ICF Coaches can specialize in a variety of coaching areas, including Executive Coaching, Life Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Career Coaching, Financial Coaching and other skilled coaching fields.

A Life Coach may work with individuals focusing on their personal goals and aspirations whereas an Executive Coach may work with managers and executives focusing on their professional goals and aspirations. A Relationship Coach might work with both individuals and couples. A Financial Coach can help you with achieving your financial goals and aspirations.

Other areas of coaching specialization include Group or Team Coaching within organizations.

Coaching can be a transformational experience, but how do you find the right coach? Anyone can call themselves a coach.  ICF-credentialed coaches are professional coaches who have met stringent education and experience requirements, and have demonstrated a thorough understanding of the coaching competencies that set the standard in the profession. In addition, ICF-credentialed coaches adhere to strict ethical guidelines as part of ICF’s mission to protect and serve coaching consumers.

An individual or team might choose to work with a coach for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:

• Something urgent, compelling or exciting is at stake (a challenge, stretch goal or opportunity)
• A gap exists in knowledge, skills, confidence or resources
• A desire to accelerate results
• A lack of clarity with choices to be made
• Success has started to become problematic
• Work and life are out of balance, creating unwanted consequences
• Core strengths need to be identified, along with how best to leverage them

To determine whether you or your company could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When an individual or business has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater ease.

Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself whether collaboration, other viewpoints, and new perspectives are valued. Also, ask yourself whether you or your business is ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes. If the answer is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way to grow and develop.

Overall, be prepared to design the coaching partnership with the coach. For example, think of a strong partnership that you currently have in your work or life. Look at how you built that relationship and what is important to you about partnership. You will want to build those same things into a coaching relationship. Here are a few other tips:

• Interview more than one coach to determine “what feels right” in terms of the chemistry. Coaches are accustomed to being interviewed, and an introductory conversation of this type is usually free of charge.
• Look for stylistic similarities and differences between the coach and you and how these might support your growth as an individual or the growth of your team.
• Discuss your goals for coaching within the context of the coach’s specialty or the coach’s preferred way of working with an individual or team.
• Talk with the coach about what to do if you ever feel things are not going well; make some agreements up front on how to handle questions or problems.
• Remember that coaching is a partnership, so be assertive about talking with the coach about any concerns.

 Working with a coach requires both a personal commitment of time and energy as well as a financial commitment. Fees charged vary by specialty and by the level of experience of the coach. Individuals should consider both the desired benefits as well as the anticipated length of time to be spent in coaching. Since the coaching relationship is predicated on clear communication, any financial concerns or questions should be voiced in initial conversations before the agreement is made. Our Find a Coach Directory https://coachingfederation.org.za/find-a-coach/ allows you to search for a coach based on a number of qualifications, including fee range.

A Coach :

• Provides objective assessment and observations that foster the individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others.
• Listens closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances.
• Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making.
• Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations.
• Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives.
• Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios.
• Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.

Measurement may be thought of in two distinct ways: external indicators of performance and internal indicators of success. Ideally, both are incorporated.

• Examples of external measures include achievement of coaching goals established at the outset of the coaching relationship, increased income/revenue, obtaining a promotion, performance feedback that is obtained from a sample of the individual’s constituents (e.g., direct reports, colleagues, customers, boss, the manager him/herself), personal and/or business performance data (e.g., productivity, efficiency measures). The external measures selected should be things the individual is already measuring and has some ability to directly influence.
• Examples of internal measures include self-scoring/self-validating assessments that can be administered initially and at regular intervals in the coaching process, changes in the individual’s self-awareness and awareness of others, shifts in thinking that create more effective actions, and shifts in one’s emotional state that inspire confidence.