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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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