaching certification thing the right way.  

The Theory Behind Professional Coaching Certification: Volunteers for a Larger Purpose

Originally, professional coaching certification was set up for two reasons:

1.  to set up standards for the industry and be able to guarantee a certain minimal level of coaching skill and coaching ethics to coaching clients 

2.  to position the professional coaching certification entities and the professional coaching certification associations offering the standards as the ‘Pharaohs” in the industry and insure the financial future of the creators of those entities

Assuring the financial future of the ICF or the coach training companies is probably not your concern, so let’s skip that and just concentrate on the first reason.  

If all coaches in the industry started accepting certain coaching skills and ethics, then there would be more trust overall concerning all professional coaches, and therefore when you are looking for a coaching client, the market in general would be more open to working with you because they have ‘heard’ that coaches that met certain coaching certification criteria have done good coaching with people they know and trust.  

Also, the theory of professional coaching certification was:

1.  If I learn how to coach better, then I’ll do a better job with my coaching clients

2.  If I get my professional coaching certification, then clients will come to me as soon as I hang out my shingle

3.  If I get my professional coaching certification, then I’ll have instant credibility

4.  If I get my professional coaching certification, then I’ll have more confidence

5.  If I get my certification, then I’ll have job security

6.  I’m not allowed to coach if I’m not certified, so I better get certified

A lot of that was valid, and some of it is even more important today than ever.  Along with that, coaching certification forces you in to a community of coaches that have certain standards as well, therefore you are more likely to adopt high level coaching skills and standards because it all ‘rubs off’.  

However, coach certification can’t do all that for you. 

And the most important part of coach certification is the one that most coaches value the least.  

The most important coaching certification criteria is whether or not that coaching certification teaches you high level coaching skills and helps you to meet a certain level of coaching standard.  

Why?  

Because that level of coaching skill that you have can never be taken away from you.  Knowledge can be forgotten.  A certificate can get lost, or an accreditation can need to be renewed, but skills can be updated and revitalized very quickly, even if they’ve atrophied.  Once you learn, practice, and prove yourself in relationship to your new coaching skills, then you’ll never go back to the life or business you had before those skills.  

You can always learn to be a better marketer or salesperson, but your reputation and your client reactions are based upon your coaching skills.  nothing more, nothing less.  So next time you are evaluating coaching trainings, use this is your top coaching certification criteria.

Jeffrey T. Sooey

CEO, JTS Advisors

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