Coaching and Mentoring Accreditation: How Do We Assess Capability?

This is the question I’m currently working on in my volunteer role of Accreditation Project Manager for the IAPC&M. I’ve completed a project involving reviewing and developing the IAPC&M’s approach to accrediting courses. You will see on the IAPC&M website a revised approach which retains, if not strengthens, the rigour and streamlines the process for those who wish to achieve IAPC&M accreditation of their course.

The questions below highlight the challenge of this piece of work:

• How do we assess coaching and mentoring capability? 
• How do we ensure that the IAPC&M capability framework and associated assessment process are rigorous and robust? 
• How do we ensure that it reflects current thinking within the coaching and mentoring professional community? 
• How do we ensure that we are truly focusing on capability rather than inert knowledge and understanding?

As a practising coach and mentor with forty-plus years of experience, and as a trainer of coaches and mentors internationally, I feel that I have a secure base from which to work with professional curiosity, on the above questions. 

Some ways forward are emerging:

1. David Drake’s model of the Five Maturities offers some helpful constructs that can potentially be incorporated into a revised capabilities framework.
2. By focusing assessments exclusively on case studies, it is possible to ensure that active, rather than inert, knowledge and understanding are being captured and evaluated.
3. There is a place for a single coach/mentor combined accreditation. 

On the latter point, like many other professional coaches and mentors, I work with clients in a flexible way, which can involve a harmony of directive coaching (mentoring) and indirective coaching. The clients themselves have a determining role in the decision about what approach to take. 

• What are your thoughts about the challenge of assessing coaching and mentoring capability? 
• What do you feel the assessment process should distinguish good capability from outstanding capability?
• Is capability more than demonstrating the effective use of skills?
• What should the work to improve one’s coaching capability focus on?

Whether you are a coach or a coaching client, what do you think about a single coach/mentor accreditation? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Email us.

Find out more about Dr Stephen Hopkins here.