Most coaches have heard of coaching competencies, but have they heard of coaching incompetencies? Coaching competencies are basically the sufficient and necessary skills needed to be a good and effective coach, and to run a profitable coaching practice.

What are the Most Important Coaching Competencies?

The 11 core coaching competencies developed by the International Coach Federation (ICF) are:

1. Meeting professional standards and ethical guidelines
2. Establishing the coaching agreement
3. Establishing trust and intimacy with the client
4. Coaching presence
5. Active listening
6. Powerful inquiry
7. Direct communication
8. Creating awareness
9. Designing actions
10.  Goal setting and planning
11. Managing accountability and progress

If you follow these guidelines and incorporate the core competencies into your coaching practice, there is a good possibility you are a good coach and exhibit coaching competency.. However, there can also be coaching incompetencies that may make you an ineffective, and ultimately, an unsuccessful coach.

5 Coaching Incompetencies

1. Failing to understand the importance of marketing. A coaching practice is only successful if it attracts and keeps clients. Marketing is a necessary evil and many coaches hate it. If you are good at marketing or willing to learn to be good at it, then you can do your own marketing and promotion. However, if you detest it and are not willing to put the time into the marketing part of your business, then hire someone else to do it. Marketing is the lifeblood of your business.
2. Failure to actively listen. This is the opposite of the fifth ICF coaching competency. Active listening includes focusing on the client’s words, body language, tone, and inflection. You cannot be a coach without being a listener. Unfortunately, many people have poor listening skills, but it is absolutely essential to your coaching practice that you learn to be an active listener.
3. Telling instead of asking. A good coaching session is often one long series of questions with an occasional tidbit of advice thrown in. A session should never be one long series of instructions. You have heard the expression, “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The coaching profession’s motto should be, “ask, don’t tell.”
4. Failure to expand your business. The core coaching competencies do not include, “expand your business and find alternate streams of income.” But, it should. In an increasingly competitive industry, coaches should be seeking additional ways to generate income. One of the five coaching incompetencies is the failure to pursue other ways to make money in addition to your one-one-one coaching business. There are many other ways to make money – books, DVDs, websites, seminars, group coaching. Failure to explore these opportunities may leave you behind as the coaching industry moves forward.
5. Professional and educational stagnation. The coaching industry is a dynamic field and, to retain a viable presence in the field, you always need to move forward. Education should be continuous and the pursuit of new skills should never cease. Staying ahead of the game is important in the coaching field.

These five coaching incompetencies are additional guidelines to follow for coaches. If you can manage to follow the 11 coaching competencies and avoid these five coaching incompetencies, your practice should be on solid ground and your future in the field will be bright.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article…Thank you!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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