How do you choose a Coach in an unregulated industry with so many offers?
This blog entry was originally published on April 5, 2019. We repeat its publication as it is a current topic and of great importance.
When I got certified as an International Coach and NLP new and classic code practitioner with John Grinder, Carmen Bostic St. Clair and Michael Carroll. John Grinder told this story (told by memory):
A family, who lived in a beautiful villa in the countryside, were having a plumbing problem. They had a friend over for dinner so he could have a look at it and after a few hours it was still unsolved and the family and the friend sat down for dinner during which he offered to send his apprentice over the next day as he needed some practice.
So the next day the apprentice came, he spends many hours at the Villa, looking thoroughly into the plumbing system, making a mess and a lot of noise and at the end of the day he had not found the problem either.
Then the family had enough and called a plumber who had a very good reputation.
The plumber came in, listen carefully to the family explaining the problem. Then he went straight for a small pipe, taped three times and problem solved.
The family was very happy and asked for the price and the plumber said 500 Euros.
“What!” the husband said “but you have only been here for 10 min. could I please have a specified bill to know what you are charging for?” “Yes, of course, you will have in the post tomorrow” the plumber replied.
Next morning the bill was in the post, he had charged 1 Euro for the visit and 499 Euros for know where to tap.
What inspired me to write this blog post was my college and friend Drake Reno* who wrote on his Facebook page about how disturbed he was after having seen “a promotion for a NLP course that was providing certificates for 500$ in a two day seminar”, and “ this organization claimed that upon completion participants could open and practice professionally”**. Also, I was a member of a Facebook group for Coaches where people claimed to be Coaches with no certifications at all, because as they said: “why should they spend money on getting certified if they didn’t need it?” So if there is confusion in our profession it probably springs from the fact that it is unregulated and I encourage the users of Coaches to find out if a Coach is certified and from where.
I have just taken the decision to display my Coaching certificates, Degree and Master in my consultancy so they are there for people to see. In Colombia, doctors have to do this by law. I think it is only fair to my clients so they know where I have been trained and who by. In my case I trained with Bent Niebling in Copenhagen to get my health and life Coaching certificated there I got inspired to look for more training in Neuro Linguistic Programming and decided to go to the co-creators John Grinder and Richard Bandler and so I did, I invested my time and my money to train with the best and can now certify new NLP practitioners both in new and classic code NLP with the signature of John Grinder, Carmen Bostic St. Clair and Michael Carroll, Through the NLP Academy. However, I think my training will never stop, I’m continuously looking for new ways to help my clients, I read and now I’m working on getting certified by Joseph O’Connor in neuroscience applied to Coaching and I must say is just fascinating to learn just how what I do work in the brain.
Also, you could give the Coach, you are thinking about working with, a call. Find out how he or she works, which method and coaching style? I was trained to be more of a detective and based on the question I ask I will find the answers you have in yourself. This way I will listen to you and not impose my own content on you but find out if there is something you would benefit from unlearning and learn something new instead, this works for individual coaching to business coaching, family coaching to couples coaching, life coaching to high-performance coaching. And so far one of my favourite descriptions I have of this is from Joseph O’Conner’s new course Coaching the brain, a practical application of Neuroscience to Coaching it goes like this: “Firstly, anything we learn we can unlearn. “You cannot simply unmake the connection, it needs to be rewired.” Most importantly, our habits of thinking are just that – habitual patterns of wiring, which we do not “see” easily because they are automatic. New thinking leads to new wiring. This makes a Coach a facilitator of self-directed neuroplasticity – a neuroscientific title we (coaches***) can adopt with pride” Joseph O’Connor.
So as long as our profession is unregulated it is up to you, the clients to investigate the market and find the Coach or Trainer to certify you, you trust enough to redo your wiring or Plumbing for that matter.
* Drake Reno works as a NLP Certified Coach in the US. https://www.integrated-man.com/
** This is particularly disturbing, considering the complexity of NPL and the years we Certified Coaches have put into our education.
***added by Ivalo Kønig Okking.