Like the saying ‘you need to separate the boys from the men’, the same goes with coaches too! In my mind, this saying tells you there is a fine difference between the two.
Back to coaches. I must have trained and certified hundreds over the last 7 years. Fifty percent (50%) of them ended up doing nothing with what they have learned; they eventually landed in the same spot where they first started. Forty-five percent (45%) did something about it; they either do coaching on a part time basis, with some actually going into the profession of coaching, either in the workplace or marketplace. Five (5%) of them went the extra mile; they become truly ICF credentialed professional coaches!
There are now 2 in the 5% bracket who went the extra mile: Rajiv Mathews and Florence Lam. Rajiv became a Professional Certified Coach and Florence became an Associate Certified Coach under the ICF banner.
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| From left: Me, Florence, Rajiv, Bob |
So what gave them the cutting edge? I spent a while figuring out the reason and I think I have a way to explain it. In my coach certification program, I teach a topic called ‘Personal Fulfillment’. In this concept, similar to the understanding of life balance, there is this thing called ‘fulfillment balance’ too. In here, there are 4 quadrants: joy, meaning, duty and achievement. What it means here is both Rajiv and Florence are people who like the others have joy (or personal satisfaction) and meaning (or personal ‘conscience’) in coaching. But it is they who have the other 2 as well – duty (or a sense of responsibility) and achievement (a sense of success) – that took them a few notches higher than others.
That’s why they are coaches who are making a mark in the coaching scene here, and I am very sure their eyes are also casted beyond the shores of Malaysia.
How about the rest of you? As coaches, you need to follow in Rajiv and Florence’s footsteps to become true coaches if you want to have the standing to preach to your clients on why people need to have ‘high performance values’ or be role models to others. That’s the best ‘medicine’ for the cure. And the beauty is when you do this, you actually turn your pursuit in Coaching into a successful coaching profession where you now have the joy of helping people, the meaning of helping to make a better world, the duty of responsibility, and the achievement of making it big in coaching.
If you have moved forward in coaching, what other reasons have propelled you forward? If you have not, what’s holding you back?