Accreditation through Governing Bodies

Accreditation plays an important and determining role for professional growth, especially for us as coaches. There are several ways of accreditation and legally recognized institutions that validate our training. Logically in most cases it is necessary to have belonged to a training institution for Coaches that grants such validation. To have knowledge, the main reference as a legal institution in terms of accreditation is the ICF (International Coach Federation) which operates globally; and in Spain acting at the state level is the ASESCO (Spanish Association of Coaching). Although there are many other institutions, these are the ones that guarantee a solid training experience to their students. We will see some aspects of interest for our instruction in accreditation.

Accreditation vs. certification.

We must be clear that accreditation is not the same as certification, they fulfill different functions although they are related and one gives way to the other. Firstly, the authority over the certification bodies is the responsibility of the accreditation entities, which allow and validate these bodies to issue legal certification. We have the need to validate ourselves as a Coach, therefore, we must know beforehand if the certifying body is accredited, to save us bad experiences in the legal area. An institution such as an academy or a university usually has accreditation to certify as valid their degrees, courses or workshops for students, but the labor accreditation is independent of the studies.

Qualification for a Coach.

As you can imagine, we do not become a coach overnight, it is vitally important to have studied at an accredited coaching school. According to the legitimizing media, we need to follow a training program that includes various multidisciplinary subjects in order to learn the skills and knowledge of the specialty. Another way to obtain an accreditation can be through a Curriculum Vitae certification, usually given to people who have not passed an academic training program and have a recognized trajectory as a Coach. Many of those who choose to dedicate themselves to coaching begin in a self-taught way or receiving self-training and become very good references to aspire to an accreditation by an international academy of coaches.

Program accreditation.

We already know that we need to follow a training program to become a professional coach, however the programs through which we will be trained do require to be legally accredited, whether in-person or online. Since these courses mediate within the academic framework, it is essential that they have quality control, security and trained professional coaches in charge. It is important to know that legal certification bodies such as AIDCP offer accreditation only to training programs and not as such to coaches. Only international academies of professional coaches validate the training entity. In this day and age a professional coach must have a website where he clearly and transparently states the training program he offers as well as the legal rights that protect both him and the client who requests it. Certainly all programs need to meet certain parameters to achieve legal accreditation, such as a minimum of one hundred and twenty-five hours of coaching and more than twenty hours of practice in the specific field under the supervision of the responsible Coach.

Requirements for accreditation.

It is good to keep in mind that having studied coaching does not guarantee in its totality the effectiveness of our professional performance, it is indispensable the correct accreditation by the pertinent entities that control quality and performance standards. First of all, it is advisable to have studied a prog