Welcome
Hi Coach,
So happy to welcome you onboard!!!
We’ll be partnering together for mentoring sessions and you’ll discover, learn, grow a lot from your coaching sessions and the feedback customized to your very own progression. Here are some tips from experienced Mentor who went through mentoring on her own coaching too, as well as best practices noticed from talented Coaches too. These will help you save time, release the pressure around ACC and make the most of this opportunity to grow your coaching even better.
I’m grateful for your trust and thrilled to see you blossoming!!!
Marianne ;-)
ICF ACC Requirements Details
Requirements evolve over time, so I strongly encourage you to review the latest updates before you submit everything to ICF. Remember that you will need to pay some fees for reviewing and you may not want to pay again because of missing a simple requirement.
For Certified People Coaches, you have subscribed to the ACSTH Path with the People Coach Certification accredited for 60 hours + 10 hours of group mentoring.
Mentoring hours – How many? In what form?
ICF requires max 7 hours of group mentoring and 3 hours of individual mentoring.
Certified People Coaches, please ask us for your 7 hour group mentoring Certificate.
Your Mentor for the 3 hours of individual mentoring needs to provide you with the corresponding certificate.
10 hours of your mentoring journey over min 3 months before submission
Coaching Experience – What to log? How to log?
ICF recognizes coaching with clients, peer coaching, internal coaching, volunteer coaching with specific restrictions that you can easily find here. Please use ICF coaching log template that you can download hereunder.
Certified People Coaches can keep the same coaching log they used all along the training certification.
Nothing more to do ;-)
For the time being, you need to keep it for yourself yet it can be audited at any time.
Coach Knowledge Assessment – How to prepare?
Once you have submitted everything, if your coaching recording meets the standards expected, you will receive and invitation per email to do the online Coach Knowledge Assessment (CKA).
Though it is offered in different languages, I’d strongly suggest that you take it in English if your training was in English. ICF is very strong in the USA and all documents are initially provided in English, translations quality may vary and you may spend some time trying to make sense of the translation rather than figuring the right answer.
You are given 60 days to take the online CKA. Remember that your ACC will only be granted once the CKA is completed, so do avoid to delay the process and complete the CKA asap.
CKA has some questions around competencies and ethics. I’d recommend that you review both, as well as your training. Certified People Coaches have ample notes and booklet to review where all competencies were covered so reviewing that to keep them fresh in mind would be enough to do well in the CKA.
Warm yourself with the 5 sample questions available here!
Recording – Tips from the Pros!
How many recording? How to select?
You need to submit only one recording of a coaching session.
Have your Mentor review 3 recordings with you so you can choose the best one to submit.
How long should a recording last?
Record sessions lasting 25 to 35min only. Remember that assessors are not paid and need to pay at least twice the time of the recording to assess correctly. Hence a 60min session requires at least 2 to 3 hours from the assessor and chances are that makes the person increasingly impatient of they do not find competencies as they expect.
Do not test their indulgence and demonstrate your coaching skills in a short format!
Shall we record in person session or online session?
I would recommend that you record an online coaching session. The sound quality is way better than what we usually get from recording from a phone in a public space and required little to no technical ability.
Can I record with a Coach?
You can record a coaching session with a client or a coach you regularly coach. I recommend that you pick someone you trust and you already have coached. Avoid to have coaching as your coaching topic if you coach a coach.
Be prepared for surprises and remain in service of the Coachee, it’s way more important than the recording!
How not to stress during the recording?
The more you record, the more comfortable you will feel, it is just a question of practice, practice, practice.
Remember to focus on serving the Client, not on performing perfectly ;-)
How to prove the Client’s consent?
Best practice is to record the Client’s consent at the beginning of the recording, stating explicitly the purpose of the recording and who will have access to it.
What do ICF Assessors need to see?
ICF Assessors will seek for evidence that your coaching is meeting the ICF Competencies standards. Yet, we rarely can portray all competencies in a 35 min coaching session.
Hence, I’d recommend that you focus on Contracting, Creativity and Closing. If you manage to have all these 3 very well done, you are on a very good track and with high chance of success.
Many Coaches fail their contracting, so you can easily stand out and ensure that your Assessor is at peace when we start listening to a very good framework as it almost systematically lead to a very insightful coaching session. People remember best what they hear last, hence nail your closing and creativity is what will make your coaching most remarkable with a-ha moments for the Client.
Transcription of coaching Recording
You can transcribe manually all your coaching recording, yet they are quicker ways to do so. Remember though that whatever you choose, you will still need to proofread and edit so that it truly describe what you have said.
Using YouTube
If you upload your recording as a video (or audio) file on YouTube, after several minutes, YouTube will generate subtitles that you can retrieve as transcript. Just follow the 3 steps detailed here.
Click on the 3 dots next to Save under your video
Click on Open transcript
Select all the transcript and time toggle, then copy and paste into a Word document
You then just need to remove the time markers you do not need and add “Coach” or “Client” when you change speaker. Here’s a sample transcript that you can download. As of today, ICF only accepts Word document for transcript.