Coaching confusion

Category: Editorial

Richard Winfield - editor I am in a state of shock.

You will appreciate that if I edit a newsletter entitled CorporateCoach, then it is likely that Brefi Group is interested in coaching. Coaching and the coaching process, including coach training, feature high in our activities. Further, we are concerned about the development of coaching and the emergence of a few internationally accepted coaching qualifications.

For this reason, I am a member of The International Coach Federation. I have already announced that this year I intend not only to attend the annual conference, but to encourage other members of the Brefi Network to join me. Over 1,500 professional coaches from all over the world attended last year's ICF Conference. It is an important event.

This year's conference will be held in St Louis, Missouri, USA from 1-4 November.

It has been my intention that Brefi Group should join the European Coaching and Mentoring Council. The EMCC exists to promote good practice and the expectation of good practice in mentoring and coaching across Europe. A key focus of the EMCC is the development of European standards, ethics and codes of conduct for the profession with a view to assuring quality within the industry.

It claims to be a unifying and inclusive body covering a broad spectrum of organisations from the voluntary and community, professional training and development, counselling at work, life coaching and academic psychology sectors. Imagine my amazement, therefore, to discover that the 13th Annual Coaching and Mentoring Conference is to be held in Köln, Germany from 1-3 November – an exact clash with the ICF conference.

What is going on here? Is it incompetence, or is it deliberate confrontation? If two of the leading coaching organisations cannot co-operate, or have so little common interest that they do not know what each is up to, what are we and our clients to make of this 'profession'?

I have been working on the editing of one of our 90-MinuteLearning programmes for an upcoming demonstration. It is called 'ResolvingConflict' and is based on the concept of Win-Win. Hardly a strange concept for a coach, but often missed in the larger competitive world.

It is surely not too much to ask that our professional institutions should role model what we teach and demonstrate mutual respect, co-operation and a win-win attitude.

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