Some thoughts following the ICF Conference

With 15,000 members, of whom 5,600 are credentialled, and with members in 91 countries, the International Coach Federation is clearly successful.

Once again, more than 1,000 members attended the annual conference in North America. In addition, there the ICF holds major conferences in Europe and Asia.

The ICF sets out to be the professional organisation for life and executive coaches and continues to work for the development and protection of the profession worldwide.

A constant concern is that governments might wish to control or license coaching, and the ICF seeks to ensure that with our own professional qualifications, external interference is unnecessary.

This year, the board has been investigating adoption of the ISO standard 17024 as a framework for a credentialing program that meets globally recognized standards and procedures of operation. This would not dictate the specific content or prerequisites required to be granted a credential; rather it would promote the operation of a consistent, objective, and credible program.

The adoption of respected standards and best practices, such as those of ISO, has the potential to add credibility and improve the strategic position of the ICF Credential.

ISO is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies and sees credentialing as a means to measure competency around a body of knowledge, not skill level. As such, aligning with the ISO 17024 standard would affect the testing or validating of a coach's competency of our body of knowledge. The standard would not affect the content of our body of knowledge.

The board had undertaken considerable research and consultation before presenting its proposals to delegates at the conference - for yet another stage in the consultation and involvement of members.

In spite of this, there was a major reaction against the proposals.

I am also a member of the XL Results foundation. About a year ago it became clear that it had outgrown its business model and would have to be significantly restructured.

Just as coaches are trained to help their clients confront change, XL members have a common understanding of psychometric profiles.

It was fascinating to watch the on-line discussions earlier in the year as members acted out the different profiles as they also resisted proposals.

We could say "Physician, heal thyself." Or, rather, we could accept that we are all human beings and recognise that our own reactions are typical of those of our clients – and gain not only greater humility, but greater understanding, too.

Coaching notes includes reviews of some of the sessions at the conference.

There is always something to agree about

There has been some interesting correspondence in the Economist magazine.

1. Hummus can promote peace

Israeli and Syrian negotiators were making no progress until they came together "in a moment of heartfelt agreement" that the chickpea dip served to them by their American hosts tasted awful.

2. A friendly brew

After the 1991 Madrid peace conference, Arab and Israeli negotiators convened at America's State Department to start talks, but the different Arab delegations couldn't agree on the modalities for actually talking to the Israelis.

One morning, after several days of unsuccessful attempts to break the ice and get the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to sit at the same table as the Israelis, the habitual coffee-cart was wheeled in. After both the senior delegates had tasted the unappetising brew that passed for coffee in America, the Israeli Ambassador remarked "Don't you think this coffee is terrible?", to which the other enthusiastically agreed.

From that moment the talks started, culminating eventually in the the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

Many years ago, I had a similar experience of an unexpected success.

One evening, I was running a 'Prisoners' Dilemma' game for two teams on a week long management development programme.

One of the participants had played it before and knew 'the trick', and the two teams agreed to play the game against the organisers.

What could have been a wasted exercise, turned out to be a great success. The whole group gelled in a way that had not happened earlier in the course.

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Richard Winfield is founder of Brefi Group.
An international facilitator, he coaches and
facilitates directors and boards in transition:
helping them to make progress by
bringing structure and clarity
to their thinking.

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