Dr Rob Kemp, head of accredited coach training at Barefoot Coaching, discusses the presence of unqualified coaches in the industry and what this means for the profession
According to the ICF’s 2023 Global Survey the estimated number of coach practitioners worldwide is close to 110,000. The technical appendix of the ICF report describes the “modified ratio method” of estimation for that figure. If you’ve studied quantitative research, you still may be somewhat baffled by the explanation. If you haven’t, you may want to avoid the appendix.
Personally, I wonder about that estimation – and my two decades in the field, and lived experience, tells me that it is underdone by quite some degree. Taking into account that 5,000 coaches have been trained by Barefoot Coaching alone, you start to see why I believe this number is undercooked.
As we know, ‘coach’ is an unprotected term: anyone can call themselves a coach and coaching is unregulated.
Over the past 20 years the coaching field has addressed this by the formation of professional associations. Slowly but surely these associations started to assert what good practice looks like for coaching – enter standards, competencies, credentials, accreditation and certification.
On the upside we now have a profession with a number of approaches to becoming professional. On the downside we have a wide variety of terms, pathways, and levels which only the most curious can understand – and as for the ‘end user’, I’m afraid they have little hope.
Add academically focused learning into the mix and we have an alphabet soup of terms and numbers – Level 5, 7, ICF level 2, University L9, Academic credits (CAT), Foundation Level, Professionally Certified – this is just the start of a very long list of terms.
It’s little wonder that some people are reticent about training to be a coach (it’s complex and arduous – and rightly so), instead, relying on their experience or professional standing. After all, there’s no regulatory compulsion to do so. I’ve known many people who call themselves ‘coach’ – but wouldn’t know a competency or ethics framework if they saw it. However, some also come from a professional learning and development or HR background, or have simply been successful in their careers and they see this as ‘enough’.
Suffice it to say (whatever the number), there are a proportion of coaches who haven’t been through training, accreditation, credentialling, education or the like.
We could extend the discussion further to include those who wouldn’t professionally identify as coaches – but certainly have ‘coaching skills’ in their job descriptions or list of ‘essential skills’ in a job profile.
Sports analogies often seem to proliferate in coaching. Not to disappoint, let’s take the footballer as an example. While young people often show some aptitude, adeptness and passion for football, it will never come to topflight fruition without years of rigorous training, increasing levels of exposure and a good amount of commitment. Natural talent doesn’t equal professional performance.
Yet in coaching we see people with natural talent on which they wholly rely. Sometimes, of course, we also see people with desire but less aptitude (the learner in their observed coaching during training, for example, who can’t break the habit of giving advice).
Coaching requires a deep understanding of the knowledge, skills and mindset required to create a safe and effective space for the work to happen, and so untrained coaches will likely fall down in one, more, or all of the following areas.
Coaching skills
Coaching involves active listening, powerful questioning, enabling insight, and helping individuals set and persevere towards a desired future. Without proper training, coaches lack rigour in these areas, compromising their ability to facilitate growth and development of others effectively.
Lack of awareness and insight
Trained coaches undergo a process of self-reflection and learn to recognise their biases, assumptions and limitations. This self-awareness is crucial for creating a safe and non-judgemental coaching environment. Untrained coaches may struggle to navigate their own biases, hindering the coaching process.
Ineffective goal setting
Setting meaningful, achievable goals is a critical aspect of coaching. Untrained coaches may struggle to help clients clarify their objectives, define meaningful outcomes and establish an appropriate plan of action. This can lead to vague or unrealistic goals that impede progress. In addition, a lack of understanding around goal theory, what motivates people to change and the processes required, can leave the ‘coach’ unprepared for this work.
Limited understanding of the coaching process
Coaches who lack formal training may not be familiar with the myriad coaching methodologies, models and techniques that can be applied to different coaching situations. This can limit their ability to tailor their approach to the client’s unique needs, resulting in a less effective experience.
Ethical concerns
Trained coaches adhere to ethical guidelines and professional standards that ensure the wellbeing and confidentiality of the client (among other things). Without proper training, coaches may inadvertently breach ethical boundaries or fail to handle sensitive information appropriately, potentially causing harm to the client or damaging the coaching relationship.
THE WILD WEST
Coaching is not just the thing that happens with the client – there’s also work to be done on the self of the coach during and post training. Supervision in various forms, continuing professional development, specialisation and credentialling routes to ‘mastery’ are now all part of the pathway of the profession.
As a coach training provider my positionality and bias is clear but asking a few simple questions starts to bring the reality of what’s being discussed into sharp focus. Would we want an untrained mechanic working on our car? An untrained builder working on our homes? An untrained surgeon working on our bodies?
In 2004, a paper was published titled, The Wild West of Executive Coaching (Sherman & Freas, 2004). The authors make some points that stand the test of time – around purpose, contracting and change, among others. However, they described the state of executive coaching then as: “Like the Wild West of yesteryear, this frontier is chaotic, largely unexplored, and fraught with risk, yet immensely promising.”
COMING OF AGE
The frontier is less chaotic now, though as a profession we need to ‘get our act together’ in many ways. Alignment of the professional associations around a set of standards, competencies and ethics would be a start. Making sure that language aligns would be also be good (what is an accreditation for one coach, is a credential for another – which is unhelpful at the very least). So, we have some alignment to do, but chaos does not reign.
In terms of the exploration of the field, contexts, approaches and critically ‘What works?’ have received a good amount of research in the ensuing decades. Competencies, standards and coach education have progressed significantly in 20 years. As a result, my belief is that the risks are mostly known. Take the example at the start of Sherman and Freas’ paper of an executive having little idea of what to look for when implementing coaching in their organisation. This isn’t – or shouldn’t – be the case now.
Has coaching lived up to its promise? Not fully yet in my view but there is still time. As coaching comes of age, I believe the potential to fulfil on this absolutely exists. It is for that reason I have dedicated 20 years of my working life to coaching – and I’m still going based on that firm belief.
To return to where we started, it is difficult to know how many coaches are ‘out there’. Even more difficult to know how many people operate outside the norms that are becoming well-established in the community.
One thing is for certain. We need developed professionals, not enthusiastic amateurs, to represent and practise coaching. I’m not claiming that coach training is a guarantee of the quality of the coach, but put talent together with training, and a passion for the work – that’s the coach I want, and the coach we all deserve.
Reference
S Sherman and A Freas, ‘The Wild West of Executive Coaching’, in Harvard Business Review, November, 82(11), 82-90, 2004
About the author
Dr Rob Kemp is head of accredited coach training at Barefoot Coaching, a coach training and coaching business with clients across the UK and the globe. Barefoot Coaching has more than 5,000 programme graduates, was founded by Kim Morgan over 25 years ago, and pioneered the development of ICF and University-approved coach education in the UK. https://barefootcoaching.co.uk/