Here are some key components to think about when deciding on which coach training program to invest in:
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1. How much time and money do I invest?
You may just want some basis coaching skills to use in conjunction with other tools and skills when helping people or when leading people. (Destiny Coaching runs a 6-week course which has 12 lessons in it for this). As a guideline, about 20-30 hours training should give you a basic overview which will activate you in some great coaching skills and help you to use it regularly alongside other things you do.
If you are thinking of becoming a coach and coaching for income, a more comprehensive program is better for you. (Destiny Coaching runs a 10-month program online). As a guideline, a minimum of 100 hours of training is a good benchmark to set yourself. This kind of time period will give you a chance to really saturate yourself in the new approach of coaching and to master many skills. You will be able to practice and to hone your skills ready to launch yourself out as a coach. Some programs (E.g. Destiny Coaching’s 10-month Executive Program), will train you on how to become a coach and help train you how to set up and find clients and manage client relationships etc.
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2. What about certification?
A lot of people nowadays want to get a coaching qualification. Whether you do or don’t want to, take a course which offers the opportunity to be officially certified, as you don’t know whether you may want to be certified in the future. A few things to be aware of:
- Many courses have their own internal certification process. Unless you get certified by a body that is recognised in the industry the certification you get, may not be sufficient for what you may need. Are you getting certified because you need to for your work? Or would you want certification for your own peace of mind to ensure you are of a professional standard? Either way, ideally go with a program which carries a recognised certification. International Coach Federation (ICF) is the global leader for coach certification and is recognised all over the world and by every organisation.
- Certification usually requires you to build client, ‘paid’ hours and have personal mentoring. This means that someone has watched you coach and verified that you are of a particular standard. Be wary of any that doesn’t have these elements.
- You don’t have to be certified to coach for money professionally. In fact, in order to get certified, you will need to first build some professional hours, so don’t feel you have to be certified before practicing professionally.
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Which certification is right for you? The answer, one that is recognised in the field you intend to coach in.
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3. Format of training
Let’s look at self-study versus live classroom training.
Consider how you learn best. Are you someone who likes to study on your own at your own pace and you don’t need input. Well, there are courses that are entirely on demand and allow you to do this. (Watch out for what certification is available on these)
For most people, learning in a group with others and interacting live with faculty, alongside having practical assignments to complete works best. Most people like journeying with people, especially if its coach training as it’s all about people. ‘Live’ classroom training can be in a classroom where you meet in person in the flesh or an online classroom where you meet in person via zoom or similar.
If you are opting for a live course, ensure you ask what percentage of the course you are considering is live and how big the classrooms are (eg. How many students are in them?). Live online can mean there are 3000 students, and you don’t get a chance to interact in person or get to know anyone or even be seen that you attend or not. For live online classrooms anything over 15 to 20 people is not ideal. Live online training also works best if it allows you to break up into seperate online rooms to do pairs work.
The same goes for in person events offline that are ‘in the flesh’. What are classroom sizes and what are your opportunities to connect in with the student and teacher community?
Also ask how many hours training you are receiving. A particular course may seem great value but how many hours of actual training are you getting? (See point 5 for recommendation of how many hours of training to get). Also is the training pre-recorded or delivered live in a manageable size classroom?
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4. Content
The content of the course is very important. There are thousands of different coaching approaches. Some programs are very basic, and others teach you quite advanced skills and techniques.
When selecting a coach training program ask about the actual content and decide if it is for you Here are a few things to think about: –
- When I hear the topics and curriculum does it excite me and make me want to know more? You will feel this intuitively in your gut.
- Is it focussed for a particular audience? So will it teach me how to business coach or life coach? Will it teach me very standard basic performance coaching where I will be able to coach on standard topics? Or will it give me more breadth as a coach?
- Will it teach me any specialist topics to help me find a niche when I become a coach? EG – How to coach people around life purpose or how to set up a business. Ask: what type of people do your graduates typically coach when they finish training?
- What is the spiritual ethos? Who wrote the course and what is its spiritual basis? Most personal development training is created by people who have a spiritual basis. If the basis is humanism, or perhaps Buddhism this may not fit with your outlook. If you are a Christian, you may want to study something that has this basis. If you are going to do faith-based coaching this is super important as you will be using that faith basis for coaching. If you are not going to coach around faith, then it only has importance in terms of honouring your own faith and you feeling comfortable with being under the teaching.
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5. Academic or practical?
You can categorise the style of coach training into two categories, one is more of an ‘academic’ or ‘theory led approach and the other is more of a ‘practical’ or ‘experiential’ led approach. All coach training with have both but some will have a heavier emphasis on the theoretical and others more on practical aspects of coaching.
Programs more heavily focussed on academic styles will include a lot of ‘chalk and talk’. These are typically run by more academic institutions such as universities. These programs will grade you on your ability to remember knowledge and facts about theories and concepts of coaching, rather than giving a good amount of curriculum time to demonstrate best practice alongside giving you time to practice and apply coaching skills with feedback and observation.
The result of attending more of an academic program is that you will know a lot about the theories of coaching but you won’t feel confident in actually doing it, as you will have had minimal exposure of seeing it through live demonstration and minimal opportunity to do it and be assessed.
For a program to be considered more experience based, ‘hands on’ and practical at least half of the curriculum would be allocated to giving you practical assignments alongside evaluation for these. Teaching time would also include demonstrating the theory as well as talking about it. Therefore, at least 75% of the program would have a practical focus.
Practical training gives you the benefit of seeing a lot of coaching demonstrations of good practice and real-life transformation through the tools and techniques being taught. Since a practical focussed program gives you plenty of opportunity to practice your coaching, usually on other students, and on people outside of the course, your confidence in your skills will be reasonable by the end of the course. The teachers will be professional coaches themselves able to give you the benefit of their experience of coaching as well as demonstrations of the techniques they are teaching you.
Which one is the best for you?
When choosing which is best for you, think about what level of confidence you need to have on completion of the course. If you want to hit the ground running and coach people straight away, (or whilst training) a more practical course is a winner. If you need to gain knowledge and want to sound knowledgeable talking about coaching but won’t so much need to hone your skills too quickly during training, then a more academic approach would be best for you.
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Whichever coach training program you pick, don’t be afraid of picking up the phone and chatting to the people who run it. It’s a great way to ask lots of questions and engage your intuition to help you feel which ones right for you.
Do let us know if this article was helpful for you.
Find out more about Destiny Coaching’s Coach Training Options.