What level of development as a coach do you need?

The following questions may help your thinking about the right coaching course level to attend. These questions are focused around your coaching mindset but other considerations also apply around length of experience, hours of coaching practice and previous coach education.

If you answer yes to more than one third of the following questions, a Foundation course will be most suitable for you:

• I am new to coaching
• I have done some training in coaching, but am a bit rusty
• I’d value a review of the basics of coaching
• I could benefit from an opportunity to practice and hone the core skills of coaching
• I don’t feel confident in my coaching ability
• Skills deficiencies are holding my team back
• I want to improve my ability at listening
• I want to improve my ability at asking powerful questions
• My team thinks I miss opportunities to coach them
• I need to delegate more
• I sense I could get more out of my team if I adopted a more coaching style
• I want to have more honest conversations with my team

If you answer yes to more than a third of the following questions, an Practitioner level course will be most suitable for you:

• I am reasonably confident coaching, but I feel I could do with a wider range of responses and techniques
• I’ve got the basics of coaching and want to be more effective in how I use it
• I need to coach using different media
• I tend to use coaching on fairly simple, short-term issues and I’d like to feel confident in tackling more complex issues, which would have a bigger impact on the performance of my direct reports
• I want a deeper understanding of my strengths and weaknesses as a coach
• I want to be more effective in linking coaching with managing performance

If you answer yes to more than a third of the following questions, an Senior Practitioner level course will be most suitable for you:

• I want to build my ability and reputation generally as a developer of others
• I have quite a broad knowledge of coaching and coaching techniques, but I’d like to integrate them into my own style of coaching
• I’d like to gain a deeper understanding of how the most effective coaches think and work
• I want to develop a coaching culture in my team
• I am already a reasonably practiced coach
• I want to acquire the skills to coach my team as a whole, rather than one to one
• I want to help my team learn how to coach each other
• I’d like to become better at being coached
• I’d like to have a deeper understanding of different approaches to coaching
• I’d like coaching others, outside of my team, to become a significant part of my job role
• I want to be better at supporting others in their roles as coaches
• I see myself as a current or future champion of coaching

© David Clutterbuck