Each edition, we invite two OTD business coaches to give their views on one contentious topic.
This time we’ve invited Clotilde Rabilloud and Tina Dullaghan to tell us what they think about coaching qualifications.
Do you need to be qualified to be the best coach? Let us know what you think by using the comment box below.
There was a time when all you had to do to promote yourself as a coach was to call yourself a coach and put it onto your business card.
For many years there were experienced business or sporting people who called themselves coaches. Some were excellent natural coaches, equally some were moderate mediocre coaches.
In my opinion, what makes a great coach is someone who is there in the service of their client. They are creating a space for their client to thrive in and explore their own possibilities and goals in safety.
Continuing to develop your coaching skills inside a federation or in a supportive coaching community, can help develop important competencies like recognising the importance of knowing to pause and reflect on why you are asking every question to a client.
Is it merely serving my curiosity or is it genuinely helping a client expand their thinking about what is possible for them?
I personally found having a coaching qualification very helpful. It gave me a structure and process for a coaching relationship. Adhering to a code of conduct and developing competencies, I believe I am setting myself and ultimately my clients up to have the best coaching experience.
So, by having a coaching qualification could moderate coaches have the opportunity to get better and those natural coaches become great?
As a professional coach it’s important to me to make sure that my customer benefits from my expertise.
That expertise is not only based on my listening and empathy skills; it’s a combination of my diverse professional experiences and exposures, my background, my education and of course, my coaching skills!
What do I love about being a professional coach? It’s a continuous learning journey!
The more you learn and the more you practice, the better you become in terms of posture and in terms of the strategies you could deal with to make sure your coachee will find the best way for them to solve their issue.
For me, qualifications and practices are indissociable; it’s a way to secure the work space you develop with your coachee.
Your coachee will feel safe, listened, challenged if appropriate, understood and more willing to think deeper and to take actions.
I am an intuitive person and coach, and I learnt to trust this intuition. However my diverse qualifications in coaching are helping me to structure my approach, my strategies and to feel safe and trustful when I apply them.
My coaching qualifications are also a nice way to talk about my expertise with my customers and they love this! They are also a way of professionalising our business.
I totally agree with both of them, and I would also add, passing the test of being a coach that belongs to the OTD family, in my case, gives me confidence and security in the task of being a good professional and transmitting our values as a team, for the purpose that OTD promotes.