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Financial Advisor Coach Credentials And Why They Matter

By ClientWise | October 25, 2012

 

Coaching is fast-becoming a recognized tool that guides successful financial advisors to achieve many, if not all of their aspirations.  However, as coaching has become more acclaimed for it’s benefits, the definition of “coaching” and what constitutes a “coach” has become blurred.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the verb to coach as to “tutor, train, give hints to, or prime with facts.” As the concept of coaching originated in the world of sport, many of us may also associate a coach with someone like Bill Belichick or the late Vince Lombardi, or maybe through our own past experiences with Little League, high school, or collegiate athletics.

Unfortunately, these associations are all somewhat misleading. In the training, professional development, and consulting spectrum, these are important modalities. But they aren’t coaching. At least, not in way the International Coach Federation (ICF) defines that coaching.

According to the ICF, coaching is: “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires the client to maximize their personal and professional potential. This is achieved through a process (i.e. the coaching conversation) that deepens the client’s observations of his/her own strengths, areas for growth, and the learning from these observations.

In this definition, the coaching conversation is one of the key underpinning elements of what coaching is. You see we all want to be heard. Yet, coaches who follow the core coaching constructs of the coaching conversation, as outlined by the International Coaching Federation, take hearing, and coaching, to a whole new level.

Some of these core-coaching tenets of the coaching conversation include, but are not limited to:

 

  • Establishing what the client wants to achieve over the course of the entire engagement, and with each individual session.
  • Identifying the inspiration and/or motivation behind the coaching objectives.
  • Determining benchmarks of success that let the client know when they’ve achieved their goals.
  • Clarifying what the stated goals mean for the client.
  • Helping the client identify what they need to explore to create actions that will achieve their goals.
  • Partnering with the client, and allowing them to choose the order and process of the coaching session, that best serves addressing the goals and issues they’d like to speak to.
  • Reframing or re-designing self-limiting belief systems into positive, realistic, and relevant models of thinking.
  • Supporting the client throughout the process in a non-judgmental, unbiased, and solution-focused approach.
  • Celebrating accomplishments, both the milestone moments, as well as the end itself.

 

Coaches who have achieved one of the three ICF credentials are well versed in the coaching conversation. Beyond that, an ICF-credentialed coach: the Associate Certified Coach (ACC), the Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and the Master Certified Coach (MCC) has achieved a minimum set of required hours of coach-specific training, as well as hundreds of hours of coaching experience.

Today, there are more than 8,000 coaches worldwide who have achieved one of these three levels of ICF coaching certification. For financial advisors looking to engage a coach to unlock their innate potential and maximize their performance, the ACC, PCC, or MCC credentialed coach is a good place to start.

 

For the complimentary ClientWise Learning Tool, "Coaching Decision Kit?", please download below:

 

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Topics: Business Development Coaching

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