3 reasons why certification matters for professional coaches

I pursued my professional coaching after spending 16 years in the corporate career. Not knowing much about the coaching industry, I was not looking for certifications, let alone why it would be necessary.

Somehow, I did a course from an organization, Coach for Life Institute, which has a program credentialled with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), an organization foremost in devloping competencies and providing certification for Professional Coaches.

Professional coaching is a young profession and is constantly being enriched - based on research, study and experience of coaches and clients.

In my view, here are the top 3 reasons to pusue a certification if you are inclined to be a professional coach.

Having a scientific approach

Since the coaching industry is self-regulated, anyone can call themselves a coach. An argument often heard against pursuing a certification is that they are a natural coach and already have an inspirational leadership style. After interacting with some non-certified coaches and their clients, what I gathered is that non-certified coaches tend to focus on advice and motivation in their sessions.

However, a certified coach focuses on supporting the client to discover their solutions rather than advice. Working with certified coaches, therefore, guarantees that they have gone through a rigorous process and training. This provides structure to sessions, ensures minimum competencies are followed and ultimately helps the client in finding the answer within them.

Honing the craft

A professional gets better at their craft as they keep working on themselves. As a certified Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with ICF, I had to undergo 125 hours of training, more than 500 hours of client coaching experience and clear an exam to test my knowledge and expertise in the profession. Moreover, the credentials need to be renewed at fixed intervals which warrants an existing certified coach to keep honing their craft.

Working with such a coach allows the client to gain from their rich experience.

Community experience

Birds of the same feather flock together! One of the things to build a business in coaching requires like-minded people who aspire for professional expertise and hold each other in a collaborative space. Being a member of a body like ICF, I come across a network of coaches - seniors and peers from whom I learn from and also work together to bring awareness of the profession to the world at large.

Many coaches work as solopreneurs. Alignment with other coaches brings a pool of resources which can then be used for research, outreach and other endeavours.Working as a professional coach for 3 years, I met my mentors, other coach friends, and co-founders through access to this community of certified professionals who believe in continuous learning.

Certification allows one to be a better coach, an inspired learner and part of a thriving ecosystem.

Sunny Bhasin is founder of Sunny Connect, a firm specialising in curating programs for Conscious Leadership Development and can be reached at coach@sunnyconnect.in