Coaching courses, the way forward

I am writing this because an online group I belong to is presently discussing if accreditation makes a difference to whether or not someone is a good life coach. In other words, should coaches be trained or do some people naturally possess coaching characteristics that make them good coaches.

I am not going to answer that question here, but I do want to discuss the accreditation and training that is available in the UK for aspiring coaches.

There is no gold standard or any one qualification that makes someone a Life Coach. There are a couple of qualifications offered nationally, one by Edexcel and the other by OCN and there are also a couple of courses validated by or run in association with a university or college. All of these courses are standardised, externally moderated courses that can be trusted in terms of quality and rigor and cost only a few hundred pounds to complete.

For example:
http://www.openstudycollege.com/courses/ocn-life-coaching-course.html

http://www.learning-at-home.co.uk/life-coaching-course-level-with-learning-credits-p-2402.html

http://www.distance-learning-centre.co.uk/products/202/LIFE_COACHING_COURSE.htm


https://store.oxfordcollege.ac/product_info.php?products_id=41&gclid=CNmQsZbEjZ8CFQWIzAodw1WCMg

http://www.reed.co.uk/LearningCentre/Course/Details/4692/?SubjectID=12

There is also a plethora of different coaching schools offering an array of certificates and diplomas. These are mostly distance learning courses, with the added bonus of a two or three day attendance programme. Unlike counselling, which coaching is often compared to, there are no supervised hours of coaching required as part of the accreditation process and there appears to be no consistent idea of what the ‘gold standard’ of coaching looks like, let alone whether or not it has been met by one of the private training courses on offer.

Selling coaching courses is a multimillion-pound business and if we could get hold of the figures, we would probably find that far more money is made from training coaches than from coaching. There is possibly food for thought in that….. but what marks out the main differences between the different accreditation paths is the cost of the course. OCN costs a few hundred pounds whereas private coaching schools can cost several thousand, yet at the end of the day, most people end up with an OCN certificate that is included in many of the accreditation packages and if people have paid for a coaching school diploma, that is what they get.



A qualification really should have some currency; some value that other people recognise. We all know what someone means when they say they have a degree, irrespective of where they studied. There is no similarly agreed standard within coaching because it is not taught in public colleges or universities: a student graduating from a coaching school is only as good as the school they attended and there is no way to compare one coaching school with another.

To draw a parallel: in the UK, anyone can set himself or herself up as a counsellor, but unless they belong to the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy they are unlikely to be employed by public bodies or by well-informed clients. Counselling courses are usually taught in colleges and universities where external moderators ensure quality. This means that students can be assured they will be supervised properly on a quality controlled professional programme of study.

Coaching needs this kind of regulation before it will come to be seen as a valued profession. There is a great deal of difference between saying to a client ‘I have a certificate from xxx coaching school’ (which the client has probably never heard of) and ‘I have a certificate from xxx university’, which clients recognise and trust.

Most of the big coaching schools offer free certified ‘training events’. They are in fact opportunities for their sales staff, who are coaches, to offer one or more activities to would-be coaches before they start their hard sell.

What I found surprising at the sales events I attended in 2009 is that neither mentioned they accredited their programmes with OCN accreditation and considering that this was the only real qualification they offered I found that surprising. The main thing on offer at many schools is the coaching school diploma that I heard referred to in the different presentations as a ‘qualification’. It isn’t! There is no qualification requirement in coaching, and a coaching school diploma is not a recognised qualification, although within the profession some training organisations are more respected than others and some coaches may be more highly esteemed because of the coaching school they trained with but I am not sure how that impacts on private clients who are just as happy to accept a certificate that cost a few hundred pounds.

This does not mean that coaching schools are dishonest or that their fees are not worth paying. I certainly enjoyed the course I did and am about to embark on another, just for the sake of it. What I am arguing for is that prospective students should be told the truth about what their diplomas or certificates are really worth. If regulations do come in, some people might find they will have to retrain or demonstrate their ability to coach, even though by then they will have held a coaching certificate for many years. Seems unfair, somehow.

Perhaps the only way to deal with this is to close down all of the private coaching schools and start again, offering coaching courses in regulated colleges and universities? Somehow I don’t think that will happen, do you?