What It (Really) Takes To Develop Coaching Excellence

By Charlie Lang, CEO Coach, Co-Founder of Ascend-U

Traditional Classroom Training alone doesn’t achieve an optimal learning outcome. Developing Coaching Excellence specifically requires a multitude of interventions for optimal outcomes. More than ever before, technology can help optimize the learning impact and enhance the experience.

How?

It all started back in early 2002: I decided to get a professional coach training as I was contemplating leaving the corporate world to become an Executive Coach. At the time, I had just recently relocated to Hong Kong and my research showed that there were only a handful of professionally trained coaches in all of Hong Kong. Also, there was no institute at all in Hong Kong that would provide any coach training. So I joined the only English language program there was at the time in Asia which was conducted through numerous so-called teleclasses (3 hrs conference calls) and a total of 5 live classroom sessions (Friday evenings and Saturdays all day).

Our Coach Trainer – as we later learnt – had a grand total of 1.5 years coaching experience when we joined the program that he licensed from a US institute. At the time, while we had some grievances around the administration of the program and the rather weird theoretical exam, we nevertheless found the training overall great!

And that’s a problem with both being coached or learning coaching: most coachees/ participants don’t know what they don’t know, ie they have no reasonable way of knowing whether the coaching or coach training they’re experiencing is actually really great or ‘just ok’ - because they have nothing to compare it to (exceptions confirm the rule, still).

From today’s perspective, after having practiced executive coaching for over 7,000 hours and having developed new coaches for a couple of thousand hours, I can clearly say that what I experienced back in 2002 was very far from what I would consider a high-impact coach development program.

I’m not complaining, because at that time the coaching industry was almost non-existing in Asia and the program I took was the only one there was at the time. And you have to start somewhere...

When I was asked by Hong Kong University SPACE in 2005 to develop a curriculum for Executive Diploma on Corporate Coaching, I worked with another Hong Kong pioneer coach (Ms. Angela Spaxman ) to design the program. Given the HKU SPACE structure, we had to design the program to be conducted in classroom during evenings and weekends. However, one aspect that came short in my own first coach training was practice. So we built in extensive practice as part of the homework participants had to do.Then, about a year later, we at Progress-U (that I founded in 2002) decided to develop our own Coach Certification program. Since we didn’t have the restrictions of HKU, we could design it in whichever way we wanted. It resulted in a 2*4-days workshop program combined with extensive coaching practice and follow-up teleclasses to hear about the progress participants made in practicing and to support them with any challenges they faced.

Getting Internationally Accredited

The first major revamp and extension of the program was required when we decided in 2011 to apply for Level 2 Accreditation with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches;(WABC). WABC appointed an advisor who left no stone unturned and helped us significantly step up our quality control procedures and challenged us on maximizing the impact of our program. Some minor further improvements were implemented to comply with the requirements for approval by the International Coach Federation in 2014. Subsequently, we kept optimizing the program contents and structure in rather incremental steps.

Despite continuously receiving very positive feedback for our coach certification programs, we decided in 2019 that it was time to challenge ourselves and take our programs to the next level for readiness in 2020.

What were the objectives of this significant upgrade?

• To further maximize the learning impactTo provide more flexibility, especially for potential participants outside our hubs of Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai and Singapore.
• To optimize the participants’ experienceTo better leverage our best resources for the benefit of the participants

What did we change?

A) Contents: Participants’ ratings for our contents were consistently very high, and yet, we found that we can do better and reworked or even replaced our contents.

B) Delivery Mode: In the past, contents were exclusively ‘delivered’ in classroom settings, conference calls ("teleclasses") and through some reading materials.

We decided to include Digital Micro-Learning, take all session virtually including the workshops and enhance the practice sessions. Also, we started to include ICF Group Mentoring Sessions in the program

The next major shift

After selling Progress-U in 2020 and leaving Progress-U as full-time member in August 2023, I recently decided to launch Ascend-U together with Amit Chatterjee .

This gave the opportunity to rethink what I learnt over more than 20 years of running Progress-U and to take the coach certification programs that Ascend-U offers to a yet new level leading to a highly integrated program design with innovative approaches such as "Supervised Practice Sessions", "Coaching Practice Reviews", "Moderated Peer Coaching Sessions" besides the regular workshops. Also, we are in the process of launching the "Ascend-U Coaches Club" sometime in November 2024 that provides alumni as well as other professional coaches a place to learn, practice and develop together beyond regular coach training.

This means that the Journey to Coaching Excellence now has been significantly deepened, providing more individual guidance and feedback to the participants. In order to manage the increased complexity that comes with the multiple interventions, we ensure close tracking and to provide personal support to monitor the progress of each participant. Participants themselves can also track at any time where they are in their journey and what they still need to complete to graduate.

About Technology

Besides improvements in contents, structure and delivery methods, we use numerous technologies to aid the maximization of impact on the learning journey of developing coaching excellence:

• Digital Micro-Learning: it takes e-learning to a whole new level, including social learning, learning in small bites for higher retention and mobile learning. It allows participants to get an introduction to all key concepts, theories and processes prior to any workshop - in a fun way. As a result, we can spend more time in the workshop on deepening the learning, and more importantly, to practice it in coaching cases based on real cases experienced by our veteran coaches.
• Virtual Workshops and other sessions: technology for video conferencing has dramatically improved over the past 5 years or so, and it’s now perfectly possible to conduct sessions effectively in a virtual format. This results in more flexibility for participants, especially for those who would need to travel to attend classroom sessions. Also, if any session is missed, there is a chance to watch the related recording which is another advantage versus live workshops, especially during a journey of several months.

We should not forget, though

One of the key contributors to make any program truly great, besides the structure, contents, activities and technology, are the facilitators who interact with the participants. As a result, we’re extremely selective who we engage to deliver this program and ensure they can deliver it at the highest quality level we expect. Technology again helps us actually to improve our quality control of facilitators and provides broader choice of the best faculty members as they don't have to travel to deliver the program.

• Do you want to become a professional coach? Check out our Level 1 or Level 2 Programs
• You are already a professional coach? Check out our Bridge Programs or Team Coaching Certification or Harrison Assessments Certification Programs

If you ever attended any coach certification program, what had the biggest impact on your development of coaching excellence?