Demonstrating your coaching brilliance to ICF assessors in 4 easy stages by Roy Marriott

A blog post by Roy Marriott, MCC, SP

Are you in the process of producing a recording for an ICF coaching credential? Do you find yourself worrying about whether you’re “doing it right”? Is that making your coaching less enjoyable or valuable?

If so, you’re not alone – we’ve all been there!

How can we escape this horribly ironic dilemma? How can we produce an ACC/PCC/MCC recording, while still doing great coaching?

Firstly, I’d recommend dropping the idea of “producing a recording.” Instead, get into the habit of recording as many sessions as possible, so you’ve got lots of recordings to choose from. Then you can relax into coaching, not performing. Your coaching will naturally improve, you’ll be coaching at your best more of the time, and that’ll really shine through.

Then I’d recommend proceeding in four stages:

1. Identifying your coaching brilliance that’s already there

2. Identifying your coaching brilliance that’s already visible to ICF assessors

3. Making the rest of your existing coaching brilliance visible to assessors

4. Adding anything new that needs to be added – one step at a time

Let’s look at each stage in turn:

Stage 1: Identifying your coaching brilliance that's already there

Listen to recording(s) of your coaching, with or without a transcript, especially focusing on times when you feel you’re coaching at or near your best, or when your clients are particularly appreciative.

What strikes you as working well?

Make some notes, really clarify what you’re doing well. This will help you to keep doing it – you’re likely to find yourself doing it more and more…. What you pay attention to, grows.

You can do this by yourself, with fellow coaches (e.g. in peer groups) and in mentor coaching (both 1-1 and in groups).

Then go coach! Pay full attention to your client, coach them as best you can, and enjoy noticing whenever your brilliance naturally emerges (even a little bit)!

Stage 2: Identifying your coaching brilliance that's already visible to ICF assessors

Some of your good coaching will already clearly visible to ICF assessors through the various lenses of the BARS or markers. These are particularly worth continuing!

So have a listen to recording(s) of yourself coaching with the BARS/markers in mind, and notice how what you’re doing well fits in with those BARS/markers. This will help you naturally continue and develop those aspects of your coaching.

Then, guess what, go coach! Pay full attention to your client! When you come to listen back to your recording, or even just reflect on a session you’ve just had, you’ll be surprised how much you’ve done that’s aligned with the competencies.

Stage 3: Making the rest of your existing coaching brilliance visible to assessors

However, you may find that some things you’re doing well in coaching aren’t “visible” though the lenses of any of the competencies/BARS/markers.

In which case, ask yourself (and others – peers, trainers, mentors) how you can “tweak” your coaching to make it visible.

Sometimes we call this “subtitles for the assessors” – but please don’t tell them, it’s a bit cheeky! And to be fair, there may be things you and the coachee know, but the assessor has no way of picking up.

For example, suppose someone is talking about an issue, and you ask them out of the blue, “how could you delegate that to your team?”

To the assessor, that sounds like you’re trying to give the coachee a suggestion. But you’re remembering that the previous session was all about delegation, and they’ve asked you to remind them to delegate rather then take things on themselves. You’re being a highly supportive and respectful coach – brilliant!

You can make that brilliance visible to the assessors by saying something like, “I remember last time we were talking about delegation, and you wanted me to remind you about that. So I’m wondering if this is something you’d like to be delegating to your team?”

This may be even better for the coachee too – it’s takes a little extra time, but it gives them chance to remember the previous conversation, leaves them more fully in control,  and exercises their burgeoning habit of deciding to delegate when appropriate.

Once you’ve identified these “tweaks” you need to make – put them into practice! I’d recommend adding them one at a time, embedding them and making them habitual, before adding more, and certainly before proceeding to stage 4.

Stage 4: Adding anything new that needs to be added – one step at a time

By this point you may find you’re already coaching at the ACC/PCC/MCC level you’re aiming for – and doing it quite naturally.

But you may find there are certain criteria you’re not meeting.

Time to add in some new skills.

Once again, I’d recommend a small steps approach: identify a coaching skill you’d like to develop, maybe brainstorm some questions you’d like to find yourself asking or ways you’d like to find yourself responding – and give it a go. Once you’ve got that “up and running”, so you’re doing it quite naturally, you can add in another.

Reading this, you might be thinking, “that all sounds rather slow.” Well, in my experience, if I try and develop too many new habits/skills at once, I become far too self-conscious and it all goes horribly wrong. I find it’s much quicker to really focus on one new thing at a time, get that up and running to the point where I don’t have to think about it, then start on the next one. So I’ll give the last word to Insoo Kim-Berg, co-originator of Solution Focus: “If you want to be fast, go slow.”

And if you’d like help believing that you have some coaching brilliance, identifying it, or making it more visible to assessors, why not come along to one of our free “meetup and exchange” sessions?

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