Do You Need a Degree to Become a Coach?

Do you need a degree to become a coach?

Is formal certification necessary for a coach to build a clientele and thrive in the field? Exactly what skills and experiences do you need to have if you want to make a living as a coach? Does a college diploma suffice? Is there a requirement for a coaching certificate? Or, is coaching competency necessary?

Since more than 170 universities and colleges now offer coaching degrees, another question arises: “Is a person with a coaching degree more likely to succeed than someone without a college degree?” There are two dimensions to “success”: helping your client achieve their goals, and giving them the tools they need to make those goals a reality. And what about making it as a coach by convincing people of its value? What about someone who has completed a Coach Training program and received a certificate? I need to know the relative values. And can a person become a coach without ever having taken a formal course in the subject?

Coaching is based on Generative Psychology

Coaching, a growing field, is based on psychology, just like psychotherapy, which has been around for a long time. But, unlike therapy, it doesn’t focus on understanding trauma, disorders, or things that aren’t normal. Coaching is based on the psychology of growth, learning, development, expertise, etc., and it starts with the idea of normality. It is based on Self-Actualization Psychology, which was started by Maslow and Rogers, the Human Potential Movement, and all of its branches today, such as Ericksonian, Positive Psychology, Strength-based psychology, Solution-Focused, etc.

So, a good coach learns and teaches the principles of generative psychology, not remedial psychology, whether at a college or through a training program. When therapists try to be coaches by using therapy models and procedures, they are not coaching at all. Instead, they are sneaking in therapy and calling it “coaching.” Coaches who don’t know about cognitive psychology, humanistic psychology, and the principles of how to bring out the best in people might have a nice “chat,” but they aren’t really coaching.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Over the years that we have offered Meta-Coach training in Australia, five Sydney University graduates have become Meta-Coaches. When they got there, they had a Master’s degree in coaching and knew a lot about cognitive psychology as it is used in therapy, as well as the Cognitive Psychology model. However, they had never been in a coaching session or done an internship, so they had no experience. On day two of the ACMC training, they had their first full coaching session.

So, unless a person gets a lot of practice in a university setting and is constantly tested and evaluated, having a degree is no guarantee that a person has any real-world experience. This is a big difference between schools and programs that train coaches. There is one professor and a person who usually hasn’t coached themselves. Meta-Coaching always has more than one trainer and a team to help, so there is a team leader or trainer for every three people who are taking part. This means that an experienced person watches over every coaching session, gives feedback in real time, and gives feedback on how to improve.

Be Coached Yourself

The academic preparation for Meta-Coaching includes cognitive psychology, some developmental psychology, and self-actualization psychology. We also have a diploma in Self-Actualization Psychology, which is an in-depth look at how people work.

But the experience of coaching is more important than all of that. The reason is obvious: the best way to learn how to coach is to coach. Also, the best way to learn it is with the help of experienced coaches who can tell you right away what you’re doing right and what needs to be changed or improved. The best way to learn how to coach is to be coached yourself. Then what you learn is based on what you know from the inside out. You also get to deal with any personality traits or beliefs that might hurt your coaching skills or presence.

To be a good coach, you need to have had some life experience and know what it’s like to fail, struggle, be confused, get along with people, feel up and down emotionally, etc. This is almost impossible to learn from a book.

Do You Need a Degree to Become a Coach?

No, just a degree in being human. Do you need to be trained as a coach? Yes! You need to know what coaching is and what it is not, as well as the limits of the field and the psychological rules that govern it. Can you teach yourself that? Yes, but that is a long and hard way to do it. In a coach-specific learning setting, you can speed up your learning for sure.

With or without a degree or certificate, will you be more or less successful? The answer is that the degree, like all degrees, is not the key or the point. The key is your skills, how you act, and how you show up. If you have that, you will give your clients a lot of value, which is the key to success with them. But that is still not enough. You have to convince people that what you’re doing is important and why. All of these parts make up the formula.

Curated by Danielle Tan.

Reference:

1. [Meta-Coaches] 2023 Morpheus #5    DO COACHES NEED A DEGREE? by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.