By Bob Tschannen-Moran, IAC-CC, 2010
President, International Association of Coaching (IAC)
Provided with permission of choice, the magazine of professional coaching www.choice-online.com
What does it mean to be a “certified coach”? We can identify three trends, represented by three organizations, summarized as:
• Qualified
• Effective
• Qualified & Effective
Qualified
There’s a new coach certification on the horizon – the “Board Certified Coach,” through the Center for Credentialing in Education (CCE). According to CCE’s website (www.cce-global.org), CCE is a corporate affiliate of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC®) and “has provided a variety of services ranging from comprehensive association and credential management to specialized aspects of credential review and psychometric functions for more than 10 years.” Thus, CCE’s entry into coach certification stands to make a significant impact on the field.
In its approach to certification, CCE proposes to focus primarily on qualifications: education, training, ethics, screening, orientation and assessment. These will not require an oral demonstration of coaching capability. Why? Because of the lack of an objective and consistent way to evaluate such demonstrations, or what’s other- wise known as “inter-rater reliability.” Being unable to consistently establish agreement between raters as to what constitutes effective performance is a problem that has plagued credentialing for years in counseling psychology and has been abandoned in many professions. Without inter-rater reliability, oral exams are vulnerable to undue subjectivity and are potentially misleading: one rater may pass a candidate while another does not. The CCE solution? No oral exam at all. Receiving the CCE credential therefore implies that a person is qualified to coach well.
Effective
At the other end of the spectrum is the certification offered by the International Association of Coaching (IAC). According to its website, www.certifiedcoach.org, the IAC certifies coaches without requiring any particular educational background or coaching experience. The IAC assesses candidates as to their com- prehension of coaching mastery through an online exam and as to their demonstration of coaching mas- tery through a detailed review of two recorded coaching sessions. That review works with both the recordings as well as the transcripts of those recordings to carefully assess whether or not candidates demonstrate the nine IAC Coaching Masteries®. Receiving the IAC credential therefore implies that a person is effective at coaching well.
Given this approach to certification, inter-rater reliability is a primary concern of the IAC. Two certifiers independently rate the recordings of every candidate. If there is a difference of opinion, a third certifier reviews the recordings and ratings to mediate. The IAC is currently working with an outside consultant to statistically establish and to operationally enhance its inter-rater reliability. If and when such consistency between certifiers is established, this could become a model for others to follow. Inter-rater reliability is essential to the viability and integrity of performance-based certifications.
Qualified & Effective
The International Coach Federation (ICF) has long asserted its credential as the “gold-standard” in the coaching profession. According to its website (www.coachfederation.org), “coaches who have been credentialed by the ICF have received coach-specific training, achieved a designated number of expe- rience hours and have been coached by a mentor coach.” The ICF also requires candidates to demonstrate the eleven ICF Core Coaching Compe- tencies through written as well as live and recorded oral exams. Receiving the ICF credential therefore implies that a person is both qualified to coach well and is effective at coaching well.
To the best of my knowledge, neither the ICF, the IAC, nor any other global coaching association has yet established inter-rater reliability when it comes to the evaluation of coaching effectiveness. That accounts for some of the discontent that is often expressed regarding coach certification. People who fail to get certified have grumbled that the process is inaccurate and subjective while those who watch the public coaching demonstrations of Master Certified Coaches have grumbled that such demonstrations are less- than-spectacular or even ineffective examples of masterful coaching. The profession apparently has a ways to go before the necessary rigor comes to the assessment of coaching effectiveness.
Accountability & Responsibility
The challenge for any coach-certifying body is to maintain the integrity of their credentials, both for coaches seeking credentials and for those who already have them. In the case of both the CCE and the ICF, maintaining a credential often revolves around obtaining approved Continuing Education Units (CEUs). The focus, in other words, is on the “qualified” aspect of the credentials. No attempt is usually made to retest whether or not certified coaches remain effective. It is assumed that coaching effectiveness continues as long as coaches maintain their qualifications. The process of getting CEUs is what accountability looks like when it comes to such certifications.
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