Levels of Coaching
Seeking a better way
Long ago, I set myself the goal long of finding a better way for the world of coaching to work. I was impressed by the power of coaching, but there was a lot about the coaching industry that troubled me.
One problem was the lack of a satisfying way to understand how exactly the coaching process delivers its benefits. The remedy for that — as I wrote about in our January blog — was a new conceptual framework for coaching.
Another problem that stood out was the vagueness around qualifications. It wasn’t at all clear what abilities a given qualification represented, or the scope of the coaching that a qualification authorised a person to provide. Phrases such as ‘associate certified’, ‘professional certified’ and ‘master certified’ seemed to have been dreamt up by marketers with little experience of the coaching process. It wasn’t obvious what the phrases actually meant. No wonder so many people find the coaching industry confusing!
When I was in my late 20s, I managed an outdoor centre in Derbyshire and it was much clearer what was meant by the qualifications in the outdoor education industry. A Single Pitch Award allowed an instructor to lead rock climbing sessions on crags that were only one pitch high, while a Mountain Instructor Award was needed for multi-pitch rock climbing, and a Mountain Leader Award for leading groups in the hills. For canoeing, a Level One Coach could run taster sessions on sheltered water, a Level Two Coach could take people onto slowly moving water, a Level Three (Inland) Coach could lead groups down white-water rivers, and a Level Three (Sea) Coach could lead groups on the sea. In every case, it was clear what a person with a given qualification could be expected to do. And since the skills the person needed to have were always stated explicitly, it was easy to create training programmes that helped people learn those skills efficiently and effectively.
As I reflected on how well qualifications worked in the outdoor industry, I realised that they could form a model for a new system of coaching qualifications. If, as with canoeing, a system of levels was introduced, the confusion around coaching qualifications would dissolve. The abilities a person needed to earn a specific level of qualification would be clear, as would be the scope of the coaching they could be expected to deliver.
Level one coaching
It didn’t take long for me to see how the level one qualification should function, for I’d already run many successful Introduction to Coaching workshops.
What made these workshops successful was their focus. We didn’t waste time talking about the difference between coaching and counselling or anything like that. We’d quickly dive in to the practice of coaching — working in small groups and experiencing what it was like to coach a person or to be coached.
Before people began the coaching exercises, they did need to know that a coach should refrain from giving advice; that instead they should help the coachee see things more clearly for themself. And they needed to know that they could accomplish this simply by asking questions that prompted the coachee to think useful thoughts and then listening attentively to the coachee’s replies. But that’s all they needed to know. It was the practice that mattered.
By the end of the workshops, the participants were able to begin coaching people informally during the run of everyday life. It made sense to formalise what they learnt as a Level One Coach qualification. At this level, coaches could be expected to provide 5-10 minute doses of coaching. They could start practising their skills in real life situations. They could start becoming experienced.
Level two coaching
It took a lot of trial and error to work out how the higher levels of coach qualification should function, for there were a lot of factors involved — how people wanted to use their coaching, the skills needed for each use case, and the nature of the coaching process itself. There is a lot of variety in how skilled coaches approach their work, and how the coach goes about their coaching can differ a lot from coachee to coachee. Yet there are certain commonalities to all effective coaching.
Our pilot testing explored what these commonalities were. Was there really such a thing as level two coaching? And if so how did it differ from level three coaching?
It turned out that what separated level two from level three coaching was the length of time the sessions lasted. This proved a reliable indicator of the depth and scope of the coaching. Level two coaching includes the coaching managers deliver as part of their jobs. Such sessions rarely last more than half an hour. But the people who work primarily as a coach — the level three coaches — normally provide sessions that last between one and two hours.
A Level Two Coach qualification, I realised, should enable anyone to start using coaching as part of their professional repertoire. It should cover the type of coaching that managers use when coaching their direct reports, or that mentors use then they adopt a coaching approach.
The key to effective level two training, we found, was focusing on the mechanism by which short-form coaching has its impact. This makes it easy for people to learn the coaching tools they need and to learn how to make use of these tools to deliver short but impactful coaching sessions.
Level three coaching
We defined level three coaching as the level of coaching ability needed to offer coaching as a standalone service — either life coaching or business coaching. Both require advanced abilities and understanding, just as a canoe instructor needs advanced abilities if they are to lead people safely down white water rivers.
Again, our pilot testing proved invaluable. We made hypotheses about the range of tools a coach needs if they are to deliver level three coaching. Then we experimented, learnt from our experiences and iterated upon the toolkits. We split some tools into two and consolidated others into single tools. We added new tools to fill voids. And we clarified how each tool could best be wielded to make the coaching as a whole effective.
We saw how hard it could be for level three coaches to structure their coaching sessions effectively, for they needed to shape their sessions without giving the structure of the session much thought during the coaching, when their attention had to be almost fully on the coachee.
So we kept developing new models of the coaching process till we found one that both made it easy for coaches to structure powerful coaching sessions and that made sense of the various toolkits and how they can best be applied.
Level four coaching
Our explorations also showed us that there is a need for a still higher level of coaching, a level four.
We live in a time where many people want to be sure they’re actively living well, but where the old religious and cultural frameworks that specify how to go about living well no longer hold sway. It can be hard to find our places in the world — balancing competing pressures, living from an authentic sense of purpose and becoming confident that we’re making good use of our time upon this planet. Meanwhile, social media sends wave upon wave of dubious advice our way. It’s no wonder that so many of us suffer from anxiety and depression. It’s no wonder that so many of us fall pray to peculiar ideologies.
Coaching is in a unique position to help, for what’s needed today isn’t a general, one-size-fits-all formula for living well — that would be impossible — but a process of investigation that can give people the clarity they need to live well within the context of their own, singular lives. Every individual has a unique array of possibilities in front of them. Every individual is in a unique position to see how those their lives touch could flourish or could come to harm. Coaching can shed light on what matters most to a person and on how they can can act in line with what matters. It can then help them implement well-considered plans, build new mental habits, and come into a definitive harmony with the world they live in.
We call this process a ‘coaching journey’ and, to provide such journeys, a coach needs level four skills and understanding. For the theory part of their level four training, we have drawn on many disciplines to put together an array of conceptual tools. Philosophy. Neuropsychology. Game theory. For the practical part, people form a three-person team and help each other pursue coaching journeys of their own.
Completing the coaching journey process enables people to live truly examined lives — lives where what they do is determined by their insights into what is best, rather than by habit or blind rule-following.
A better way
At Coachwise, we see what we’re doing as creating a Coaching 2.0 — a new and better way for the world of coaching to operate.
The four level system of qualifications is an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It brings a much needed clarity to what specific coach training courses need to cover and to what a coach with a specific qualification should be able to deliver.
It also paves the way for better coach training, for we can now optimise courses around what precisely people need to learn if they are to provide what their coachees will need from them.
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