ICF Coaching Certification
ICF Coaching Certification ~ The path to Coaching Glory
When freshly-certified coaches who have completed an approved ICF Coaching Certification program, enter the marketplace and attempt to establish themselves, they often feel powerless and disillusioned. But there are steps one can take to make this difficult journey easier.
If you have just completed an ICF approved program proclaiming your ability to coach others, you deserve to feel proud. But along with pride, you might be feeling a cocktail of negative emotions:
- Fear: “What if I never get enough clients?”
- Anxiety: “What if I am not good enough to coach others?”
- Nervousness: “Will I have the presence of mind to know what to ask or say next during a session? What if I make the client feel worse about themselves?”
- Confusion: Should I call myself a Leadership Coach, Executive Coach, Life Coach or Peak Performance Coach? Which type of coach has the most market demand? What type of coach am I most suited to be?
- More confusion: “I don’t fully understand the difference between Coach, Mentor, Counsellor, Therapist or Facilitator. What am I really? How do I clear this difference for myself and the client?
- Jealousy + Anxiety: “Others seem to know their message and their brand. Their social media campaigns are spot on. I don’t even know where to start. How can I aspire to succeed?
Such questions reflect not just your frame of mind, but also the quality of training you received from the coaching academy. A good program would have covered these practical aspects of becoming a coach. A mediocre one would let you grapple with such challenges on your own.
Now that you are at this juncture, after completion of ICF Coaching Certification, here’s what you should know:
- Know your authentic USPs
Many people put the cart before the horse – they pretend to be what they think the market wants. This creates a diluted and inauthentic brand which will sound hollow to your potential clients.
Your authentic USPs must be derived from your strengths, your unique set of experiences and your very own style of communication, after your ICF Coaching program.
Our genes have already made each one of us unique. And our life experiences deepen this uniqueness. When we derive our Brand from this uniqueness, it becomes authentic and it resonates with our audience. As a great added advantage, this Brand cannot be imitated by anybody else. You are the only person in the whole world capable of being that person and delivering results in that particular way. When you reach this point, you will find imitators getting inspired by you and failing to get the same traction from the market. Again, because fakes can be sniffed out. The real deal, on the other hand, is rare.
So how do you arrive at this authentic self? By deep introspection, honesty with self, asking about oneself from people who know us best. Those with deep pockets can also hire a brand consultant.
- Know your target audience
You could be everything to everybody, or you could be a niche person who serves a particular segment of the market with the utmost expertise. Knowing your target audience will help you frame your brand message in the most effective manner. If you want to be a Leadership Coach, your experiences as a leader need to be highlighted. If you want to coach housewives, you will have to narrate your story of how you achieved Work-Life balance to succeed.
Diversity in your audience can come in the form of gender, age, educational qualification, professional designations (middle management, upper management etc). You could also create specialties based on particular crises: are you good at helping those experiencing mid-life crises, those starting off as entrepreneurs, those with leadership challenges at the workplace?
As you can see, this step depends on the first. In order to know your target audience, you need to first know yourself.
- Accept your sales and marketing responsibility
Some people have a mental block when it comes to sales and marketing, even after completion of ICF Coaching Certification. They may consider the vocation unethical, vulgar or manipulative. It’s important to accept that a self-driven profession like Coaching requires strong marketing and sales orientation. You need to break barriers in mind and knowledge. You need to learn the secrets of effective selling. And nothing prevents you from selling yourself ethically and transparently.
- Be consistent in your messaging
An authentic brand needs to be converted into sales and marketing collaterals. These take the form of the website content, social media content, email responses to potential clients, cold calls made to potential clients etc. In each artifact, each message, are you able to inspire the client to believe in your authenticity and uniqueness? Or is one message contradicting the other?
Also, is this consistency aligned with the target audience you seek? Are your vocabulary and style suited to this audience? Acknowledge that your sales and marketing collateral is a personalized message you are sending to the client you are yet to meet. Keep this archetypal person in your mind when you draft your message. Speak to this person, show them you understand their pain. Only after this point should you include a content writer in the endeavor. A content writer can only rewrite the confusion or clarity dripping out of your mind.
- Be comprehensive in your messaging
A lot of marketing collaterals commit the cardinal sin of speaking about the service-provider and not the service-receiver. While it is important to let the client know about you, it is even more important to answer the client’s implicit and explicit questions about the service you are providing. The client’s questions could be along these lines:
- Will this service help me solve my current and future problems?
- How do I find out the modus operandi? Is there an FAQ page that will answer my many queries?
- Oh, I didn’t know this about coaching. Interesting. I think I’ll read more and then maybe decide.
- Can coaching solve only professional problems, or is my home front covered too?
Part of being comprehensive is to create awareness about your service and dispel myths around coaching. After all, this is a new-fangled concept for most people and they are likely to be skeptical about the value you are bringing to the table.
Being comprehensive also means using all messaging platforms at your disposal and being flexible about using one or more, as the situation demands. Every calendar year, as millions of youngsters prepare to join college, they may need coaching and they can be found on Instagram more than any other platform. Older people are found on Facebook. Paid adverts on online classified sites can be an investment that pays off in the long term. Writing regular blogs that are published on LinkedIn is important while reaching out to future thought leaders of the corporate world. And being found on the first page of the Google search results is of paramount importance, for which you need an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert.
To rely on only one platform is a fallacy. To be platform-agnostic and prompt is a blessing.
- Treasure your clients
It’s better to have a dozen totally satisfied clients than a hundred clients out of which only a dozen are happy. Quality trumps quantity in coaching. When you learn to give your best to your clients, they will become your biggest brand ambassadors. And now, in spite of all the social media or probably because of that, people rely a lot more on word-of-mouth publicity than anything they see online.
So treat your clients the way you would want to be treated, help them resolve their challenges they way you would for a loved one. The rest will take care of itself in the long run.
- Develop a Growth Mindset
Unlike in a Fixed Mindset, a person with a Growth Mindset embraces challenges, learns from setbacks and failures without losing the desire to try again, learns from criticism, finds ways to get inspired and, above all, knows that long-term effort is the only way to attain mastery.
A Growth Mindset will sharpen your USP, make your messaging clearer and crisper and rubs off on clients. As clients see you surmount your challenges, they feel inspired to do the same.
A coach with a Fixed Mindset, who sees herself as incapable of change, who feels that she is a static entity in a dynamic universe, will not and should not attract clients.
- Be patient
An offshoot of the Growth Mindset is patience. The ability to see that great endeavors require time and perseverance. So be ready for downtimes and failed brand/marketing messages. Be ready to feel the pits that will remind you of your need to be humble and accepting – of your own vulnerabilities and those of others.
- Be ethical
Even clients who benefit from you may not recommend you if they feel that you aren’t always transparent and fair in your behavior. Besides, being ethical is, first and foremost, about liking the person in the mirror. So whatever happens, don’t lose your positive relationship with that person.
- Be sceptical about social media
Finally, let’s talk about the jealousy one feels when a fellow professional, who has the same ICF Coaching Certification seems to have mastered the art of selling and earning. Having a sceptical approach to social media messages is healthy. While a cynic dismisses everything as phony, the sceptic demands evidence before believing a message – be it in social media or otherwise.
Even strugglers can appear awesome on social media. Some of the trainers who promise to help people earn millions are themselves broke. Couples who conduct marital therapy sessions may barely be able to sustain their own marriage. Leadership seminars are offered by some people who have never managed to create a winning team.
Researching the true phenomenon behind a successful social media message will help you understand that you have less to be worried about, that people appear more successful online than they actually are. This will also help you craft your own message with authenticity.
And when you do come across a message that authentically sells a high-quality service, you can learn from it. As a coach, you need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Stay away from scams and don’t create one yourself. This will help you laugh heartily when you see a lofty and unreal promise in the next social media message. You would have defeated jealousy.
In summary
A coach is responsible for the welfare of the many people who trust her with their lives. This responsibility cannot be given to any random person. It is to be bestowed on a person who is unique, growth-oriented, ethical and consistent in delivering excellence, and more so if you have attended a premier program like ICF Coaching Certification approved by the International Coach Federation. When you become that person, you would have established yourself as a coach par excellence. What’s more, you would be known as a good person.
