What is Coaching?
Coaching is an exciting process that helps individuals attain their highest vision, dreams, aspirations, and goals. Coaches motivate clients to envision their future, make a plan to get there, implement changes, and help hold clients accountable for the actions they want to take. Coaching is never about fixing a client. It’s a process that taps into the client’s inner wisdom, resources, and knowledge that are already there.
Coaches often specialize in an area in which they have expertise, such as executive coaching, business coaching, career coaching, health coaching, parent coaching, relationship coaching and many others. At ACN, we help you understand the process of coaching by providing you with the hands-on experience of being coached yourself as you go through our experiential learning based coach training program. By going through the process yourself, you understand coaching from the inside out, an experience that makes you a more effective, powerful coach.
How do I know if coaching is right for me?
Many people have made coaching their path because it’s a wide-open field with a lot of interesting and unique possibilities. Often people are drawn to coaching because they want to make a good living by helping others achieve personal growth and success in business and relationships. They love helping people define and achieve their goals. They want to work independently and set their own hours. Maybe they want to travel internationally to help executives in new markets develop more successful management styles. Often people considering coaching want to make more money or add onto their business by developing another income stream. These possibilities have already become realities for many people who are coaches.
Coaching is an excellent choice for many people including: career changers, people such as business managers or therapists who want to add coaching to their existing career, individuals interested in personal growth, independent types who want to work on their own, entrepreneurs, or teenagers or college students who want to understand themselves.
There are so many niches in the coaching profession and more are being created. From executive, leadership, business, and career coaching to personal growth coaching in the areas of relationship, health and wellness, and parent coaching—you can develop your special area based on your interests, work experience, and life experience. At ACN, we provide you with the broad training and experience to help you identify and build a practice around your unique body of expertise. We can also assist you with developing a network around the clients you already have.
What is NLP? NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. Neuro means brain. Linguistic means speech or communication. And programming is a deliberate process of organizing information to get the results you want. So you can think of NLP as a way of programming your brain to communicate information both to yourself and others in order to achieve your desired goals. Many of us know how to program the machines around us to get the results we need, such as using the GPS in our car to navigate our way or programming the recording devices on our TV to enjoy our favorite shows. But few of us understand how to make deliberate choices in what we say to ourselves and to others in order to get the success and enjoyment we want from our lives. NLP is a structured process that helps us do just that. Clients who receive coaching along with NLP say that they experience a breakthrough in their lives to goals they never believed were possible. NLP was developed more than 30 years ago and is now a widely practiced technique used in conjunction with coaching.
How do Coaching and NLP work together?
People often want to change and attain their goals, but they get stuck in old beliefs or habits. In the process of being coached, they find they need a breakthrough technique or tool to help them get unstuck. At ACN, we train coaches to help their clients identify and overcome the obstacles that are standing in the way of a client’s dream path. One of the best ways coaches can accomplish this is by using NLP processes to empower their clients. At ACN, we emphasize NLP based coaching in order to focus on identifying those often unacknowledged, unconscious beliefs that are sabotaging or holding the client back from their goals. Through NLP, we can give clients the powerful tools to reprogram these beliefs and create their pathway to success.
Why is the Academy of Coaching and NLP different from other coach training programs?
In a short sentence: ACN is different because we include everything you need to become a successful a coach under one roof—from training, ICF credentialing, to building your coach practice into a successful business. We like to use the phrase, “one-stop shop”. That means we provide excellent training by successful coaches who are trained in a wide variety coaching modalities and have all built successful coaching businesses. We give you all the support you need to become ICF certified, including mentoring towards your required mentor hours. And we give you the tools and skills you need to develop your business plan, develop your marketing plan, and access to your first clients through our Affordable Coaching Program. We also distinguish ourselves from other coaching schools through the added benefits of knowing and understanding how to use powerful NLP processes in order to give your clients the edge they need to achieve their highest goals and aspirations.
What will I learn in ACN’s training courses? The Academy of Coaching and NLP’s training courses center on the core coaching competencies required for credentialing from the International Coaching Federation or ICF. To learn more about what is covered in the courses please click here.
How can I establish a coaching practice and how can ACN help me get started? After completing training and passing the ICF exams, the next step is beginning your practice. At ACN, we help you get started in several ways. We assist in finding your first clients and gaining the coaching hours you need to become credentialed through our Affordable Coaching network, which provides low cost coaching services at $35 per hour to clients. We guide you through the ICF credentialing process and offer mentoring to get you on your way. We also offer telecourses, seminars, webinars, and one-to-one expertise to help you develop your business plan and your marketing strategy. Our coach trainers have all built successful coaching businesses, and they will share their strategies for success with you.
What is the tuition for the training courses and what does it include?
The tuition for the courses either in the weekend program or the intensive program is $3,995. These courses, taught by experienced faculty trained in many modalities, will give you all the information and techniques that will prepare you for the core competency examinations from ICF. The training is taught through an experiential learning model, so you will also be coached as part of the process and learn from this life changing experience how to coach others. You’ll learn NLP techniques and processes that will set you apart from other coaches and give you the breakthrough tools you’ll need to help client attain their highest potential.
Why is mentoring an important part of learning to become a coach? Mentoring is essential in many ways. First, being mentored helps you learn from experienced coaches the best techniques and practices to use when coaching your clients. It’s an experiential process of learning from the inside out that will give you a direct path to knowing what coaching really is. At ACN, we provide mentoring to guide you every step of the way.
Mentoring is also important as you apply for the ICF credential. The ICF requires a certain number of supervised coaching hours for each level of the credential. . Having a mentor to supervise you will streamline your process through the ICF. Please visit ICF Certification for further information.
Mentoring also helps you build your coaching business. Being guided by coaches who have successfully built their own coaching practices will help you build yours.
What is the ICF and why is it helpful to become an ICF Credentialed Coach?
The ICF stands for the International Coach Federation. Its core purpose is “to advance the art, science and practice of professional coaching.” ICF offers the only independent credentialing program that is recognized worldwide.
At ACN, we believe that credentialing is becoming more important than ever before. From a client standpoint, an ICF credential gives clients important information they can use when they’re choosing a coach. It helps them to understand the coach’s level of training and experience and gives them confidence.
From a coaching standpoint, credentialing ensures that there are professional standards for coaches to follow, which strengthens and enhances the level of service we provide.
What are the levels of ICF credentialing? There are three levels of ICF credentialing:
Associate Certified Coach (ACC): Requirements include: completion of a set amount of coach-specific training; 100 coaching experience hours; at least eight clients, among other requirements.
Professional Certified Coach (PCC): Completion of a set amount of coach-specific training; 750 coaching experience hours; at least 25 clients, among other requirements.
Master Certified Coach (MCC): Completion of a set amount of coach-specific training; 2,500 coaching hours; at least 35 clients, among other requirements.
What is the process of becoming credentialed?
The ICF recognizes two options to credentialing. At ACN, we offer the shorter and quicker path of these two options in order to receive credentialing. Students in ACN’s program can get the training they need to pass the ICF exams, access our Affordable Coaching network to gain clients, and also obtain through our mentor coaches the supervised hours they need to complete their credential.
The second way to get ICF credentialed is a more lengthy path known as the portfolio process. The applicant who is not affiliated with an ICF credentialed school will complete training, then take exams from ICF. The applicant will also need to find clients on their own and obtain supervision, then submit a portfolio showing they have met the number of supervised hours. There is a waiting period at each step, which lengthens the time for completion.
Where can I get coach training through ACN if I don’t live in the U.S.? We currently offer two international programs, with more on the way. Our international programs our held in Shanghai, China and in Guadalajara, Mexico. We are enthusiastic about starting new programs and are currently looking for international sponsors. Please find out more about international sponsorship here.
"Taking the NLP and Coaching Summer Intesive was absolutely life changing! Before taking the NLP and Coaching Summer Intensive, I felt controlled by the actions and behaviors of others in my environment. Afterwards, I felt incredibly empowered and ready to take full responsibility for my life. I would recommend the coaching course for anyone who wants to live a more joyous, fulfilling, and happier life."
