Consider Ethics vs Core Values to Become a Business Coach and in Career Coach Certification

What is the difference between having a Code of Ethics and Core Values? I find variety in how these are explained without a concrete comparison. What are the implications in your career coach certification and training to become a business coach? Consider this: the Code of Ethics defines rules of conduct toward customers; Core Values are beliefs from which our behaviors and communication develop.

How does each influence people, teams, and companies? If the Code of Ethics is written by an industry or company, it serves as a teaching tool and guideline. Often each employee or professional is expected or required to comply with the Code of Ethics. Core Values might be different because individuals may or may not agree with the values. So if values are personal in nature, are corporate values simply accepted if required? Or are values about behavior and communication while at work only?

What is the impact on coaching clients? If a coach does not subscribe to, consider, or develop a Code of Ethics and/or Core Values, during their career coach certification and training to become a business coach, is the client aware enough to ask? Whether or not the client asks, the process means there is some education and thought involved, and generally the quality of the relationship is enhanced. How does openly communicating these with the client further enhance coaching?

Life Coaching Certification versus Executive Coach Certification

The perception of a person with a Life Coaching certification is often mistaken as similar to a friend, mentor, or counselor. The perception of a person with an Executive Coach certification may be mistaken as a consultant, advisor, or mentor. Both Life and Executive Coaching are very different from the other fields. Consider how the perceptions develop, the actual process of coaching, and the difference in experience and effort between Life and Executive Coaching.

Many people have a desire to help and coaching is an uncontrolled industry, so an abundance of “Life Coach” businesses are available. The experience people have with these businesses varies. Sometimes it is great – the client feels their coach did a great job. Sometimes it is poor -the client gains a negative impression of coaching, sharing those thoughts. Sometimes it is counseling or mentoring not coaching, leading to distorted impressions. A quality life coaching or executive coach certification prepares the coach to empower the client to explore goals, moving towards creating what they want in life.

Businesses are increasingly savvy about the difference between consulting and coaching. As a result, the specific training of the coaches, the coaching model used, and the expertise of the coach are factors in the decision to begin a coaching relationship. The primary reasons for hiring a coach are transition, leadership development, and to serve as a sounding board. Long-term success results from a well-trained coach who recognizes the client is their own best expert.

From ICF-Approved Coach Training to Group Coaching

Take the group experience of your ICF-approved coach training into your practice. How was your learning experience enhanced by the group experience? What are the unique benefits of learning and working with a group of adults that share a common thread? Each time I consider all the different ways for learning, I go back to the spark created with a group that wants to learn meeting live.

During coaching certification, we learn and hear the information from our trained expert and coach, what do we gain from the other students? In my experience I gained support, confidence, feedback, encouragement and the ideas that come from talking, sharing and brainstorming with others.

In discussions with others we see different ways of thinking in action and we gain inspiration. Now think about any group learning experience you have had that inspired you, motivated you, and called you to action. What in particular did you like most? How specifically did you learn and benefit?

Now think about applying this experience from your ICF-approved coach training to group coaching after earning your coaching certification. Give clients who share a similar focus or goal a very rich experience that complements individual coaching sessions, or even be the primary coaching environment. Your knowledge of group learning will become the power of group coaching.

Life Coach Certification for Personal Trainers

Tom owns his own business and is a successful personal trainer.  As his client base grew, he realized he wanted to offer more to his clients.  Tom had heard his clients concerns and excuses in many of the training sessions and he wanted more ways to help them.  He realized they were stuck in self defeating patterns so he looked for a way to help the whole person.  Tom researched and found that life coach certification made sense.

Tom was drawn to coaching because it engages the client and fits well with his role as a motivator and accountability partner.  He realized he already had a number of skills for successful coaching work.  As a personal trainer, he understood the importance of proper training and knew this included the coaching field.   He took the time and made the investment to master the skills and achieve his goals by becoming properly certified in an ICF-approved coach training program.

Tom already had a trusting relationship with his long standing clients so he had developed the rapport and knew their personalities.  He decided to add coaching services to his personal training agreement where he defined the roles and boundaries of the coaching relationship as taught in his ICF-approved coach training.

Now Tom uses his life coach certification to help his clients so they begin setting specific, measurable, and achievable short and long term goals.  They choose to change their behavior patterns and create lasting success.  His clients now have better results and stick with their training.  He finds training and coaching both happen naturally during training sessions.  Tom is now a well-being coach in addition to a personal trainer.  He is more satisfied with his work and his clients are more satisfied with their results.

Become a Business Coach or Earn Career Coach Certification and Use Whole Person Coaching

In whole person coaching, the coach takes time with the client to fully explore what they want in all areas of their life.  Even when the focus of the coaching is on business or career, this makes sense because all areas of their life come to work with them.  After exploring goals in all areas of their life, future sessions are focused on the business or career.  Then, when something from their life is impacting them, the client is comfortable discussing it because of the whole person coaching process.

In whole person coaching, the client has an initial 90 minute session.  If you choose to become a business coach or earn your career coach certification, you will ask the client about what they want personally, in relationships, career, financially, health, and lifestyle.   The coach listens, probes, and clarifies.  The experience is amazing for the client because they think about what they want in all areas, and they say it out loud which creates a new level of awareness and focus.

During a coaching session, after you choose to become a business coach or earn your career coach certification, you are focused completely on the client.  It is the coach’s responsibility to recognize the client’s personality in the moment so the coach can effectively adjust to the client.  This is essential because we all have different sides of our personality at different times. The coach is also aware of client language patterns because questions are formulated based both on what the client says and how they say it.

After this full exploration, the next step in the coaching process is providing a tool so that the client maintains their focus and creates the habits they want to support the goals they choose.

Executive Coach Certification or Life Coaching Certification for Media Interviewing

Media interviews have the potential to turn a slight misstep in wording into a widely broadcasted misrepresentation of you or your company.  Knowing how to handle media situations and different reporter’s styles is important to successfully conveying your message.  The message must be clearly formed and flexible to fit time constraints, while giving the intended answers to different questions.

One option is hiring a professional with an executive coach certification, ideally one that is through ICF-approved coach training.  Working with a coach will prepare you to identify and respond to leading questions with confidence.  You will learn poison words to avoid and powerful words to include in your answer.  Through coaching, instead of falling in the trap of dealing with the past you will bring the focus to the future.

Alternatively, life coaching certification is an opportunity to enhance your skills so you easily identify a person’s personality and communication styles within minutes and know how to respond most effectively in each circumstance.  Coach training will teach you to set goals which translate into a powerful personal message for the sometimes prying questions of the media.  Coaching certification teaches you the most effective forms of wording and how to build rapport with people quickly.

Hiring a coach with executive coach certification or earning your own life coaching certification is an opportunity to prepare yourself so you effectively transform a potentially hostile media experience into an opportunity for effectively sharing your positive message.

Skills through ICF-Approved Coach Training at the Center for Coaching Certification

Which skills to effectively coach will you learn at the Center for Coaching Certification?  An effective coach listens well, understands how to work effectively with different personalities, utilizes the power of language, asks questions, and is ethical.

Listening Skills: Human nature compares what we hear to what we know, so we often miss the real message.  Listening well requires removing ourselves from the equation to truly focus on the other person, their frame of reference, their emotions, their thoughts.

Understand Different Clients:  Each of us thinks, processes, and decides based on our personality, experiences, knowledge, and perceived options.  Each person is truly unique.  As discussed in ICF-approved coach training, understanding how to identify the client personality, combined with listening skills, means the ability to understand and accept the client for who they are in the moment.

Language: Often without realizing, our language focuses on the problem not the solution, the negative instead of what we want, and limits understanding and respect.  Learning language nuances, effective questioning, and how to engage means the coach enhances the value of coaching sessions.

Questions: telling everyone what to do, how, and when does not work. As taught at the Center for Coaching Certification, effective questioning puts clients in charge of determining priorities, values, options, and their course of action.

Ethical: Need we say more?  Surprisingly, yes.  Taking the time to learn the ICF Code of Ethics, as taught in ICF-approved coach training means considering others and how we treat them. Ethics make the difference for achieving long-term success.