How do I train as a coach? (One coach’s journey)
More coachees are asking me each week how to become an International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified coach and how I became a coach, specifically the decisions before me and the training itself. (I’m delighted they ask, because coaching’s a truly delightful field.)
My journey might contrast from other coaches you’ve met. I have no PhD in psychology nor aptitude in science. I had not received coaching prior to going to coaching school. (Until the first day of coaching school, I’d confused mentoring with coaching.) Nor did I grasp the basics on active listening. Every career I’d had required pouring in, directing, and offering my expertise: Consulting. Professor and instructor work. Journalism.
But I’ve found a fantastic home in this new industry, now coaching full-time for those I adore and relate well to. (Most of my clients are foreign-born leaders or managers on their way to the top.) I’m training coaches and corporate leaders on active listening. My training’s broadened what felt possible. Here I’ve mused on how I scaled my coaching business quite quickly. In this week’s musings, I’m sharing how I trained to become a coach, letting the most popular questions I hear guide us. (If you’d like to listen along, I read these musings in this week’s Competency No 5 podcast.)
Why and how did I choose coaching over other professions?
Training to become a coach felt like a natural segue from all I’d done and still felt curious about. Clues that coaching might delight me and satisfy my quest for change included:
- Noticing I’d coached, even somewhat as a professor. Pouring in information and tips only helped so much. Fear’s a big blocker to effective communications and performance and I helped students see that by being curious and building trust and intimacy
- Falling into a coaching role reporting for global publications. Interviewing famous and powerful people revealed public speaking fear, nervousness, self doubt, and imposter syndrome. The higher the person, the bigger the fear. I coached my sources to relax and speak to me like a dear friend vs stranger. These first two careers confirmed for me a need for coaching others to communicate well existed.
- Knowing I loved self awareness and self growth through therapy, self-driven growth and change (including solo travel). I understood my confidence had grown through prevailing over deep pain and adversity (childhood and adult). I related to others wanting the same.
How did I know it was time for change?
This question’s a bigger one I’m planning to explore in a memoir only because training to become a coach changed my life, my work, and my family, too. I’ve scaled in a short time and have tripled my income as a result. Taking steps to make that change and go back to school at age 49 (amidst Covid-19 and the world turned upside down) meant leaving my role as professor (across several excellent universities). I’d served in academia for 19 years. Here lay the clues:
- Feeling disgruntled/frustrated/FOMO. I loved my time with my students who taught me as much as I taught them. Scarce opportunities and growth roles meant I could not grow nor promote, no matter how hard I tried. Coaching and training to become a coach felt opposite to that.
- Noticing an intuition as I reached 50, I’d be really mad at myself as an elder woman in my 80s if I didn’t make a move now when I still could. I felt something that better satisfied my ambitions and curiosity awaited me. I did not know what. I knew something though.
What other external factors determined your path?
Some serendipity and helpful timing which came into play included:
- Covid. World calamity. Everyone wanted and needed a coach. Therapists became strained and inaccessible. For many, coaching got them through the last four years.
- Companies noticing they would lose too many talented people without offering coaching support. Companies investing in external coaching.
- BetterUp, the coaching startup which hired me, ballooned. Prince Harry joined them as CIO, and he was a mental fitness advocate, which became an arm of my training, which I’m now getting to.
Where did you train and how did you choose?
I chose an ICF-accredited coaching program because one time I’d attempted to coach formally for a university where I taught, the organizer asked if I were certified with the ICF. I was not; and got refused. This planted the seed I needed to do so if choosing coaching as my serious career change and job.
I selected the UW Madison Professional Coaching Certificate Program which hosted online and in-person training and appreciated the hybrid model where I learned a lot with my fellow coaches in training and observed delightful activities including fishbowl coaching (observing in a circle), meeting my wiser, elder self for guidance, and value mining. (We had 44 in my cohort. This program is since remote only.)
Additionally, I coached and certified as a:
- Mental fitness coach via Positive Intelligence, becoming the 81st globally certified mental fitness coach with Shirzad Chamine. I chose mental fitness coaching and training to compliment my traditional, ICF training. Building mental fitness drives awareness, performance, and reduces fear, helping my niche coaching as a communications coach. (Many clients choose me because of this training.) Also, Coach Bill Carmody’s play book on building your coaching business? Wow. I ran with it and played with it.
- Group coaching coach, so I could bring the joys of 1:1 coaching to groups on scale and still honor the ICF’s seven core competencies.
- Happiness coach by taking the delightful Yale course on the Science of Happiness and Wellbeing via Coursera. I still use the learnings from this sweet research based course in my coaching today.
Countless coaching institutions exist with some larger players, like the Coactive Training Institute and the Hudson Institute of Coaching. Some newer players have also entered the scene, like ICLI Rising with trainers and cohorts across the globe.
The key on your program: Speak with the director. Ask to speak to graduates. Doing both guided me well.
How much does it cost?
The ICF tells us the cost in the U.S. to certify as an ICF coach ranges from $5k to $12,000, depending on the program. All up, I spent $13,000 to fully train as a coach across the fore mentioned programs with the UW Madison program costing $10,000 when I graduated. I consider the investment money well worth spent.
Now certifying towards my Master Certified Coach certification, I’m investing an additional $5,500 for my mentor coach (I require 10 sessions as part of many requirements) and submitting my oral recording of my coaching for the ICF examiners costs close to $800 per submission. (All costs in US dollars.)
Can your employer subsidize the expense? Many do! Several classmates had their employer invest in their entire coaching training provided they make a compelling case on how it helps them in their job. Others use their education and training stipend(s), which too few employees here in the U.S. ever use. Some have $5k at their disposal, which covers the ICLI Rising fee.
Can I work alongside my coaching training?
Absolutely. At my traditional program through UW Madison, most classmates worked full-time while training to become a coach. My first training required about 15 hours a week, including the first 100 coaching hours I needed to complete to help me certify.
How hard is the ICF training itself?
Deceptively tricky because the ICF core competencies, especially maintaining presence and active listening require a different way of thinking, being, and interacting with each other. An ideal, ICF-approved coaching conversation requires the coach to speak only 10% of the time and yield a powerful shift within. (I launched a podcast, Competency No 5 on maintaining presence when we coach, lead, and live our lives, to chronicle my MCC certification, this approach, and experience.)
Also, if your background, a consultative, bossy one like mine, requires driving insights and results, then trusting that someone will unlock their answers within without me pouring in felt ridiculous and impossible. I’m also extroverted with introvert undertones; I like to talk. I’ve a lot of ideas — too many. So I struggled, until I trusted the process, discovered that mirroring back what I heard, asking open-ended questions, noticing what’s there, and trying not to solve was the biggest gift I can give anyone, even humanity.
Is the training worth it?
Absolutely. Not only did I find an exciting, new, uplifting career, my personal life shifted in beautiful ways too. Training to become a coach meant I must look deep within me, become more self aware on when I talk, why, and better understand my values. I have reconciled old feelings that no longer serve me. I take better care of myself and have become more confident, peaceful, and more decisive.
Meanwhile, now coaching a lot, and coaching people I enjoy during thrilling life and career diversions and chapters, I gain the lasting residual benefits and joy from watching them grow more self aware, strident, and bold at taking risks.
If I had any doubts, three years ago, my oldest boy, Nicholas gave me a memorable gem to defy them. He was aged 14 and I’d just concluded my third of four quarters of training. He noticed I’d changed, in a good way, a very good way, since training to become a coach. Of course I thanked him profusely. And then I asked what he’d noticed. “You listen better,” he said. “And you just seem more peaceful,” he added. “And because of that, we get along even better than before.”
Debbi Gardiner McCullough coaches and trains foreign-born leaders to become more confident, concise, and mentally fit communicators. From Wisconsin, she owns and runs Hanging Rock Coaching and coaches worldwide with BetterUp.