ICF Competency and Code of Ethics Study Sheets

It’s International Coaching Week 2020 and the 25th anniversary of the International Coach Federation! I’m looking back at my journey to coaching and I wanted to give you a gift. ICF Competency and Code of Ethics Study Sheets.

I can hardly believe it as I write down these words, but I started coaching more than 25 years ago! As a co-founder of an award-winning training and development firm, I frequently found myself immersed in conversations with individuals in training programs asking for advice, tips, and techniques.

They may have attended a session on, say, Leadership Skills, and had a tough problem they needed to talk over. Listening carefully and referencing the learning materials while leaning on a long track record of success in an advising role, I would dole out the tried and true strategies that best fit the situation. The client was happy and the strategies worked.

Since I was primarily working at large companies like Microsoft, Canada Post, Manulife Financial, and numerous public sector organizations, I got to know a lot about the challenges of the people at the top, middle, and front lines of these organizations.

Once, after a presentation skills workshop, I got a call from a senior executive working in the organization where I had delivered the training. He had heard good things about my work and about the presentation skills program from his employees. He wondered if I would be willing to work with him one-on-one.

He was scheduled to deliver a speech to an audience of 2,500 people at an industry conference. The stakes were high and his anxiety level was through the roof. He needed some help. Fast. Having successfully presented in front of very large audiences myself for years, I knew just what he was up against.

I enthusiastically drafted a coaching plan that would have him standing ovation ready in just a few short months. We met weekly to outline his goals for the event. We roughed out and then fine-tuned his speech. We recorded his presentation, reviewed it together and I shared my hard-earned wisdom in an effort to polish his platform skills.

Finally, after our last session, with the trepidation of a parent waving to a child heading off for the first day of school, I bid him goodbye and I hoped he was ready.

He was.

The speech was a success, earning him resounding applause and many accolades.

Word got out and before long I found myself advising a number of senior executives in precisely the same way. The work was rewarding and I loved sharing my proven techniques. Presto, I was a Presentation Skills Coach!

Fast forward a decade. Coaching in the workplace was becoming a fast-growing field. As it emerged as a tool for personal and professional development, there appeared two distinct paths for helping people reach their goals. One was where they were told what to do and another where they figured it out for themselves.

A few years and a few life lessons later, with a Graduate Certificate in Executive Coaching and thousands of hours coaching senior leaders to my credit, I earned an International Coach Federation Master Certified Coach designation. 

Today, I continue to coach senior leaders as they strive to meet their strategic priorities, handle difficult executive team issues, deliver on year-end objectives, answer to their Board of Directors, move their organizations through transitions, and a wide range of other challenges. I also mentor coaches who are working on their professional development so that they can be the best they can be for their clients.

It is still rewarding work.

But let’s talk about you for a minute.

Wherever you are along your coaching path, you may be coaching and you want to coach even better. Or, you are a coaching student working your way through a coach training program, and you want to develop your craft. Whether you are an internal coach in a large organization, a leadership coach, a life coach, a coaching student, or a coach in another specialty altogether, you strive to be the best coach you can be. We all do.

That’s why the International Coaching Federation has been so important for me. It is an organization that set the standards for excellence in coaching years ago with the coach competencies. I am a big fan of competencies. They encourage professionalism and ethical conduct in any field.

The fictional character Frank Underwood in the television drama House of Cards, said it best “Competency is such a rare bird in these woods, that I always appreciate it when I see it.”

I agree, Frank!

I hope that you have been continually striving to improve your competency as a coach. It is something that I work on myself every day. To that end, and as a special gift to coaches this International Coaching Week 2020, I have created a set of ICF Coach Competency Study Sheets. It’s just a little document that may help you brush up on your ICF Coach Competencies.

I hope it helps you along on your journey to grow your capability as a coach and to serve your coaching clients as the best coach you can be.

Happy International Coaching Week 2020 coaches! Let’s keep on growing.

Click here to request the ICF Coach Competency and Code of Ethics Study Sheets. 

Be sure to circle back and let me know how it works for you!

And if you haven’t yet completed your required 10 hours of Mentor Coaching for your ICF Credential Renewal. Check out my next Group Mentor Coaching sessions.