Kingstown College Coaching Magazine vol.5 2019/2020

www.kingstowncollege.ie
85
How to become a Life
or Executive Coach
International accreditation should be
the number one priority of anyone
considering a career as a life coach. This
ensures that you are coaching in line
with international best practice within
a quickly progressing profession, and
should be working and studying with
the goal of progressing through the ICF
credentials. International organisations,
governments and individual clients
view those credentials as a mark of
approval and quality.
provides you with a globally recognised
credential which is even more important
as technology allows coaches to engage
clients all over the world.
ICF also accredit Life Coaching Courses
such as the Diplomas offered by
Kingstown College. This is the fast track
to ICF credentials with 160 recognised
The path to professional life or executive training hours.
coaching anywhere in the world will
look like this
Since the 1990s, coaching as a
profession has evolved from a separate
1. Study an accredited Life Coaching
Course like the Advanced Diploma in
Personal, Leadership and Executive
Coaching
private practice to being a leadership
style within progressive organisations.
Not only does it help to achieve
corporate goals and targets, it also helps
retain talent within the organisation.
2. Build up your coaching hours – even
with pro-bono clients
Life coaching courses explore intriguing
subjects such as resilience, positive
3. Apply for Accredited Certified Coach psychology, emotional intelligence,
status with ICF, or Practitioner with EMCC conflict, values and beliefs. Every client
is different and every coach is different,
4. Continue to learn and develop as a
life coach with Continuing Professional
Development opportunities such as
seminars, conferences and Masterclasses
so often life coaches are not only using
the popular coaching models such
as GROW, they are developing new
models which help their clients resolve
challenges and achieve goals.
About the Coaching Profession
Do you have what it takes to be a Life
The techniques of Life coaching were Coach?
used by people in various disciplines
from sport to business for the last
century, but life coaching really only
became established as a profession in
the 1990s. It was during that time that
the International Coach Federation
was founded, which is now the gold
standard for life coach accreditation
Paula King is the course director of
the Advanced Diploma in Personal,
Leadership and Executive Coaching at
Kingstown College. She is the recipient
of the Global Leadership Coaching
Award and was recently announced
as European Coach of the Year. She
with 30,000 members worldwide. believes that a coach should approach
Anyone considering the profession a session with “the total understanding
that the human being in front of them
has the answer within them”.
But one of the most important skill
taught on life coaching courses is to put
judgement aside. And that is not easy
because as coaches we could approach
an issue with our own pre-determined
beliefs and values –which may not be in
line with those of the client.
“Put aside judgement” advises Paula, “If
we walk in to a room with our clients,
genuinely holding them in unconditional
positive regard we cannot go wrong.”
That said, a coach also needs to
recognise that clients may have
cognitions that are not serving them,
leading to emotions that are disabling
them, leading to actions that are not
assisting them to achieve their goals.
“[As coaches] We work in that space
using all of our tools, our techniques
and professionalism to help clients
achieve their goals and their vision.”
Start your journey to becoming a coach
with Kingstown College!
learn@kingstowncollege.ie