THE SUPER COACHES ARE COMING!

*The ICF’s 2023 study has reported that the coaching profession has ‘continued to expand at a robust pace’ and that ‘globally,?active coach practitioners generated an estimated annual revenue/income from coaching of $4.564 billion (USD)’.

This is in contrast to 2007 when the same study estimated the annual revenue generated by the coaching industry globally was $1.5 billion.

There’s no doubt the coaching industry is expanding and, in doing so, is now moving significantly into territory previously occupied by the counselling professions.

Why is that?

Our understanding of what we need for emotional wellness has grown through the new brain sciences. We can now look inside a living human brain and see how we learn, how we consolidate memories, how we process emotion and even observe the brain areas where motivation and insight occur.

As our understanding continues to expand, we are developing more and more effective tools and skills for managing our minds, our emotions and consequently our lives. The coaching industry has been quick to respond by embracing new niches such as ‘wellbeing coach,’ ’holistic coach’ and ‘mindset coach’.

Meanwhile those of us with a psychotherapeutic training have also noticed our clients are demanding more of us and that counselling has begun to cross the bridge into coaching territory where strategies, goals and outcomes begin to inform our practice.

One of the UK’s largest counselling bodies the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has noted the shift, created a Coaching Division and is now fully embracing coaching techniques as a valid extension of core counselling skills.

Recently, I was part of the Expert Research Group that brought together the new integrated coach-counsellor competencies framework. It felt to me like a real leap forward and a commitment to expanding the reach of the counselling industry.

Having focused for years on what separated counselling from coaching, the two professions are now looking for the common ground and staking a claim on that territory. I think it is our clients that will truly benefit. The nub of what Darwin said in his Origin of Species is it’s not the strongest nor the most intelligent that does the best but those most adaptable to change. ?

Professional change is certainly in the air and those who respond to it the most comprehensively are likely to find themselves at the leading edge of a new wave of dual-trained practitioners; the Super Coaches.

In reality, most counsellors have, for some time, been integrating some coaching techniques into their therapeutic toolbox and most coaches often stray into therapeutic territory, whether or not they intend to.

Why?

Because our clients are all human beings who have a range of innate biological, psychological and sociological needs and a brain that responds to the environment in which it finds itself by producing emotional responses designed to drive us to get our needs meet.

So whether you have a coaching or a counselling client in front of you, depending on their current life circumstances, they are going to be at a certain point on a continuum of wellbeing. They will either be in the ‘ok’ zone (traditional coaching territory) or closer to the ‘not ok’ zone (traditional counselling territory) and, because life circumstances change, their position on the continuum may move from one week to the next.

*Taken from my recent article in Coaching Perspectives

Frances Masters??MBACP accred GHGI AC (Fellow)

Frances Masters is a BACP accredited psychotherapist, coach and?training consultant with over 30,000 hours of professional practice. She is?author of the professional guide PTSD Resolution: reclaiming life from trauma.

In?2009, Frances founded the charity Reclaim Life; training its volunteers to work in her new?integrated therapeutic coaching model,??FUSION.?

You can access the?free 'Time for a Change' workbook here.?

Fusion training

If you want to be part of the new wave of integrated practitioners you can apply to be on the waiting list for the Integrated Coaching Academy Therapeutic Coaching Diploma on [email protected]

The good news is there is no waiting list at all for the NCFE distance learning Therapeutic Coaching Skills Certificate and you can follow this?link?for immediate?purchase of your Skills Workbook for just ￡455.?

You can also still access the Fusion?Mindfulness Based Mind Management programme here?for ￡395 for a limited time.

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