Supervision of Coaches in Europe: Situation and Trends

There are a lot of professional bodies in Europe for coaching and supervision and the terminology varies a lot. Some are international and many are local. Their implementation varies from country to country. In Germany there are about 30 associations for coaches and a big one (2000 members) for supervisors. In France, only four coaching associations are active, assembling about 2000 coaches and only a quite small association of coaching supervisors (PSF, 30 members).

“How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?” Stalin asked in 1944, interrupting Churchill’s argumentation about Poland. We have to ask ourselves the same question about European bodies of coaches and supervisors before we can consider the scenarios of the future. Let’s take them briefly one by one:

APECS

Founded in 2004, APECS (Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision) has the ambition to be the top level professional body for executive coaching and supervision.

Located in UK this association has 120 to 150 members out of which about 20 accredited supervisors.

AOCS

AOCS (Association of Coaching Supervisors) is located in UK and has 120 to 150 members. It has Country Coordinators in the USA, Spain, Benelux, France, Ireland/Northern Ireland and Asia Pacific region.

One element of AOCS strategy is to focus on research considered as a key component of monitoring changes in this area. AOCS has formed mutual partnership with several other associations: EMCC, LVSC (Dutch national association for supervision and coaching, 2400 members, ANSE affiliate) and AC (Association for Coaching).

EMCC

EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council) was founded in 1992 and is made up of Affiliated Country EMCCs and direct members where a local EMCC does not yet exist.

It is an association for coaches, mentors and supervisors that has about 5000 members in 24 European countries.

EMCC has developed a competence framework for coaching and mentoring (8 competences) that has recently been updated. It has also a competence framework for supervision (7 competences) that is inherited from the work of the “UK coaching bodies’ roundtable”, a workgroup active in 2006 including EMCC UK, ICF UK, AC, APECS and later AOCS.

EMCC is currently revisiting its supervision competence framework. Converging with EQF (European Qualification Framework, see blow “The role of EU”) is a possible direction.