This is a celebratory edition, but hopefully it still offers you insight into what it is like to be coached, highlights considerations you hadn’t thought of, and gives food for thought.
I’ll cover:
- What is ACC accreditation
- Being evaluated on a coaching session
- Accountability and control
- The exam
- My amazing clients (one year on)
- The challenges we’ve discussed
- Client availability (clue: bookings reopened, and a few slots are now available again)
The ACC accreditation
One year after completing my ADHD course, I’ve officially become the first in my cohort to earn the ACC accreditation. This means so much to me (the accreditation, though being the first is interesting too!).
When I started to learn to become a coach, I didn’t really know what that meant – I was largely driven by instinct, support from friends, and a small amount of research. I wanted an evidence-based course, where the graduates said it had been life-transforming and worth the significant amount of time, effort and money invested. Not much to ask!
Ultimately, I wanted to “do no harm”. Being ADHD, I knew the impact of being excluded and experiencing feelings of low self-worth. Life creates all sorts of invisible and visible barriers, which adds up to harm, and the last thing I wanted to do was add to them. Now, I’ve seen that I’ve rather exceeded that goal. It’s quite the honour and privilege.
So, why pass an exam? What’s different is that going to make? Well, the ICF is one of the few internationally recognised oversight bodies for coaching. So many people I respected over the years had mentioned it: if it’s good enough for them, it was quite frankly likely to be good enough for me too, I thought.
Now I know why.
To pass the ICF ACC (accredited certified coach) exam, you have to meet certain standards of quality education, supervision hours and actual coaching time, but this is no tick box exercise… ok, this is a partial tick box exercise but heavily vetted with human oversight. There are additional parts.
Being evaluated on a coaching session
An uninterrupted recorded coaching session proving that you meet the ICF principles. It’s 30 minutes long and any evaluator – who is themselves an experienced coach – would be able to tell if you were faking it, because it would sound wooden and inauthentic. That wouldn’t meet the headline criteria:
- Maintain Ethical Boundaries:Adhere to high ethical standards by respecting confidentiality, avoiding conflicts of interest, and ensuring professional integrity.
- Facilitate Client Growth:Support clients in translating insights into action steps, encouraging accountability and celebrating progress along the way.
- Encourage Client Reflection:Ask… open-ended questions to prompt clients to think deeply and reflect. Then… understand their underlying concerns and emotions.
- Foster Client Accountability:Help clients take ownership of their development by encouraging them to set clear goals and commit to specific actions.
- Navigate Challenging Conversations:Stay calm and centred during emotionally charged conversations… hold space for your client to express themselves without feeling rushed or judged.
Accountability and control
Let’s take “Foster Client Accountability” as an example.
Often a client may come to me being frustrated by aspects of their work or personal life. By helping clients reflect on what theydohave control over, this empowers them, gives them confidence, and removes power from other people. By showcasing the power they (you!) have over even just one thing, that proves that you can do this, that you have the skills, and it’s a matter of navigating and learning how to apply these skills elsewhere. That’s not false positivity, that’s fact-based evidence, although of course there’s always room for improvement..
For the coach, there are many pitfalls. During my supervision and reviews, I learned that the simplest things I said could remove power from my clients, or at least reinforce the message that they didn’t have power, and these were enough to show that I was not ready for the ACC exam yet. So, the exam isn’t just about proving youcandemonstrate the skills, it’s about showing thatyou aren’t demonstrating bad coaching practices either.
The exam
One of the hardest parts of the exam (tick-box or not!) is passing the ethics questions. There are scenarios such as:
After two months of a six-month coaching engagement, a client begins missing appointments and not following through on agreed-upon actions. What is the BEST approach for the coach to take?
- Terminate the coaching agreement immediately.
- Ignore the issue for now and hope the client gets back on track.
- Refer the client to a colleague who may be a better fit.
- Explore with the client whether or not to continue with the coaching.
The ICF principle is about doing the best thing. The correct answer is D.
By applying for ICF ACC accreditation, I have agreed to follow the ICF’s code of ethics. And that’s doing the right thingfor the client at all times. This isn’t just CEO marketing speak.This is contractually enforced, with an ethics enquiry line if I do find myself in grey territory or worse, and a reporting line if anyone has concerns about me.
I also commit to continuing professional development in a quantifiable way and a minimum number of supervision hours. The learning never stops, because we are always changing, and developing.
I could go on much more about this whole topic, but that’s enough for one newsletter.
My amazing clients (one year on)
My first year has been full of surprises, one of which has been the huge variety of clients that I’ve been able to work with, such as:
- From the young person entering their first professional job and navigating the workplace for the first time, to the person with decades of industry experience but realising they had areas of themselves that they wanted to explore.
- IT techies to community workers to medical professionals.
- Corporate bookings for multiple members of staff, to being part of a redundancy support package, to people investing in themselves out of their own pocket.
- I’ve also worked across the sexuality and gender spectrum.
Life experience, values, genetic inheritance and beliefs shape us all differently. Every individual has been, and will be, unique, and a privilege to work with. It’s also why off-the-shelf solutions only go so far.
But what unites all my clients? Curiosity. And determination to succeed and overcome challenges. Ok, and a level of patience and humour when my hyperoptic superfast broadband “fails”, particularly when a client has just had a powerful insight – sometimes shown across their face – meaning that they might need to repeat it out loud, perhaps two or three times, until my headset finally picks it up. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that science has proven that vocalising a thought is much more powerful than just thinking it internally. 😉
I create a safe space for my clients to be themselves, sometimes for the first time, giving them a space to practice taking off the mask to see what is underneath and – possibly most importantly – give them time out from a busy day/life to take a moment to reflect and breathe.
The challenges we’ve discussed
One of my earliest “cases” was the stress over a son not looking after his own hairstyle. The client told me it sounded trivial, but given the stress it was causing, when we dived deep, it turned out to be anything but (and I have his permission to share that). This is a recurring theme – if something is taking up your brain capacity, then coaching is often a good space to explore. More than one client has said that I’ve given them the space to think through and process a topic for the first time, even though it had been lurking on their minds for a long time.
From cleaning the dishes, to processing expenses, from struggles booking flights to relationships, communications, project plans, time blindness, and prepping for annual appraisals. Many topics appear to the client to be “trivial” however, the impact is anything but. Often there are surprisingly deep roots and truths. Understanding these has profound benefits once investigated.
Client availability
At the beginning of November, I noticed that my diary was looking a little bit spicy. Full days, busy weekends, and an exam to complete. So I practised what I preach and valued my sanity over additional work. I established a boundary and decided that I would not accept any new coaching clients for the rest of the year.
That was just as well because I became a trustee of a very relevant charity, close to my heart – more details in the next newsletter!
After crunching the numbers and looking at my other priorities and obligations for this year, I have space for three more clients, before I’ll be moving to a waiting list. It’s a surprisingly slow process in terms of finding the right coach/client match, as coaching is a bit of a cottage industry. Every coach I have spoken to reports full books after 18 months, so I’m definitely on course however.
If you want to be one of those clients who will be starting with me in the next few months – perhaps you like my honesty, style, qualifications or think my life experience might be useful – now is a really good time to book an intro call. There genuinely isn’t an obligation.
Two reasons: First, a “vibe” match is strongly beneficial for coaching outcomes. Secondly, because intro calls are part of my ADHD awareness-raising work, alongside my volunteering for the Scottish ADHD Coalition. You’ll come away knowing a little more about your ADHD-related options regardless of whether you decide to pick me as a coach or not.
Being coached myself
Finally, to end with an amusing story:
I celebrated passing my ICF ACC exam with my mentor and asked, “What’s the next step?”
She replied: “Where do you want to go next?”
Coaches can be extremely useful, and bloody frustrating simultaneously! 🤣
Sending love and thanks for reading!
I write about neurodivergency matters, with a dash of inclusivity and tech. Subscribe directly to avoid missing out; you can have a nose through my back catalogue. Want even more? You can also follow me on Bluesky and/or LinkedIn.