A common theme that I see in those wanting to become coaches is a passion for coaching. It may be that it’s a particular niche or process that has ignited that enthusiasm or it may be for the entire field.
Yet from time to time I come across coaches and those wanting to be coaches who have lost touch with that passion and are frustrated – maybe by their perceived lack of progress in their studies or growth of their practice.
There are lots of practical actions that you may be able to take in such a situation. Often in such a situation an individual may feel that they have done everything they can think of to do and yet nothing has worked.
The actual situation that is the source of the frustration can be very varied. With such a broad spectrum of potential “causes” this would be a very long post if I even attempted to cover a proportion of the scenarios.
Instead I am focusing a few minutes about your passion for your coaching and why you love(d) the idea of becoming a coach.
I invite you today to remind yourself of that and to (re)-connect with your passion for coaching and all that means for you. That may mean that you take a moment or two to really imagine, using all your senses, what you want to be doing as a coach.
Perhaps it’s about taking the time to actually go and physically do a coaching session with your own personal goal of being of service to that person.
Maybe it’s about reviewing testimonials and feedback that you have been given by past clients – or even writing a testimonial that you’d love to receive from your dream client.
Having (re)connected with your passion notice what occurs to you in this state about what you can do next with your coaching.
One thing I know as a coach is that when someone is feeling frustrated that the solutions that they are aware of for a given ”problem” can be very different to the ones that they can see in the same situation when they are feeling passionate. If nothing else it can be a great boost to your motivation and energy 😉
One of the “models” that a training department I used to work with was Comfort, Stretch and Panic Zones. If you have not come across that model it is usually explained using 3 circles, all with the same centre but increasing in size.
The smallest circle is normally labelled your comfort zone. With this model you put things that are part of your every day life that you do naturally, possibly even without thinking about them. As the label suggests, it is the items that you are comfortable doing that “fit” into this section.
The middle ring is normally labelled your Stretch zone. This is where things that are not part of your everyday life and/or that you are not so comfortable doing fit. It’s things that stretch your skills, capabilities and perhaps even your attitude to carry out.
The outer ring is the panic zone. This is the area where it moves from just stretching your capabilities and moves into one of panic.
In a learning context you may have found that you are encouraged to work by moving into that state of stretch – one that challenges your abilities and away from comfort.
However, the approach with this model that I don’t hear mentioned as much is one that brings an activity into a client’s comfort zone. Or even one where they are comfortable “playing” with a new approach or capabilities.
Personally, I don’t think any approach is “right or wrong” in general. I do think that some approaches will be preferred, easier and work quicker for some individuals than others. Surely the important bit is the one that is used is one that works for the person using it 😉
In case anyone is reading this and thinking “but I’m a coach not a trainer” – For me this is a model about learning not training. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that a coaching client will turn to a coach for support with something that they feel is currently a stretch for them.
So the question I invite you to consider today is:
My first full time jobs out of education were all in the hospitality industry. Working as a manager it was obvious that some waiting staff were taking more orders for desserts than others. One of the main differences between those who were selling more was with the way they were describing the desserts.
For example, imagine that you are dining out and at the appropriate time your waiter/waitress came to tell you “Today’s special desert is a chocolate pudding.”
That may sound appealing and you may even place an order. However, now, imagine the same scenario but this time your waiter/waitress tells you that:
“Today’s special desert is a must for chocolate lovers It’s a moist chocolate sponge, with a gooey dark chocolate filling that oozes out when you cut into it, topped with a white chocolate sauce. It is served warm with homemade smooth and creamy vanilla ice-cream that really compliments the chocolate-ness of the pudding.”
If you do like chocolate, which one of the two descriptions is going to have you drooling at the prospect of eating? Which conversation do you think will encourage you to say yes please?
(As a side note I think it’s important to add that both descriptions actually match with the dessert that was served)
One of the other things that those who sold more desserts did was that they did not take “no” personally. They knew that some people don’t like chocolate so are never going to order a chocolate pudding for themselves. They also know that sometimes a guest was just not hungry enough to have anything else. It didn’t mean that they were any less “worthy” as an individual.
I invite you to consider the description that you use to describe your coaching/work that will cause your potential ideal clients to drool at the prospect of working with you?
I was having a conversation recently revolving around an underlying desire for this person to learn to be a great coach. Rather than write a post about one of the specific skills I think a great coach demonstrates I am going to focus more on how you can learn to be a great coach.
How do you currently define a “great coach”?
This is a step that I find is often missed out. In conversations with people who tell me they want to be a coach but don’t feel that they are there yet it’s not at all uncommon that they haven’t actually defined for themselves what that means.
Once you know that benchmark it’s so much easier to then learn to be a great coach.
I invite you to take a moment to see what your current definition is, and share with you the following questions to aid you with that:
What is an example of a testimonial that a client would write for a great coach?
If you were following a great coach around, what would you see/hear them do?
What skills does a great coach possess?
What qualities does a great coach demonstrate?
Where are you now?
Once you have your benchmark of what a great coach currently means to you then you can take steps so that you are a great coach too. So my next question is where are you now?
I know as a coach/trainee coach you will probably have seen clients give an answer to a question that is outdated yet they still believe to be true. It’s a human trait to get caught up in that from time to time – you may be a coach but as I’m presuming that you are also human I invite you to consider the possibility that you may be wrong with your initial answer and check out the current reality.
So my first questions in this section are:
How do you know? What proof have you got?
My guess is that if you have got this far through a post about learning to be a great coach you are likely to think that there are skills that you could develop further. So my next question is:
How would you know if you too had those skills of a great coach?
Sometimes it’s a lack of information that can keep someone stuck – if you do find that any of your answers are “I don’t know”, find out!
Take action
Don’t just wish for these skills to appear overnight, the chances of your skills developing and you becoming a stronger coach increase dramatically if you actually do something to create that.
The action you take will depend upon the answers you have to the first two sections. My question to you under this heading is
How can you strengthen a particular area of your coaching?
Just some potential actions that may be relevant are:
Practice, study, observation, training, drills/exercises, establishing a strategy. working with a mentor, get your own coach, seeking feedback
What is it for you?
Evaluate the difference a particular approach made
Once you have taken action, check to see how it’s worked. One word of warning here – Don’t beat yourself up if the action you have taken hasn’t immediately resulted in you perfecting a skill. Learning can be “clunky” at times and things can be strengthened using many different ways. However, I find that beating yourself up isn’t one of the most effective ways 😉
Repeat
I was very conscious while writing this that I did not want to give a list of skills/qualities etc that I believe a great coach demonstrates. However, I also know that my definition has influenced what I’ve included and this stage is a prime example. For me, one thing great coaches demonstrate is continuing to develop their own skills etc.
You may have noticed that in the first stage I asked you how you currently define a great coach. I know that over the time I’ve been coaching some of my answers to the questions have remained relatively constant. However, there are aspects that I am aware of now that I was oblivious to when I first started coaching. Your perspective of what makes a great coach can change over time, so it can be worth checking what it is for you now.
Additional questions you may like to add in when you repeat this process –
How can you strengthen your coaching?
How can you make a bigger difference for your clients?
Feel free to share your views below, including your current definition of a great coach 🙂
You have asked a straight forward and in your opinion perfectly crafted question to your coaching client. However, the answer you get is actually one that may have lots of words but didn’t actually answer the question you asked!
As a coach there are many things that you can do in such a situation.
Perhaps you just repeat the question without comment and see if you get an answer the second time.
Maybe you point out that they didn’t actually answer the question that you asked.
You may even decide that the answer that they gave actually takes the conversation in a useful direction so let the none answered question pass by.
One of the things I personally find really useful is to consider:
What question would the answer given make more sense?
We all filter information through various beliefs and values etc to get it to make sense. Sometimes, the questions that we as coaches ask can also get caught up in one of those filters so that the question they “hear” is different to the one asked.
Identifying the question a client actually “heard” can give some indication about the beliefs, values, your clients perceptions and any patterns. It can give you a clue about what is getting in their way.
For example:
As a coach, you ask a client “What would you love to do?”
The response they give you do not believe is something they would love to do at all. The answer is actually a much better fit with the question “What would be the next logical step to take?”
Why can being aware of what question your client actually answered be helpful? Firstly, it can show you what is getting in your clients way and assist you in wording a “killer question.” It may also indicate beliefs and values that impact other areas of their life.
Using the example above, by immediately considering the logical next step they are missing out on considering bigger better things. Are there other beliefs and values about what “admitting” what you actually want means? Perhaps, looking at the logical next step is something that they think is the natural thing that you should always do.
How often do you consider the question your client is actually answering?
One of the questions I quite often see some trainee coaches struggle with is how to find the confidence to find clients to coach. They have often done lots of preparation; maybe even have a secret suspicion that they do know the basics but they don’t feel that they have the confidence to actually start coaching.
If you think you are in this situation yourself then I’ll share some brief thoughts below. If you have been through this and are now happily coaching and helping lots of clients then feel free to share your thoughts.
Why do you need to feel confident before you actually start coaching?
Sure I get that feeling of confidence is far more pleasant than some of the alternatives (and I certainly am not against someone increasing their confidence) but why do you have to feel that first before you take action?
Give yourself a break
It’s not unusual to find that when I dig a bit deeper in this situation that the expectations a trainee coach has set for themself is incredibly high. Either they are comparing their potential coaching session to one run by someone with many years of experience or just by their own idea of what a perfect coach would do.
Normally this is done with the best of intentions, often a variation of wanting to be the best coach possible and making the biggest difference to their clients.
My suggestion is to allow your session to be what it is, focus upon your client and what is going on for them at that moment.
I’m going to guess that even if you give yourself that break you will still do the best that you can and even look to see how and where you can improve in the future. You just don’t have to add the extra pressure on yourself.
Yes, I think it’s possible to continuingly improve your coaching skills. I also think that you can persist in increasing the positive difference that you make to your clients. None of that is of any assistance to your potential clients if you never start!
What’s the worst that could happen?
I love coaching; I think it can have an incredibly powerful effect. It’s also unlikely that if a coaching “mistake” is made or if a question isn’t worded elegantly that anyone is going to loose their life!
However, you may have been telling yourself some horror story about what could happen – how realistic is this story?
It’s not at all unusual when you recognise the story you have been telling yourself for you to realise it’s really a piece of fiction.
Find a technique or approach that will give your feelings a quick boost
There are many different techniques and approaches that you can use to quickly boost your feelings of confidence – you may have come across some in your training or maybe things that you do in other areas of your life!
I’ll include one technique you could use in Mondays general life improvement post.
If you were already feeling the confidence to start coaching, what is the first thing you would do to find clients?
If someone is so caught up in increasing their confidence, self-belief and self-esteem then they often forget to check out the practical aspects of what action they would be taking.
Just for fun, what would be the first thing you could do to do just one coaching session?
Find yourself a coach or mentor
I’m perhaps preaching to the converted here, as I’m sure you already have a strong belief about how valuable coaching can be.
However, I’m often surprised by how many coaches attempt to run their coaching business with no support system in place. Ignoring the messages that gives about the value they place in coaching etc, it always strikes me as making things harder than it needs to be!
Find your local coaching circle and practice group
A sense of community is just one thing that you can get from a coaching circle and practice group. You may also find advice, support and an environment to practice your skills. (You can find a growing list of practice groups and coaching circles here)
Take one small step
Movement is a lot easier once you have started to take some action and got momentum going.
Sometimes that is by taking big steps and other times lots of smaller ones – starting with just one, perhaps just asking one person to practice a coaching session with you.
Who do you know that it would be fun to practice your coaching with?
Who do you know that you think would benefit from having a coaching conversation?
I will end this post first with a short video and then an invitation:
Each Tuesday on our Facebook page you’ll find that a TED talk link is shared. This week was this short video by Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer fire fighter.
As you watch the video consider the lessons you can learn about your coaching.
If you had been waiting to start coaching I invite you to go and take one action that will actually move you closer to starting coaching.
Feel free to share your actions below. For space reasons I’ve only added a few of many different approaches to this situation – if you have more you want to add then do add your comments.
When people sign up for the “What to put in your coaching welcome pack”, 7 part e-course I invite them to share what other coaching or confidence topic they would like more information about.
Some people share their answers, while others do not. The answers I do get can vary dramatically in length and topics suggested. I do read them all and bear them in mind if I specifically invite a Friday guest poster or when I write Wednesdays coaching related post.
Today’s post comes from one such comment, because it intrigued me. It simply said “Dealing with clients who are over confident.” One of the very first Wednesday coaching related posts I wrote was about what technique to use to increase confidence and I don’t often get asked about over-confident coaching clients.
So I began to imagine the possible scenarios that may have occurred to lead to such a description and briefly my coaching thoughts about each of those situations. 7 words is not a great deal to go on, so if the individual who asked that question is reading this feel free to get in touch and expand further.
I’m guessing that because more information has been requested and with the choice of the word “dealing” that at the very least the coach perceives the over confidence as a “problem”.
Mainly because whenever I answer a question I start with the person who asked it, my first question would be to explore who says this is over-confidence?
Potentially (and I have no way of knowing if this is true for the actual questioner) this may reveal more about the coach than it does about the client.
However, I also accept that over-confidence may be a “label” that a coach may have been briefed about from a third party such as a manager in a business context. – Is this really a question about building better relationships in the workplace?
The only context I can possibly imagine a client using the descriptive label as over-confidence is in hindsight – probably in response to something not going the way they had intended and looking for a reason why and questioning their every action. In reality it sounds like this client has actually lost confidence and trust in their own opinions and actions.
I’m also going to guess that rather than a “feeling” of a certain level of confidence, this is actually a question about how to deal with certain behaviours, something that the client is doing that in this case has been “labelled” as over confidence.
So my next question is what behaviours tells this person that this client is over-confident?
If over confidence is your own description, as a coach, of your client is this behaviour directly linked to something happening in or as a result of the coaching session?
For example, is it the “homework” that your client is committing to which indicates to you that they are over confident? Does a client try and commit to overwhelming a situation with lot of action between each session?
What impact is this behaviour actually having?
For example, is it challenging your expectations for them? Is committing to so many actions actually creating an overwhelming feeling and stress for them?
In one situation, it is the coach who is being affected more than the client. In the other it is the client who is being affected by their action. In which case I would suggest using questioning to first see if this is something the client wants to alter and secondly guide them to identify the behaviour that is causing this and what they can do instead. Perhaps you can agree to play with it for a week or two and see the difference that it makes?
If this is an issue just for the coach then I would suggest that they may want to explore that deeper – is this a case of a particular behaviour pushing your buttons? Have you got strong beliefs about how someone should behave in certain situations? I’m not going to tell you that you have to change that; I will ask if it is affecting your coaching? Do you want it to influence who you work with? What would you suggest to a fellow coach in a similar situation?
If you are finding that this is a trait you see in all your clients then you may want to look at if there is anything that you are doing in your marketing and interaction with your clients that is encouraging this behaviour. Depending upon what behaviour you are actually talking about it may be as simple as how you set expectations at the start of your coaching relationship – what you say during an initial chat, or put in your coaching welcome pack etc?
Coaches, what else would you add to a request about “Dealing with clients who are over confident?”
You may have read Dave Doran’s guest post a few weeks ago that asked Is your coaching business was at risk? If you read that nice and early you may have missed the discussion that then took place in the comments section.
As you will see as you read the comments it’s a conversation that concerns the UK government potentially regulating coaching. Having now heard back from the relevant government department I wanted to publish the whole thread as a post in chronological order.
I understand that some coaching sectors are to become regulated in UK, and very soon. I’m involved in Career Coaching and am aware that the UK Government is very keen to regulate this area, with a kite-marking programme being developed as early as April 2011.
Regulation creates 2 issues. The first is a major threat to many in the industry that they are not operating in a professional enough manner anyway and should be heeding the good advice in this article; but the second is the level of input that the whole profession (if we can call it that yet) has to the accreditation process. How does the government decide what level of education and experience is required – which standards do they use?
The Career niche is about to be closed down to a lot of very good professionals because the majority of participants in the group that are deciding on the accreditation are from the old school of Careers Guidance which is largely academic and reflecting the public sector. Consequently, if as a coach do not have a qualification based on the academic careers counsellor standards you could well be shut down until you have spent the time and money to become certified.
This is a very serious topic that all coaches should be watching closely.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
You said that: “I am aware that the UK Government is very keen to regulate this area, with a kite-marking programme being developed as early as April 2011.” Can you share the source of this knowledge?
For years now I have seen stories and heard rumours that coaching is about to be regulated – normally when I track the original source of a story down it turns out to be a training/accreditation provider who also happen to be selling a training/accreditation they imply would meet these “new regulations”.
I’m not for one minute suggesting that this is the case here. I don’t work specifically as a career coach and as it could be something niche specific I could easily have missed such announcements. I’ve just learnt over the years that it can be very easy to get panicked by such stories about regulation and the impact it can have on your business without checking out the origins.
I look forward to hearing from you
Love
Jen
I am a member of the Association for Career Professionals International and sit on the interim board. ACP International is the only member organisation representing private sector career professionals that have not taken Career Counselling qualifications as the route to their practice involved in the government discussions. I’ll paste in our most recent communication but not sure how much your comment will hold – mail me if it gets cut short!
Dear Career Professional.
You are probably aware of the move towards regulation of the Careers Profession.
John Hayes (MP Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning ) is overseeing this and working with the Careers Profession Alliance (CPA) to make this happen. Private sector Career Professionals are represented on the CPA by the Association of Career Professionals International
Duncan Bolam (current ACPInternational chair) met with John Hayes’ senior civil servant leading this project last week and was left in no doubt that the minister is determined to ‘professionalise and regulate’ the career profession in the UK. The private sector not participating is not an option. Both the Department for Business Innovation and Skill and the Department for Education are collaborating on this unprecedented initiative to achieve this goal.
It is essential that ACP International (UK Network) can demonstrate a significant body of membership so that registration of career professionals and/or a license to practice (whatever mechanism is chosen) can take into account the prior experience and alternative qualification pathways that are relevant to independent career professionals.
The bottom line is – those of us seeking to make our livelihoods out of this industry can continue to do so in the future.
If we cannot demonstrate a significant body of membership we are likely to be left out of discussions and have ill-fitting regulation forced upon us which may not be fit-for-purpose to career professionals operating in the private sector – which includes outplacement.
The cost of joining is currently USD 80 (equivalent approx. £50) and this IS your clarion call to join TODAY. Don’t leave it another moment, join here: http://portal.zzeem.com/acpi/Registration/tabid/1167/Default.aspx
— Cut a piece about membership benefits —
Most recent developments in the Careers Profession Alliance:
· The CPA has won a bid for £40k funding for Phase 1 to regulate the industry. This first phase ends on 31/3/2011.
· A programme manager, Ruth Miller was recently appointed by the Careers Profession Alliance’s newly-appointed Chair, Ruth Spellman, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute.
· In turn, Ruth Miller has appointed her own team of Project Managers to deal with the following workstreams:
1. Development of Common Professional Standards – industry-wide
2. Career Progression Framework for all career professionals – public and private sector
3. Plans to progress to a Level 6 profession
4. Review of initial training and all access routes into the career profession
5. Review of CPD
6. Progress to an overarching national ‘kite-mark’ for the career profession
7. A Business Plan – to be produced by Chief Executive of PARN (Professional Associations Research Network – http://www.parnglobal.com )
ACP International (UK Network) will in future distribute communications and questionnaires regarding your professional journeys to date, which professional Code of Ethics you subscribe to, how you regulate yourself and what accreditation standard you stand by when selling your services to the public. There are alleged to be in excess of 9,000 career professionals operating in the UK. Approximately 7,500 of that number are members of professional bodies contributing to the Careers Profession Alliance. ACP International is the only private sector-orientated body and we are massively under-represented in numbers.
There is a sizeable risk that the prevailing language of ‘career guidance’ will swamp the exciting contribution that we all know to be achievable using dynamic and commercially savvy career coaching methods. Not only do we owe it to ourselves to leverage these invaluable insights into the wider careers landscape, we owe it our consumers as well.
There is also the key consideration, why would any practitioners operate outside of their professional community and not put their weight behind an initiative aimed at raising standards for career professionals and their customers? To be called a truly bona fide professional one has to demonstrate to the world that:
· Your practice is based upon empirical evidence.
· You are signed-up to a rigorous Code of Ethics.
· You obtain regular supervision – all too often ignored
· You operate with utter impartiality and with complete confidentiality.
· You are able to demonstrate your ongoing and continuous professional development (CPD) – annually.
· According to the new qualification frameworks and levels of achievement, you hold a minimum of Level 6.
So the case remains: If you care about your profession, please join ACP International NOW. Many people, several in particular, have given considerable amounts of their own time for free to ensure that you are represented in these important talks. This really is the final call.
If there is no significant increase in membership, then there are clearly not enough people like you interested enough in our sector having a voice and, whilst ACP International will continue to grow and benefit its members, we will all have to react to regulation that is imposed upon us, rather than being involved in its creation and professional principles driven by us for us.
Many thanks for providing such a detailed response. It was very informative and interesting to read ACP International (UK Network), news. I see that understandably, given the described situation, ACP International (UK Network) is looking to grow their membership.
Because this can also be viewed as a sales letter I have contacted John Hayes (MP Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning ) and asked him to confirm that this is something he is working towards. According to the autoresponse I have recieved I should hear back within 15 days – I will let you know what I hear back.
I completely understand your desire for corroboration and yes there is a sales component because it’s critical that ACP International membership increases to be deemed credible as part of the process that the Careers Professional Alliance are undertaking. There is further discussion on this in a LinkedIn group – the Career Coaches Forum run by John Lees. Given that the CPA will report back on March 31st there is not a lot of time. If you or any of your connections are attending the National Career Guidance Show at Wembley 8/9th March ACP International will have a stand and more information and so will many other organisations that are part of the CPA such as the Institute of Careers Guidance.
A lot of this stems from a speech made by John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, when he announced the creation of an All-age Careers Service for England last November. You can read it at http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/john-hayes-icg-conference – and take special note of
“So we will revitalise the professional status of careers guidance, looking to the Careers Profession Alliance to establish common professional standards and a code of ethics for careers professionals.
We will implement the recommendations of the Careers Profession Task Force. In doing so, we will consider the Taskforce’s recommendation on levels of qualification, particularly the speed at which we could move towards establishing Level 6 – equivalent to an Honours degree – as the minimum standard for practising careers advisers within the service”.
He later referred to this as a “Licence to Practice” Its happening fast and independent careers professionals (coaches etc.) may well face a closed niche while they re-certify. I’m not trying to scare people into membership so much help them wake up to the threat and see a route to being involved in the process.
Hi Peter,
Many thanks for the extra information and your understanding. I want this site to provide valuable information for coaches so felt I had a duty to corroborate.
You are doing a great job at educating and spreading the word. I don’t work in this particular niche and had heard more about a potential first step to regulation in Australia (with a draft publication of a “handbook”) then I have about this in the UK.
If there is anything else that is important to know regarding this situation feel free to share it. In the near future I will make sure that a series of tweets goes out throughout the day to allow more people to become aware of this discussion and the situation.
The S4P Blog » Blog Archive » Coaching: Government Regulation or Self-Regulation? says: February 19th, 2011 9:48 am edit
[…] more interesting is that a post on the Coaching Confidence site “Is Your Coaching Business at Risk?” had a comment from Peter Tate suggesting that some areas of Coaching are in the sights of […]
“Thank you for your email to John Hayes of 9 February 2011 about the careers profession, which has been passed to me to reply.
In October 2010, the Careers Profession Task Force published its report, Towards a Strong Careers Profession [http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00550-2010]. The report made fourteen recommendations to improve the quality of careers guidance and to raise the status of the careers profession. As part of recommendation fourteen of the Task Force report, the 2011 report on progress will be taking place on the 28 March 2011 directly to John Hayes, the Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning responsible for Careers Education. This will include an update on the move towards regulation within the careers profession, through the establishment of common professional standards and a code of ethics, of quality standards that will underpin the new all-age careers service, of a career progression framework for careers advisers, and of clear expectations for initial training and continuing professional development. All of which will help to strengthen the profession so that it is better able to adapt and respond to future challenges.
The Department for Education is currently working with the careers professional bodies, through the Careers Profession Alliance, to implement the recommendations, as we know the success of future arrangements for careers guidance will depend largely on the quality and professionalism of the advisers who work within it. The Careers Profession Alliance have a specific remit around standards, ethics, a progression framework and the national kitemark as part of taking forward recommendations from the Task Force report.
[An individuals personal contact details is then given for further details on the Careers Profession Alliance (CPA). Until I have that individuals permission I will not be publishing those contact details.]
I hope this has helped to clarify matters for you.
Yours sincerely,
Saqib Ahmed
Quality, Support & Guidance Division”
Since these comments have been posted I have had a phone conversation with someone from the CPA who I hope will be sending additional information. As soon as I get that information I will happily post an update. They did state that there is also the Institute Career Guidance who represent the private sector.
UPDATE: An added comment
Dr Deirdre Hughes says:
March 3rd, 2011 5:32 pm
This blog begins with a really helpful outline of key issues relating to possible new regulation measures for careers coaching and its allied professions. Are we on the cusp of major change in establishing a strong careers profession or is this another short-term initiative that might eventually fizzle out? Let’s briefly consider the facts:
Firstly, the Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning in England has announced his intention to support a regulated careers profession that can operate freely within an ‘open and free market’.Without this, government is at risk of failing to deliver on services for the public good.
Secondly, findings from the Careers Profession Taskforce in England highlighted a fragmented careers sector which causes missed opportunities for both end-users and those working within and across the careers sector.
Thirdly, major reviews of public, private and voluntary/community careers services in each of the 4 home countries of the UK have indicated the need to build on best practice in having a Code of Ethics, Professional Standards and a Career Progression Framework for people coming into the sector with differing qualifications and experiences.
In response, six careers professional associations came together to form a Careers Profession Alliance (CPA). The Chair of the CPA is Ruth Spellman OBE, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI)who is responsible for bringing together the associations to work on a plan to achieve Chartered Status in the next 3-5 years, linked to the creation of a professional register of practice or licence arrangements. This will build on the work of 6 careers professional associations in which at least 2 are private practitioner orientated, namely, The Institute of Career Guidance (ICG – the UK and Europe’s largest careers professional association)and ACP International as described above.
The six careers professional associations are working together through the Alliance and we will be publishing key findings at the end of March 2011. If you want to feed into the discussion then email your view points to us at ICG and/or ACP International. We all want to ensure the voice and requirements of private practitioner’s are fully captured.
At the heart of the debate is how best to serve and protect, where necessary, the interests of the client. We’re learning lessons from other sectors and we’re building a dynamic framework which hopefully will inspire and help create a stronger UK careers profession.Watch this space for more news in the coming weeks.
Deirdre
In addition Dr Deirdre has also provided a copy of the latest CPA update to ICG members. You can read it on this page
I’d personally like to thank everyone who has so far contributed to this discussion and will welcome any other contributions 🙂
Feel free to add your thoughts and comments below.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Peter Tate says:
