Too much of a good thing?
The second in our new series of columns by an anonymous coaching buyer takes a thought-provoking helicopter view of what’s going on in the industry.
This issue: accreditation
The recent growth in coaching accreditation is confusing. Not just for coaches but for those of us involved in coaching procurement In the unregulated marketplace, the challenge has always been to sort the wheat from the chaff. Until recently if you weren’t prepared to pay for an assessment centre, word of mouth tended to be the main way of checking whether a coach was any good....
If we examine the development of other professions such as accountancy, over the last 100 years, we find that there are a number of professional bodies with a range of qualifications and ‘accreditations’ which focus on different aspects of accountancy. This allows a person to select the training suited for the area of practice they wish to enter.
I do not see why the coaching profession and coaching professional bodies cannot continue to stay rich in their diversity with professional bodies working together but offering specific accreditations for their members. It would be difficult to imagine professional bodies having one joint accreditation although working together on ethics and general competencies is probably workable.
Professional bodies could have, in addition to their own register, a joint register like other professions do.
Stephen Palmer