It’s called status inflation and it starts when kids are in their early teens (or before). They want to appear just that bit more mature than they are.

You would think adult coaches would have grown out of this instinct. But we see the same phenomenon in relation to executive coaching. It seems that any coach, whatever their experience or capability, tags the word executive in front of their descriptor. As a result, the term executive coach has been steadily devalued in recent years.

So, what are the basic requirements of an executive coach? Firstly, to be credible, they must have considerable experience in a senior executive role. They must personally have experienced what it’s like to be a manager of managers and implementing strategy with only partial information. Knowing these things in theory isn’t enough – you have to have been in the hot seat to empathise and to ask questions that are context specific. Coaches without personal executive experience can ask good questions, but they will tend to be generic, which means they often lack the same level of impact.

Secondly, they must have a high level of business literacy. This includes an understanding of all the major business functions; deep insight into organisational politics; and clarity about the overlapping roles of executives and directors.

Thirdly, they must have achieved a level of coach maturity that allows them to see beyond the client and the presented issue into the client’s systems. They have advanced way beyond doing coaching to integrating their practice with their identity – the being of coaching. They haven’t used crude and simplistic models like GROW for a long time. The value they add is less about helping a client to solve a particular problem than about empowering clients to change the environment within and around them.

These characteristics have little to do with number of hours of coaching or levels of general accreditation – there is no meaningful correlation with either. The toolkits of executive coaching and general coaching are very different and draw ion a far wider range of disciplines, although there may be some overlap at the beginner level.

Executive coaching is a distinct and separate vocation or profession to coaching in general. It carries status, because it equips coaches to work with high status clients. Status inflation is an ethical issue. If someone calls themselves an executive coach but does not have an acceptable level of the qualities above, it can be argued that they are in breach of the ethical codes of their professional body.

So, what can someone, who is a genuine executive coach, do to differentiate themselves from the pretenders? Recommendation from existing clients can help, of course. But the most practical solution is to gain accreditation as a professional executive coach, through an education programme that builds on and expands their capabilities and credibility. That raises the problem that status inflation also applies to courseware – many “executive coaching” courses are simply teaching basic generic coaching, but with inflated titles. CCMI’s Advanced Executive Coaching programme is very different. The course content doesn’t require the coach to set aside all their immense experience – rather, it helps them value and use their experience to achieve more substantial outcomes for their clients. And it takes an evidence-based, pragmatic approach throughout. If you’d like to know more about our next course click here.

© David Clutterbuck 2024