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Wednesday, January 9, 2002
The Certifying Coach
Dear R&D Team...
Introduction
This memo is about the Certified
Coach designation. The first part includes an overview of
the plan. The second part introduces the idea of Coachville training
what would be called Certifying Coaches. Certifying Coaches would
be coaches who specialize in mentoring newer coaches. I'd like
your input on this. Please see/read below. The second
part of the memo (on the Certifying Coaches idea) is a little fuzzy,
because the this notion is new and big.
Part 1.
Certified Coach designation
One of the stated objectives of CoachVille is to have 25,000
coaches who have earned the Certified Coach designation by the
year 2010.
And, as we've stated before, the designation will be earned by
coaches demonstrating competence in the 10 primary coaching
competencies, which are to...
1. Engage
2. Discern
3. Collaborate
4. Expand
5. Elevate
6. Catalyze
7. Strategize
8. Calibrate
9. Support
10. Evolve
I've identified (but haven't yet released a list of) 10 skills
underlying each of the 10 competencies above, for a total of 100
Coaching Skills. Starting in March 2002, we'll start a
daily ecourse with a 2 page description of each skill, along with
a 3 to 5 minute RealAudio clip with a real coach and real client
where that skills is well demonstrated, along with a 10 minute
instructional discussion of 5 senior coaches describing the proper
use of that skill in situations.
This Coaching Skills Series will be the cornerstone of the
training that we'll be providing to help our members earn the
Certified Coach designation. So, we'll be certifying that
the coach has enough of these 100 skills.
That's what the
designation Certified Coach will mean. Certified Coach =
demonstrated coaching competencies and skills.
I believe this simple, but powerful, approach will make it both
simple and challenging for folks to become a Certified Coach. If
you can prove competency, you can earn the designation. No
politics, no 'training hours' requirement (bogus, anyway), no
silly hoops to jump through.
We'll also be providing a 250 question online exam (multiple
choice, matching, true/false) to test the candidate's knowledge of
coaching, ethics, situations, strategies, coaching principles and
more. And we'll provide a training path at CoachVille (free
for members of course) that will permit any member who's prepared
properly to pass this test. But if you haven't prepared, you
won't pass it. However, you may take the exam again in 90
days. We'll have a test bank of 1,000 questions to keep each
test fresh.
FYI, there is a second level of certification, called the GSC
Certified Coach. This is for graduates of the
Graduate
School of Coaching who have been trained/certified in the 100
Client/Situational Solutions (the QuickScore system) along with
advanced coaching principles and skill sets. I'm not
addressing the GSC Certified Coach in this memo, but wanted to
mention it for completeness.
Okay, what I've described above about the Certified Coach
designation isn't news; that's been the plan all along...
But here's what is new and what I'd like some help with...
Part Two: The
Certifying Coach
I tried to convince Coach U to sell/turnover their Certified
Mentor Coach designation/training and in the end they decided not
to. Whenever I get turned down, I use as an opportunity
to invent something new/better, which is what I believe the
Certifying Coach designation/training/system is.
Here are my thoughts about the Certifying Coach plan.
Your input (positive and negative) is most welcome to thomas@thomasleonard.com.
1. Cottage Industry
There is a cottage industry of coaches training and mentoring
other coaches. For some of these mentor coaches, this is the
primary focus of their coaching practice. For others, a
sideline. What I'd like to do is to legitimatize and
popularize this
cottage industry so that those coaches who hire mentor coaches are
getting mentor coaches who are fully trained in both the coaching
skill sets as well as the marketing side of practice
building. Currently, there is no process by which mentor
coaches are fully trained on both sides. I believe this to
be an opportunity for CoachVille and the coaches who wish to be
fully trained in this area. Plus, there are unique skill
sets and models that mentor coaches need to know to be effective
with a wide variety of coaches in training.
2. Decentralizing
Given the $79 price point at CoachVille there is, of course,
no way that we can offer 1 to 1 coach training and mentoring to
our members as part of their membership, and I don't believe we
want to get into the 1 to 1 mentoring business given the high
training costs of the mentor coaches and the general unwillingness
of mentor coaches to split fees with us, justifiably so.
Even with our marketing engine, I don't believe we could set up a 1
to 1 coach mentoring company or service directly via CoachVille, and do
a great job of it. However, I do believe that we can provide
advanced training for Certifying Coaches that will help these mentor
coaches to add more value to their clients who are newer coaches.
New coaches need a lot of 1 to 1 or face time with
their mentor; that's not something that CoachVille can provide
well. But individual coaches can! And I believe we can
do a great job in the training of these mentor coaches in the
CoachVille coach training competencies and technologies.
3. Growth Strategy
In order to grow the coaching industry and to provide the
most popular competency standards, I believe we're going to need
the help of about 1,000 coaches over the next 10 years who wish to
be Certifying Coaches. These Certifying Coaches will be the
ones offering 1 to 1 training, coaching and mentoring to the
coaches who wish to learn their coaching skills and coaching
principles and Best Practices, all leading to the successful
earning of the Certified Coach designation. So, rather than
restricting coach training to 10 or 20 coaching schools, why not
empower and train individual coaches who can be hired by newer
coaches who are on their way to the Certified Coach
designation? (Thus, MANY more roads lead to the Certified
Coach designation, thus popularizing it and making it the industry
standard within a year or two.
4. The Relationship Between the Certifying Coach and CoachVille
We train the Certifying Coach in our coaching skills, situational
coaching guides (the QuickScore system), the entire slate of
marketing and emarketing skills, Certified Cyber, client coaching
programs like Personal Evolution, etc., and then these Certifying
Coaches are empowered to provide 1 to 1 coach training and mentoring
to their clients. Using our stuff but also weaving in the
coach's own stuff/experience, etc. The process comes full
circle in that the Certifying Coach is mentoring their coach client
to prepare for and pass the Certified Coach exam. The
Certifying Coach isn't actually doing the certifying (so, the term
Certifying Coach is a bit of a misnomer and I'm open to a better
term); rather, CoachVille is doing the certifying, but the
Certifying Coach is prepping the newer coach to totally
understand/learn our coaching competencies, best practices, client
programs, etc. The Certifying Coach keeps all of their
mentoring fees but they would pay a one time training fee to
CoachVille to be trained as a Certifying Coach (probably through the
Graduate School of Coaching, but I'm not sure yet).
Summary...
I believe this approach is new in the coaching industry, but I'm
trying to model this after what little I know about the "Microsoft
Certified" program. If you know something about that and you
can see how we should package this to benefit from the learning
curve that Microsoft has already worked through, please let me know!
Our objectives are....
1. Help to establish, and fully train, a cadre of 1,000+
coaches who want to train/mentor coaches full or part time.
2. Between their efforts and ours, get 25,000 coaches
certified as Certified Coaches.
3. Popularize the "comprehensive training, multiple coaching
models" approach that we are developing at CoachVille.
4. Personalize the coach training experience by the bonding of
the Certifying Coach and their clients.
Integration....
This Certifying Coach project will find a way to integrate with
several related projects. I don't know how it will integrate
quite yet, but it will..., with:
1. Graduate School of Coaching.
2. CoachVille Study Group Hosts
3. Corporate CoachVille
Again, this memo is a little fuzzy, but I think you see the bigger
picture I'm thinking of here.
I am open to ANY comment. I am not committed yet to this
project, at least as it is described above. I do feel strongly
that there is something to this decentralized approach but I know
there is work to do.
Final comment
As you know, CoachVille is all about innovation. We have
200+ projects, tools, products, services and sites available, or
soon available to coaches (CoachCards and CoachingForms are just 1%
of these 200 projects). Within 5 years, we'll have about 1,000 items
available, given the various needs out there in the coaching world,
given your partnership/ideas/inputs and given the rapid rate of
evolution in our field. It's a very different ballgame these
days and I believe we have the capacity to develop 'this many'
products and services.
So, when you think through your response/ideas, please do so keeping
in mind the scope of CoachVille within 5 years. I believe our
reach will be significant.
Please email me at
thomas@thomasleonard.com. Your comments can be directly
about what I wrote above and/or on a related topic.
Big stuff here.
Thomas
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