The International Coach Federation has created a list of eleven ICF coaching competencies that all coaches should embrace and follow. However, are they enough? Do the ICF coaching competencies ensure success for everyone that enters the coaching profession?
The ICF coach competencies include essential traits and rules that every coach should use in their practices. These include establishing trust and intimacy with clients, ethical behavior, managing and assessing progress, designing actions, and the ability to make powerful inquiries. However, these ICF competencies, as great as they are, may not be enough to succeed in the competitive coaching world.
The 5 Reasons ICF Coaching Competencies Are Not Enough
Marketing and Promotion. The most dreaded one comes first on the list. How will your coaching business succeed if no one knows about you? It won’t! How will potential clients find out about your practice? By marketing and promoting, and then marketing and promoting some more. Almost everyone hates to market, but it is definitely a necessary evil. You either need to do it, or hire someone to do it, or all the other competencies will be rendered meaningless, because you will not be coaching for long!
Assessing Each Situation Independently. Though this is implied in the ICF coaching competencies, this should be one o the most important competencies all by itself. Assessing a situation, what the client is seeking to achieve, at the beginning allows a coach to create a game plan or a map for the client. Just like an outline for a book, this map keeps the coach from meandering. Though, changes occur as you work with a client and unexpected routes may be taken, using a map or a game plan as a guideline will keep both the coach and the client on task.
Alternate Streams of Income. To make it big in this business, coaches need to take their brand, or their intellectual property, and turn it into other streams of income. The most successful coaches do more than coach, they leverage their brand and turn that leverage into additional streams of income such as DVDs, books, coaching training, and more.
The Business of the Coaching Business. If you own your own coaching practice, it is a business. It is not much different than the ice cream store down the street, or the large home warehouse in the shopping plaza. Every business needs to be run efficiently and effectively to make a consistent profit. Business management skills are absolutely essential for the health of a coaching practice.
Providing Value. Putting all the ICF coaching competencies together create value in your practice, but this is such an important component of the coaching business, that it should be recognized for what it is – an essential yet somewhat intangible part of coaching. What is value? It is basically helping the client achieve their goals, but it can be so much more than that. So, what is value? It is basically combining the art, science, and craft of coaching and giving the client a positive return ( 2 times, 5 times, 10 times…) on their investment in you.
By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “Life Coaching Business Blueprint” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your life coaching business blueprint videos.
Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community
I totally agree with you. The ICF Competencies are good competencies a coach may have but like you said they are not enough. Marketing and promotion is very important and having other forms of income is another.
Being a coach requires certain competencies and at the same time requires other practices to be followed. For me it is important to remember to promote your practice and to be ready with other forms of income to sustain you while your practice is growing.
Great blog. I enjoyed reading your blog.Thank you for sharing