ICF Credentialing Update

I sincerely appreciate how important and dear to many of our hearts this topic is. I want to reinforce to you now that what has been shared is a proposal—a concept idea that the Board needs to get your opinion on. 

Our true intent is to engage in conversations with our members, credentialed coaches and other stakeholders, about what we've learned in the validation of the credentialing process so that we could truly enhance both the process and the credentials. 

Over the past few weeks we have been engaged in conversations with various groups, including the ICF Past Presidents, and reviewed online feedback. We have already learned a great deal! In particular, your input has helped us see how our initial communications mixed two ideas together and created confusion. 

One idea is to improve the process of credentialing to achieve more objectivity, consistency, fairness and capacity. The second idea was to look at the value of the three credentials and how they portray internationally recognized standards of excellence. Now that we see this, we commit to creating more clarity about these two different ideas in future communications.

Again, no final decision on how to enhance our credentialing program has been made. In December, the Board will meet and review the many comments, questions and ideas that coaches from around the world have shared with us. After this, we will share the collective learnings gathered and engage you in further dialogue.

I am sure you can appreciate the enormous complexity of the work we are doing here, and how inadequate one mode of communication alone is. Please join us in as many different ways as you can to contribute to our learning conversations. 

There are many ways you can engage with us to share your comments and questions: 

- Open conversations via teleforum with members of the Board and Credentialing Committee; bridge line and dialing instructions on our blog;

- E-mail isocomments@coachfederation.org;

- Follow and share feedback on this ICF blog (www.coachfederation.org/blog);

- Attend a special meeting/lunch on the afternoon of Friday, December 4 at the 2009 ICF Annual International Conference in Orlando. I’ll be sharing more details with you on this shortly.