You probably already know that we’re not born great coaches and mentors. We may have some tendencies and some capacities for greatness in leading and guiding others, but no one is blessed with perfect skills in this area—they are learned behaviors.
This is fortunate for us, as it means that any one of us can put in a little time and effort to boost our coaching and mentoring skills through targeted training.
If you’re thinking about coaching or mentoring in your organization, you’re in the right place. Start your $1 trial of Quenza today for everything you need to deliver effective coaching solutions easily in the workplace.
Training in Coaching and Mentoring
Whether you’re a manager, supervisor, leader, or executive, a coach by trade, or a respected professional with experience to share, there are likely many people that look to you for guidance.
If you want to provide the best coaching and mentoring possible to your employees, clients, or mentees, it’s important to build your skills intentionally in this area.
If you want to provide the best coaching and mentoring possible to your employees, clients, or mentees, it’s important to build your skills intentionally in this area.
Luckily, this is a popular area for self-development, and there are tons of courses, trainings, programs, and other learning opportunities available.
Qualifications and Requirements
But first, let’s take a look at what makes a person a good coach or mentor.
What are the qualifications and basic skills required?
Here’s a shortlist of the foundations of good coaching and mentorship:
- Listening: Above all, you need to be a good listener; you should be able to take in information, get clarity when needed, actively participate in conversation, and guide your client or mentee without pushing your own agenda.
- Empathy: Another vital skill is empathy, which allows you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes; you should be able to understand a person’s context and the factors that are influencing them.
- Motivation: As a coach or mentor, you’ll need to make use of your ability to motivate, encourage, and perhaps even inspire those who come to you for guidance.
- Self-awareness: This skill is essential for anyone who hopes to help others, as a helper must be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses; before providing guidance to others, make sure you understand yourself, what you have to offer, and your limits.[1]
If you have these skills, you’re a good candidate for coaching or mentoring training. You don’t have to be a gifted speaker, natural leader, or even in charge of employees to benefit from these types of training; in fact, the best leaders are those who invest their time and energy into building their leadership skills before they’re in a leadership position.
If you have the basic skills listed above and the motivation to take on additional training, you’re ready to get started!
3 Certifications and Degree Programs
If you’re looking for a formal or recognizable qualification to add to your business card or expand on your accolades, a certification or degree program is the right choice for you.
For certification in coaching, look no further than the internationally known and highly respected ICF coaching credentials.
The ICF (International Coaching Federation) was established in 1995 as a nonprofit that connected coaches with the goal of supporting one another and developing the profession. It is now the most widely recognized coaching organization, and it offers three levels of certification for coaches looking to prove their skills.
The three levels are:
- Associate Certified Coach (ACC): requires a minimum of 60 hours of coach-specific training, a minimum of 100 hours of client coaching experience, and at least 10 hours of mentor coaching over a minimum of three months.
- Professional Certified Coach (PCC): requires a minimum of 125 hours of coach-specific training, a minimum of 500 hours of client coaching experience, and at least 10 hours of mentor coaching over a minimum of three months.
- Master Certified Coach (MCC): requires a minimum of 200 hours of coach-specific training, a minimum of 2,500 hours of coaching experience with at least 35 clients, and at least 10 hours of mentor coaching over a minimum of three months.[2]
If you’re interested in earning a degree in this area, there’s good news and bad news. First, the bad news: there is currently no degree program available that is specifically in (non-sports) coaching or mentoring.
Next, the good news: anyone with any level of education or area of focus can be a coach or a mentor!
That’s because good coaching doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of coaching theory or an appreciation for the history of coaching. These are good areas to learn about, but they are not required to be an effective coach or mentor.
The skills and tools you’ll need to be a good coach can be gained through shorter, less intensive options, like courses, workshops, and good old-fashioned hands-on experience!
3 Best Coaching and Mentoring Courses
If you’re looking for options to build your coaching and mentoring skills, you’re in luck! There are tons of useful courses and programs out there.
For instance, here is a short list of some really good options:
- The Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership (IECL) offers Accredited Coach Training Programs (ACTP) that are designed for everyone from beginner to experienced coaches to boost their skills and supercharge their qualifications. Courses include access to a coaching network, peer group, and tons of resources to help you take your executive coaching to the next level.
- Management Concepts offers mentor coaching, coaching skills training, and leadership development programs to teams, groups, and organizations. Work with ICF credentialed coaches to enhance your own coaching and mentoring abilities, accrue mentor coaching hours, and boost your confidence to coach within or outside of an organization.
- UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management offers training in coaching and mentoring designed to bring out the best in others. This class is offered as part of the leadership program that helps all managers, supervisors, and mentors to more effectively lead those who look up to them.
6 Online Courses and Opportunities
If you want to enhance your coaching skills but don’t need to commit to a full program or get a certification, you can check out one of the many courses and other short-term learning opportunities available.
For example, you may want to look into these options:
- Coaching and Mentoring Skills for Leadership Success from SkillPath
- Coaching and Mentoring Training Workshop from Momentum Training Solutions
- Coaching and Mentoring Training Course from Emtrain
- Anytime Coaching Course from Management Concepts
- Short Courses in Coaching from the British School of Coaching
- ILM Endorsed Coaching and Mentoring Skills Course from Meirc Training and Consulting
Ultimate Digital Tool For Coaches and Mentors
Once you’ve got the credentials or certifications under your belt and the training to prop up your skills, it’s time to get to work coaching!
Although coaching and mentoring has been happening for about as long as humans have been around, it’s gotten an upgrade recently; the recent decades’ explosion of technology has provided valuable new tools that can help a coach be exponentially more effective and efficient than in years past.
One such tool that can help take a coach from “good” to “great” is Quenza.
Quenza is a unique, evidence-backed solution that has been utilized by coaches, counselors, therapists, and mentors around the world to deliver high-quality content to their clients in an easy-to-use platform.
It can help you minimize the burden of creating and sharing content, organizing client information and notes, and communicating with your clients or mentees, so you have more time to do the part that you actually love: working directly with those you want to help.
7 Unique Ways You Can Use Quenza
Quenza offers tons of tools and features that a coach or mentor can use to boost their effectiveness, including:
- The Activity Builder: this easy-to-use drag-and-drop tool allows you to build content for your clients and employees that will help them engage, learn, and enhance their skills. Use it to create Activities and exercises, assessments, evaluations, guides, resources, and more.
- The Expansion Library: if you want to use a pre-existing, evidence-backed tool or template, you’re in luck! The Expansion library has tons of ready-made activities that you can add to your toolbox and easily send to your clients or employees, or customize for your specific needs.
- The Pathway Builder: once you have a good concept of the kinds of activities and exercises you want to assign to your clients, you can use the Pathway builder to create custom sequences of content that will guide users through your unique coaching or mentoring program. Create one for each type of client or employee you oversee.
- The Client App: refer your clients or employees to the app for a seamless and user-friendly way to keep them engaged and motivated as they move through your coaching experience. They can use it to keep up to date on their activities and to stay in touch with you.
- The Client profile: this feature allows you to keep all relevant info about a client or employee in one place, quickly and easily keep tabs on their progress, and store notes.
- The Chat: if you need to reach out to your client or employee, the Chat function makes it a breeze. Best of all, you can turn it on or off for each individual you work with.
- The Groups feature: with this tool, you can work with groups of clients or employees all at once, making it easy to coach or mentor teams within an organization.
Add all of these features together, and you get one excellent app for coaches, for delivering high-quality transformations to the people you serve.
Final Thoughts
In today’s fast-paced and information-rich world, there is no shortage of opportunities to learn and grow for those who are motivated. Fortunately, there are tons of resources available to help those motivated individuals improve and enhance their coaching and mentoring abilities.
This piece outlined some of the most popular courses and learning opportunities, but this list is certainly not exhaustive. Search for information on opportunities that are specific to your niche and you’re sure to find some excellent options.
And be sure to check back here for more information, resources, and ideas to put into practice with your 1-month Quenza trial.
Happy coaching!
