Published in, and reproduced with permission from, choice, the magazine  of professional coaching www.choice-online.com by Suzi Pomerantz  originally published in June 2010. Is your coaching really consulting? Maybe if it was, you’d be making a six-figure income! Check your contracts, coaches! Does your contract include language referencing the descriptors of a coach as “guide” or “trusted advisor,” or is the …

Unless you’re at your best as a coach, you can’t support your clients effectively. Therefore, understanding the cognitive, emotional and behavioral aspects of your own wellness is fundamental in order to be a successful and sustainable support to your clients.

The term “supervision” is used to describe the dialogue that the coach has with someone else called “supervisor”. The definition of the word “supervision” varies with the countries, the professional bodies and the professional environment.

Would anyone coaching, as a member in the ICF, tell a client that they had to imitate the existing success models in order to thrive? I would hope not. Would they seek to impose a structure for success they’d seen before, studied or been a part of? In fact, the ICF MCC minimum skill requirements would be expressly against that. …

The use of the words Supervision and Mentoring feel arbitrary and contrary to what we have been doing as ICF credentialed coaches/coach trainers as well as compared to the broader definitions out in the worlds we work in.

How do you see ICF today? I’m hopeful that within the organization there are people who are willing to push back, to ask questions, to challenge the status quo.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) developed standards to assure that coaching training programs follow guidelines such as providing mentor coaching to participants.

This whole idea of supervision is misguided. Who supervises the supervisors? Is this just another monetized certification?

Being genuinely empathetic to the issues the team is grappling with and providing direct yet respectful feedback is as useful with a group as it is in our individual coaching work.

My understanding of what coaching mastery means is being totally in the moment and present, working at a deep level, and co-creating an environment where the client can achieve deep awareness and breakthrough.