This article explores the question of whether the corporate coaching industry in Australia should require corporate coaches to be accredited? Let’s face it the number one sports people, world renowned leaders and politicians all have highly credible coaches. Are corporate coaches exempt from showing their credibility through accreditation or qualification?
This debate has been buzzing around the Australian corporate coaching world recently and is becoming increasingly relevant now that the impact of business coaching is being felt.
More and more organisations are adopting corporate coaching and mentoring programs with their senior management and leadership teams and their experiences have overall seemed to prove quite positive.
With the interest in business coaching on the rise more and more business coaches are entering the market to take advantage of this fairly lucrative industry.
But who are those that are claiming that they indeed can coach at senior leadership levels and promise to transform organisations into profitable enterprises with a satisfied and happy workforce?
Is the attraction of a helping hand, shared burdens and a promise of future success sufficient to entice Australian business to dig deep and invest in business coaching no matter the qualification or experiential successes of the coach?
While admittedly there are many worthy and experienced business coaches there is no regulation as yet as to corporate coaching accreditation.
There are corporate coaching organisations as well as academic programs to cater for those corporate coaches that choose accreditation and qualification but it is solely at their own peril and not a regulatory requirement.
So will regulation be compulsory and is it necessary for the industry to try and set a standard for corporate coaches through accreditation programs?
If indeed it does, it would beg the question wether a Welch, a Branson, a Murdoch or a Lowy would require accreditation or qualification to justify their existence as a business coach?
Furthermore, as with the psychologists and social workers would it be advisable that the practitioner have some support and opportunity to debrief their challenging scenarios with those who have successfully walked down similar paths before them?
All these questions are relevant and their answers are not that straight forward.
Form the way the corporate coaching industry is heading in Australia I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of accreditation or experiential success would become a requirement before any business coaching program was to be accepted and implemented.
This will become especially relevant when more and more business coaches enter the market. Not only will it serve to ensure high standards of corporate coaching excellence but will also weed out those who simply don’t cut the mustard.
As far as support for business coaches is concerned, I cannot see any immediate movement to make this compulsory.
If corporate coaches preach the value of coaching surely it should apply to them as well? After all can we ever be objective about ourselves?