ICF uses the term “coach-practitioner” to distinguish professional coaches with a minimum of 60 hours of coach-specific training from managers/leaders who have taken a one- or two-day coaching skills workshop. As the ICF website states, “There is no single, industry-wide standard” for training internal coaches.
That said, here’s a look at three viable approaches that large organizations are taking to create an internal coaching bench:
Hire full-time credentialed coaches
On the high end of the cost spectrum is the approach of recruiting or developing credentialed coaches to work as full-time internals. Typically the job description includes delivering coaching skills workshops, group and team coaching, and 1-on-1 coaching to senior managers on up to directors. External coaches generally work with upper-level executives (SVPs through C-suite).
Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Capital One are among a handful of large corporations with full-time internals earning six- figure salaries. The CEO of Capital One became a coaching champion after experiencing its benefits himself. Now the firm has four full-time ICF-credentialed coaches on staff. Even when the banking industry was under extreme pressure to costs, the coaching program wasn’t touched.
Develop part-time credentialed coaches
A less costly and more common approach involves training full- time employees to coach as part of their jobs. This may involve:
* sending employees to an accredited coaching school (at a cost of $10-15K per person)
* bringing in an accredited external coach training company to deliver internal training
* developing an internal coaching curriculum that meets the standards of ICF or another credentialing body
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Rey Carr
December 27, 2016 at 2:34 pm
With the increasing use of polls and surveys by different coaching groups or independent survey firms, it has become more difficult to integrate the different findings into a coherent picture.
Carol Goldsmith integrates the results from different surveys/interviews brilliantly in this article; and for those with a short attention span, she’s even included the top 10 in an executive summary.
Most of the organizations that conduct coaching surveys do not point out the limitations of their instrument or data collection procedures. However, when such surveys are combined, as they are in this article, the resulting data can be more credible.
Carol Goldsmith
January 2, 2017 at 10:33 pm
Thank you for the kind comment, Rey. Glad you found the article to be useful.
Be your best, Carol
Carol Goldsmith, PCC, NLPT
The Discovery Coach