Trust and Confidence

What do you think about when you hear the words trust and confidence? The dictionary defines trust as ‘confidence; reliance on the integrity, strength and ability of a person’, while confidence is defined as ‘full trust, belief and reliability in a person’. The two words are interrelated and complement one another.

Your Expectations

When you take your car to a garage to have the brakes repaired, it would be fair to presume that your expectation is that a professionally trained, qualified, experienced and accredited mechanic will complete the work. Similarly, when you catch a flight, or have to visit a hospital, your expectations are that the pilot or surgeon is equally trained, qualified, experienced and licensed/accredited.

Your life could literally be in their hands, yet how often have you boarded a plane and asked to see the pilot’s license, or the surgeon’s medical certificate? We don’t, although some of you may be tempted now!  The reality is we tend to presume these people know what they are doing simply based on their profession.

Know Your Rights

You are important! If you are planning to engage the services of a coach or mentor, it is highly likely that you are seeking support for an issue that really matters to you be it personally or professionally. If you would not leave your car with an untrained mechanic, or fly with an unlicensed pilot, or agree to be operated on by an unqualified surgeon, why would you want to engage with a non-accredited coach or mentor? The same can be said if you want to train to become a coach or mentor; presumably, you want to work with a training provider that knows what they are doing? That is where the International Authority for Professional Coaching & Mentoring can help.

Our Why:

• We believe that everyone has the right to be protected from non-accredited coaches, mentors and training providers
• We believe that every coach, mentor and coach/mentor training provider must be accredited in order to practice
• We believe our accreditation levels set the standard that everyone should expect
• We believe that our sole focus is making everyone aware of the importance of accreditation

Our Purpose:

• We provide accreditation to enable practitioners to demonstrate the highest levels of professional standards in the industry

Choose Wisely

We believe that our accreditation standards are the best in the industry. If applicants do not meet our requirements, they are not accredited; additionally, we check all our members to ensure they still are fit to practice, every three years. We also have a strict Code of Conduct that they must follow and a comprehensive complaints process in case they don’t.

If you believe that the reason you are engaging with a coach, mentor or training provider is important; if you believe that your issues is too significant to put in the hands of the non-accredited, then we recommend you choose one of our accredited members.

Details of our accredited coaches, mentors and training providers can be found in our directory listings – Directories

We encourage you to contact them, in person, and talk to them about how they will meet your specific requirements.

Finally

Just in case you are still not convinced, ask yourself this question ‘In 12 months’ time, which would you prefer to:

• look upon your successes and say that you were grateful for the support of one of our accredited members

or

• to consider how successful you could have been if you had worked with one of our accredited members’?

Remember, if something is important to you, it’s important to us too.  So, please make an informed decision based on your research, because choosing wisely could make all the difference to the outcome.