Achieving the PCC milestone: a pause for celebration!
I reached a milestone in early 2020. Being someone who is more energised by looking forward to the next challenge it is not often that I stop to celebrate achievements. In this case I am going to make an exception for two reasons. Firstly, while it has been a slow burner for me, I do now understand the importance of recognising success as part of the whole self-care aspect of wellbeing. Secondly, the achievement has been co-created through partnership with a whole bunch of people who I would like to celebrate with.
What is the occasion for celebration?! I have been recognised at Professional Coach standard (PCC) by the International Coach Federation (ICF). It represents the culmination of over 500 hours of coaching with over 80 clients and roughly the same number of hours of coaching related professional development. As well as the volume of work the ICF require a quality assessment too. They do this by evaluating the recordings of a number of my coaching sessions. It is this requirement to demonstrate both volume and standard of coaching that attracted me to the ICF way of professional certification. It’s challenging, rewarding and meaningful for me as well as my current and prospective coaching clients.
Along the way I have partnered with some great organisations and connected with many people. It has been brilliant to work with Maximum Coaching as an assessor on their coach training programmes. Part of the validation of my own 30 year coaching journey involved graduation from a Maximum Coaching course so there is a pleasing symmetry giving something back by working with the current cohorts of prospective coaches.
Some years back I started out with Know You More (KYM) as a founding member and have coached with them ever since. The KYM ethos of bringing coaching to an ever wider community, particularly those who are the early stages of their leadership development, is something I buy into. The same applies to their commitment to social enterprise which sees some of the commercial revenue from coaching, and the expertise of the KYM coaching community, being used to support social enterprise projects. I am delighted to be part of KYM’s central team with responsibility for engagement with its coaching community, a fantastic group of coaches who are at the heart of what KYM offers.
While my own coaching practice involves coaching across private, public and social sectors, my commitment to social sector projects is also reflected in my work with Clore Social Leadership. I was part of a small team of coaches who piloted their Find a Coach programme which is going live in 2020 with the intent of supporting leadership development in the social sector.
While coaching is not a lonely job it is one where you are often alone as the practitioner ‘in the room’. As with any lone working there is a risk of getting stuck in your own thinking if you don’t take care to actively engage with other practitioners to test that thinking. Two people who have most certainly done that are Eve Turner and Henry Campion. The groups of coach practitioners they convene and the discussions they facilitate have been a positive provocation to my thinking over several years. Alongside there are those 1-2-1 conversations with people I have met in the professional setting who have since become friends. In particular cocoaching with Helen and Marco has been a significant influence on me.
Most of all I want to thank my coaching clients, those who I have worked with through the partners mentioned above and the more that 80 clients through Alpamayo Coaching Ltd, my own coaching, facilitation and training company. Partnering with each of you as you think about the challenges you are facing is a huge journey of discovery that is a privilege to share. You know who you are. Thanks so much to you all!
I am looking forward to many more years of coaching, taking on new challenges, reaching new milestones. For now though I’m going to enjoy the moment of achieving Professional Coach Certification with the ICF. Thanks for being part of my success.