How can we ‘upgrade our systems’ rather than ‘adding more apps’, ask Julia Carden and Elizabeth Crosse in this three-part series on coach development. Part 1: setting the scene

 

This is the first article of a series in which we’ll explore coach development, challenging a traditional approach to Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and arguing why we should instead focus on a much more holistic approach and move to Continuous Professional and Personal Development (CPPD). 

The thinking we’ll share with you is based on our PhD research in this field and our ongoing journeys to deepen our coaching practice. This first article will set the scene, and in the subsequent two articles, we’ll do a deeper dive into coach self-awareness and how we learn.

CPD aims to enhance professional practice by developing knowledge, skills and competencies as our coaching career progresses. The focus is on ‘professional’, with formal and informal activities that support and underpin this professional development. The professional coaching bodies are all aligned to the importance of CPD by making it a requirement for initial and ongoing accreditation. However, there’s a lack of consistency in how it’s positioned and conceptualised across the coaching profession. The EMCC and AC include CPD as a core competency (EMCC Competency: Commitment to self-development; AC Competency: Undertake continuous coach development), whereas the ICF include it as one marker within the ‘embodies a coaching mindset’ competency, where the requirement is for the coach to “engage in ongoing learning and development as a coach”.

All the bodies require members to engage actively in ongoing learning and development activities. At the heart of the AC, EMCC and ICF’s definition of CPD demonstrates a commitment to developing a knowledge base and technical expertise to ensure “standards and competencies are maintained and enhanced over time” (EMCC, 2024). 

The range of activities the professional bodies recognise for CPD encompasses formal and informal learning. However, there’s a difference in emphasis on the need to demonstrate competency-based learning and develop reflective practice, as summarised in Table 1.

 

Comparison	AC	EMCC	ICF
Supervision: building the capacity of the coach to benefit the client through reflective dialogue	Required	Required	Recommended
Develop a reflective practice: critically reflecting on client feedback and demonstrating coaching competencies	Required	Required	Recommended
Mentor coaching: coaching and feedback to enhance capability in coaching in alignment with core competencies	Not required	Not required	Required for ACC renewal and updating a credential
Ethics course	Recommended	Recommended	Required
Formal (coach-specific) learning: knowledge and competency-based skills development, eg, webinars, short courses, programmes of learning for qualifications	Required	Required	Required
Informal (self-directed) learning: Non-competency based learning activities, eg, designing and delivering coach-related training, supervising and mentoring, wider reading, writing, and research	Recognised	Recognised	Recognised as resource development

Table 1: Comparison of CPD activities recognised by the professional coaching bodies

 

 

The AC and EMCC require members to establish active engagement with supervision, and reflection on practice. For the ICF, these are recommended rather than required activities. In comparison, ICF members must demonstrate a certain number of hours engaging in competency-based learning activities through courses or mentor coaching. APECS takes a different approach – rather than evidencing hours of training in various activities, members need to demonstrate a commitment to their learning and development to ensure that they’re up to date with current thinking and knowledge. An annual development plan is agreed upon and reviewed with their supervisor. 

Demonstrating CPD by adding what we consider as more apps, ie, skill-based webinars, courses and workshops which can be assessed as core hours, is easy to evidence and meets re-accreditation standards. However, we consider that personal growth rather than professional development facilitates us to do the ‘systems upgrade’ that enables us to take our coaching to another level. Therefore, the current professional focus of the accrediting bodies leaves a significant gap in ‘personal’ development and work on ‘self’, which might include activities such as therapy, yoga and spiritual practices, which undoubtedly enhance our being and deepen our practice. 

Our research highlighted that the route to deep client connection, which enables us to work at a level of insight and change, comes from the work on self and self-awareness. This is because we cannot fully connect with others until we have connected with self (Carden, Passmore, & Jones, 2022). And to do this, we must first develop self-acceptance through self-compassion and be able to manage and regulate ourselves so that we can sit with uncertainty and difficulty and bear witness to all that unfolds for our clients. As Laske (1999) highlights, we can only take our clients as deep as we have taken ourselves. Only when we have reached this level of deep self-connection can we truly connect with others because, as Yetunde Hoffman (2020: p.27) says: “Love is an unconditional acceptance of all of who I am as a human being and an unconditional acceptance of all of who you are.”  Therefore, client connection cannot happen without working first on self-connection, which enables us to coach and lead at a deeper level and go as deep as the client needs to go.  Developing and working on one’s self-awareness is the work that needs to be done to develop this self-connection.  Figure 1 highlights the dynamic nature of the relationship between self and client connection and shows how the two are inextricably linked.  

Figure 1 shows that the first stage of the work is for the coach to develop a mindset of self-development and be motivated to do so. The professional bodies placing value on CPPD, rather than just CPD, would add significant weight in initiating this stage of the work. Stage two is about knowing what self-awareness is and how best to learn and develop it (our next two articles will tackle this). As indicated in Figure 1 this is ongoing work because every client presents us with a new learning opportunity to learn more ourselves because it is “an ongoing process which needs continuous self-evaluation and conscious effort” (Rasheed, 2015: p.214).  

 

Figure 1: Stages of coach development

 

 

This thinking is supported by numerous studies that have demonstrated significant links between the quality of the coaching relationship and client benefit (De Haan et al., 2016). While we may disagree with De Haan and Gannon’s contention that the coaching relationship “sits at centre stage in practice” (2017, p. 195), the professional coaching bodies’ competency frameworks all have behavioural indicators that recognise the importance of presence and trust. 

These elements of the core coaching competencies invite us to focus on how we bring our humanity to our work. Our ability to create meaningful connections becomes even more essential as our humanity will differentiate us from the AI coach. However, developing this ability requires a level of self-understanding that goes beyond skills and knowledge. It evolves through our self-work, the ‘personal’ element in CPPD.  

In sum, we believe this focus on ‘continuing personal’ development is what is currently missing from the CPD requirement, and it appears that activities that centre on how we are being rather than what we are doing seem to hold less weight, even being categorised as “resource development” (ICF), even if these activities are acceptable as CPD.  Nevertheless, we consider that focusing on your personal development is of equal, if not more, value than undertaking professional development activities. This is about focusing on CPPD rather than CPD. Table 2 highlights how we perceive the difference.

 

Comparison	CPD	CPPD
Learning focus	Professional capability: enhancing knowledge skills and competency development	Personal capacity: enhancing  reflexivity and criticality; working on self
Benefit to clients	Enhances our technical expertise	Enhances our ability to develop meaningful coaching relationships deeper connection and sit with uncertainty
Type of activities	Coach-specific webinars and training; Programmes of coach learning for qualifications and credentials; Using competency framework for skills practice and feedback;  Supervision focusing on what I am doing	Developing a reflective practice; Deep self-work, eg, therapy, yoga, silent retreat, self-compassion courses, somatic work Learning from life-experience;  Attending to personal well-being; Supervision focuses on how I am being

Table 2: A comparison between CPD and CPPD

 

 

Maybe next time you consider signing up for another coaching course or webinar, stop and ask yourself if investing in a holiday that is the adventure of a lifetime or a yoga retreat would be better and how it might enhance how you are being rather than what you are doing as a coach. Even if you cannot use it as evidence of ‘continued coach education’, this may be a learning experience that will bring a greater depth to your coaching practice. With that in mind, we offer the following questions as points of reflection when planning your CPPD: 

• What is the purpose of my development (for me, my clients and the systems we live and work in)? 
• What is the difference I want to make?
• What am I curious about?
• What does my soul need?
• What is my body telling me that I need to pay attention to?

We’ll explore this further in subsequent articles, which will look at what we mean by self-awareness, what we can do to develop it, and how we might approach CPPD. 

 

About the authors

• Dr Julia Carden runs a coaching and coaching supervision practice. She is also a visiting tutor at Henley Business School, teaching on the Coaching Certificate, Professional Certificate in Coaching Supervision and MSc in Coaching for Behavioural Change. Her PhD research focused on the role of self-awareness in the development of the coach.
•  julia@carden-consulting.co.uk

 

• Dr Elizabeth Crosse, MCC, is an experienced coach, mentor and supervisor. Her thinking on the continuous development of coaches has evolved from more than 30 years’ in the coaching profession and her doctoral research, which focused on how coaches develop expertise. 
• elizabeth@eacrosse.co.uk

 

References

• Association of Coaching. (2024). Ongoing professional development. Available at: https://www.associationforcoaching.com/page/CPDScheme
• Bachkirova, T. (2016). ‘The self of the coach: Conceptualisation, issues and opportunities for practitioner development,’ Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 68(2), 143-156. 
• Carden, J., Passmore, J., & Jones, R.J. (2022). Exploring the role of self-awareness in coach development: A grounded theory study. International Journal of Training and Development, 26(2), 343-363.
• Crosse, E. (2023). A journey to expertise: how executive coaches identify their development needs. DCM thesis. Oxford Brookes University (Unpublished)
• De Haan, E., Grant, A. M., Burger, Y., & Eriksson, P. O. (2016). A large scale study of executive and workplace coaching: the relative contributions of relationship, personality match, and self-efficacy. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 68(3), 189-207. 
• De Haan, E., & Gannon, J. (2017). The coaching relationship. In E. Bachkirova, T., Spence, D., and Drake, D. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Coaching (pp.195-217). Sage.
• EMCC Global. (2024). Continual Professional Development. Available at: https://www.emccglobal.org/leadership-development/cpd/
• Hoffmann, Y. Y. (2020). Beyond Engagement. Authors Place Press
• International Coaching Federation. (2024). Continued Professional Development. Available at: https://coachingfederation.org/credentials-and-standards/professional-development
• Laske, O. (1999). An Integrated Model of Developmental Coaching. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 51(3), 139-159.
• Rasheed, S. P. (2015). Self-Awareness as a Therapeutic Tool for Nurse/Client Relationship. International Journal of Caring Sciences 8(1), 211-216.