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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross 

Hi and welcome to the next episode of Decoding AQ, I have another special guest with me here today, I have Magdelena Mook, who is the CEO of ICF. And that's the International Coaching Federation. So welcome.

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Magdalena 

Thank you, thank you glad to be here.

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Ross 

And interesting, isn't it? The phases that life goes through, and at what point might we have a coach? And as we were chatting just in the initial piece, my own personal coach took me on journeys to different countries because I wanted to find the best coach. You know if you're an entrepreneur, well who's the person who coaches the best entrepreneurs find them and it evolves who we are and what our potential is. What got you into coaching in the first place, Magdalena?

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Magdalena 

Yeah, in the first place it was in fact the job opportunity, I have been with ICF for almost 16 years, which is a little scary. But I wasn't hired for my coaching abilities, mind you. I was hired for my association management skills and international relations. I was familiar with coaching, but more on a theoretical level, and it was only 2005. But very soon after I was afforded the ability to work with a professional coach. And it only came naturally, very soon after I was trained as a coach, and I continue my training as a professional coach. And so there was a work related opportunity to engage with coaching.

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Ross 

And your journey from as you said, in government, in agriculture, and the ability to facilitate groups of people decisions, strategic decisions, all of these complex things of international relations. I guess there's a lot of similarities in coaching. We're dealing with complex people and humans, and then teams and organizations and how does an international coaching Federation differ from say, potentially regional or individual ones? What are some of the unique aspects of having one that's so vast and so diverse across lots of different countries and things? What's the benefits of those things?

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Magdalena 

So right now, we have about 45,000 members in over 140 countries. It is possibly one of our greatest benefit of having an opportunity for anyone within the system to have a colleague and peers, you can just check how they are doing things. And yet there are some headaches, language as you can imagine is immediately one, because coaching is quite an intimate service. So a lot of coaching is happening in the local language of the country or the territory that it's happening.

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The other one is of course, culture. Coaching, as it exists right now was dominantly, developed more of an Anglo-Saxon tradition. And now we're having such a beautiful influences of other countries and other cultures. And that's enreaching definitely the way we perceive coaching and the way the coaching is being delivered. And yet, if you try to be a global standard for the coaching profession, that creates some interesting conversations, to be resolved, for the good of the profession.

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And naturally, you can imagine the code of ethics is also something that we don't want it to be bland, we want it to be enforceable, and yet how do we make sure that we respectful of multiple cultures, multiple countries laws and regulations. So never a dull moment, that's probably what describes ICF but again, richness of opportunity to see how coaching is being developed, evolves and is being applied in different parts of the world. It's just phenomenal.

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Ross 

I guess that insight, an organization 25 years old, and you've been there nearly 16 years, that evolution to understand what has worked, what's working today and what will work tomorrow is a continual cycle that every organization goes through. And what are some of the challenges and some of the maybe stories of where there's been shifts and changing in the coaching, whether it's the policies or best practices or the ethics that you've seen over that decade and a half of how coaching has changed?

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Magdalena 

Yes, definitely many, many, many changes. I think for the better. As it is a young profession, and we're still evolving, we're still learning, we are learning from other disciplines that are supporting coaching, that being instruction, design, that being neuroscience, medicine, psychology, psychiatry. So this is quite rich. And yet, when I first started with ICF such concepts as internal coaching was not very much talked about. And now we know, a lot of organizations employ internal coaches, the term manager and leader using coaching skills, now the fastest growing part of the coaching continuum that didn't exist. 

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Things like supervision, things like group or team coaching, those simply did not exist. And they came to be because there was a defined niche within the population of clients that needed to be responded to. So I think that this is a beauty of the agility of the coaching profession. You mentioned ethics, the code of ethics, our Code of Ethics is reviewed every three years. It's religious, because it is such an important document, not to coaches alone, but to the clients what to expect, what to ask for, what not to agree to, in the coaching relationship.

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So we really want to make sure that the code is very much up to date. Because one of the, I think most important things that any organization and association needs to look to is to be relevant. And that relevancy comes from being very attuned to what is the circumstance, or what are the circumstances in the marketplace.

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Ross 

So one of the key challenges then for the coaching industry or any industry is, as you say, to remain relevant, and to be able to change and adapt, to let go of something as much as it is embrace something that's coming, that's new. What do you see as the key opportunities for coaching in the future? What's coming down the line? What are the things that are being worked on that we might see trickle down across the coaching industry? What if I describe a question of what's the future of coaching? How would you describe that in your view?

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Magdalena 

First statement, is that the future of coaching is right. And it is because another phenomenon that we're observing is that coaching, starting maybe even a little bit remedial, quickly became more of a developmental professional development or performance development tool. And originally also afforded maybe only to a top-level individuals in organizations. Now, our own research with human capital institute points to the organizations that are becoming strong in their coaching culture. And one of the elements of the coaching cultures for coaching culture is that coaching is available to anybody and everybody within the organization.

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So that's one thing that I think that the pie is getting bigger, right? Because we have more and more people who are aware of coaching, that's another study with PricewaterhouseCoopers that we know that the awareness of coaching is growing exponentially year to year to year. We're gonna repeat that study this year. So I'm curious. And also that allows for that different attitudes towards coaching, is it onboarding? Is it career coaching? Is it life coaching? Is it something that is important for the entire team or the entire system? So from that perspective, I think that really there is a lot of need for coaching.

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Last year COVID showed us that we're being relational as a leader, being empathetic, being resilient, but also vulnerable. These are the traits of leadership that we didn't hear before, right? And being self-aware. And we know that all these three elements of personal or professional persona can be very well helped by working with the coach. But you ask about the trends. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention technology and artificial intelligence, of course. Because that's something being talked about a lot, technology already supporting coaching in a big way, and so is AI. My personal view of course, is that AI will never replace coaching because of the empathy level and the ability to really read the changes in person as they go through the relationship.

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Ross 

Yeah, I think it is. One of those things with technology is that we trying to replicate who we are or augment us to be better at what we do. And there's no doubt things that technology can do better at it than we can, certain things and we should gladly have a relationship with technology that allows us to perform better. And I think one of the opportunities that you mentioned there, which has been a historical challenge is the accessibility of coaching. The accessibility of quality coaching, and something that has been almost a privilege of the execs and the high level, to actually be able to access quality coaching, at every level of the employee lifecycle. And every stage in the org chart.

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I think technology can play a big part to that to a certain extent. And likewise, as you said, coaching cultures inside organizations, so it's not necessarily just someone who has a badge that says they're a coach, but is able to understand the coaching principles, and how that might be able to aid and help. What are some of the dangers that you see around coaching, some of the sort of obstacles and friction points for really effective and good coaching?

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Magdalena 

So I will start with the fact that to be a good coach, one has to be good, well trained,that's the absolute must. And as you know coaching is not necessarily externally regulated professions, so people call themselves coaches, and not necessarily breaking any laws or rules. But I think that this is important that the purchasers of coaching are educated enough about what to look for in a coach. And that being membership in a professional organization, credential, proof of education is supremely important in that.

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Second potential danger I'll say is, I didn't see it as much but there was a period of time we're coaching seem to be a silver bullet for absolutely everything that was not going as well as it could be. And coaching can help in multiple facets, no question. But sometimes a good old fashioned mentoring or good training, classroom training may benefit the person and the organization in a better way. So the mixture of applications of learning techniques, including coaching is very important.

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And the only one, I will go back to technology, because I think we share the opinion that technology can support coaches work and can really just help get rid of some boring parts of the business and really focus on being with the client, being present with them and being in that relationship. And then at the same time, if taken maybe too far, they need maybe a recognition that AI type coaching would be enough. And I hope and this is also the responsibility of our organization, of course, to make sure that potential clients existing and potential clients understand the difference in the benefit of working with the human coach and being helped by algorithm behind the AI coach.

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Ross 

And it potentially could be a great onramp for that in terms of people who weren't aware of maybe some of the benefits of coaching to try it out to then get some feedback and responses and the danger causes if it doesn't help them that they're completely turned off. But let's live in the utopian world, not a dystopian one, in that it offers up this explosion of opportunity for the era of coaching where human coaches are, I really believe we're in the era of coaching, if we had an era before of management and structure. Now coaching, where we're in a more unpredictable and more uncertain world. Coaching that asks great questions that help support people through not a defined process or journey, but one in which is involving creativity and imagination, and those kinds of things, I think provide a great light for the future.

In terms of how the federation functions and as you talked about these huge challenges across cultural differences, across language differences. In terms of the federation's mandate of how it exists and it's got a number of different components, hasn't it? Sort of half a dozen different components as a nonprofit organization? Just give us some headlines of some of those that are new, or have been around a while, and what did they do, just to give us a walk sort of a walking tour around ICF, I think would be really helpful.

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Magdalena 

Sure, happy to do that little historian, right. So back to the beginnings, the organization was started in 1995 in North America. But quite quickly gained some footing in Australia and Western Europe, especially the United Kingdom. So and the organization from the very beginning, what a foresight by the founding fathers and mothers of the organization to be called International, they did not want it to be a local organization. And second to create the organization not necessarily as a network for coaches at that point, very new, very budding profession, but to promote the effectiveness and efficacy of coaching. 

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And I think that we remain true to the very roots of the organization, especially lately when we created the six, we call them team of the organizations that constitute the ICF. And the first and the foremost is it always will be is the family organization that represents professional coaches. Not everybody knows that to be an ICF Member, one has to be already trained as a coach. That's the minimum requirement to be an ICF Coach.

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Ross

That's the bar.

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Magdalena

Yeap, that's the bar and believe me, I did live through the time when we propose that bar and there were some very spirited conversations around that, partly from the perspective of are we being inclusive of people who are interested in coaching and who said, “You know what, interested in coaching, we can fulfill their interest in other ways than being a member of a professional organization.” But that's yet another sign of evolution of the organization. So professional coaches, we make sure that they are well trained, well prepared, that they get the resources they need to run an effective and successful coach train, coaching business.

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Then the second longest existing part of the ICF is ICF Foundation, which was created to be more like a charitable arm of the ICF and offer primarily pro bono coaching in social progress organizations, so they can achieve greater social return on investment in their activities. To other activities that we've been known for, is the approval of Coach Training. And that's another family organization. So they make sure that the curricula for our coach training providers are adequate and again reflective of what's relevant in the coaching profession.

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And they almost hand over those people to the coach, credentialing and standards, family organization that is responsible for ICF credentials. And again, I think that it is important to know that ICF looks into two aspects of our credentials. One, of course, is the content, what is the skill set, what are their coaching competencies, but the other part is that we in our processes are following the highest global standards for credentialing and that's ISO standard 17024 for organizations offering credentials to individuals. So these are very hand in hand, but parallel steps so we really do offer the gold standard in coaching credentials.

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And finally to babies to their family. One is coaching in organizations. And our own research said that indicating that organizations are adopting coaching cultures, they are embracing internal coaching programs, they are embracing training for leaders and managers using coaching skills. So we thought that as a global organization we should have offering for them. So, when they get on this journey, they do it in a way that supports them being successful in as quick of a time as possible.

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And finally, the Thought Leadership Institute, as we said, coaching is still evolving. And coaching touches upon leadership, right? Upon our human development. So where are we going? And where do we want to go? And where we don't? This is equally important question how far we stretch before we break, and maybe we give birth to something else. And yet, make sure that what we call coaching is coaching.

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Ross 

Yeah, and it's that lovely poetic dance, isn't it? Between exploring new, and exploiting what exists, in terms of propositions or thought processes. But overall what I get a sense of is being able to give confidence to something that is challenging to understand, to discern and unregulated. So bringing that level of confidence that whether you are a coach or a buyer of coaching, you can come and gain those seals those confidence, those areas of which you're de-risking the entity of that.

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But also I think it's a wider as you touched on at the end in terms of a steering one of leadership of what's the vision, if we can create a world in five years time, in ten years time. What kind of world do we want coaching to play? What kind of role in that world will it play? And I'd be fascinating to explore a little bit of your thoughts where we have all of these individuals, leaders, organizations dealing with everything from just surviving through to thriving within their lifecycle of business. And some are going through such transformations and shifts and change that all they're trying to do is hang on to their seats of what they've got, let alone envisage what might be next. For ICF and the Federation and how you see coaching, paint me a picture sort of three years, five years time, what would be an amazing environment for coaching to be in and what role does ICF have in that?

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Magdalena 

We can go straight to the vision of the organization, which says that coaching is becoming an integral part of a thriving society, and ICF coaches are representing the highest quality in the profession. This second part is of course, self explanatory. The first I think has a beautiful invitation to define two terms, one integral part and the second thriving society. So in many of our works, we are talking about, you mentioned that earlier, how coaching can be accessible to more people, right? How coaching can be introduced to populations that by now either don't know about it, or don't think it's for them, or don't think they can afford it, and all three statements may not be correct.

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And then the thriving society is I think it's so powerful because it's up to you to define what's thriving, right? And thriving in one, especially for us being so internationally present, thriving for one population maybe having access to drinking water and for other is to well go to Mars, why not? We are having some people doing that right now.

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And I think I see ICF’s major role is twofold and I think we always had a bit of that dual responsibilities, and I say responsibility cautiously but also on purpose. One is to make sure that coaches are really trained and prepared to offer the service to their clients. So that high standard of coaching competencies and ethics is absolutely imperative. And the other one is that general education of the population of what is return on investment, or we have another index, which is return expectation, how coaching can help, how coaching can be useful.

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And again, don't use it as a silver bullet. But be aware that this modality exists. And it could be very helpful or useful at any different stage of individual, personal, professional path, but also for organizations, larger systems, regions, countries, okay, here we go the planet. And one last thing I say is that in the work of the Foundation, and also for Leadership Institute, we decided to follow the framework of the United Nations, United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. So that in a way shows us that picture of 17 areas where humanity is badly in need of help and we do believe coaching can.

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Ross 

It's funny you bring that up, because it makes me smile. My background Magdalena, was in brand and marketing. And I had the privilege of leading the project for the rebranding and repositioning for the United Nations Volunteers globally. And it was just prior to the Sustainable Development Goals being launched. And I addressed the whole UN System on the brand strategy of the global goals when they were just launched. And in fact, my first book was all about how we take exponential technologies, and deploy them to the SDGs to the global goals, this to-do list for the planet.

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So I think whatever we have, whatever we're passionate about are our purpose, pointing it in a direction that's additive. So whether it's coaching, whether it's technology, whatever the thing is, is it's important, as you said, to find this area of where is it in whether it's ethics, whether it's the Sustainable Development Goals, that we are thriving, that is defined by the context of an individual, of a country, access to drinking water, or going to Mars, I love that, that kind of thought.

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And the other part for me that resonated when you were talking there was about this, even what is coaching and you invited this opportunity of an integral part. And that opens up this huge opportunity for this operating system to have counseling, to have learning, to have training, to have all of these elements that allow us to move forward, that allow us to have a better future than past. And I think that's very, as you said, intentional about the responsibility that both with caution, but intent in the same that by being integral is that it's at the table, it's at the strategic table of change of coaching, it's not to fix something afterwards, or that happens in a silo in a room. It’s at the grownups table, and I think now is the era where coaching is at the grownups table of every organization.

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And I think the challenge and we've hit on it a few times, is to make it accessible and the reach. You know, there's in sports, coaching, it's the elite that get coached. And then you have somebody volunteering to coach the, under 10s football team, or whatever it may be. There's well intended people trying to better the coach, the company, the areas that they're working with. And I think with federations and organizations, they can just rise all boats, in the harbor with that tide of activity. I'm so grateful that there are organizations like yours, that exist and take their place in the world very seriously. Because the world needs it. Humanity needs it, of those things.

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In terms of the types of things that you've seen across the plethora of types of skills, of leadership, all of the different trends from, how to have great conversations to make strategic decisions. What are you seeing at the moment in terms of what people are wanting to be coached in and what coaches are wanting to be trained in? What are some of the themes that are happening at the moment is the most important skills to work on?

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Magdalena 

I think that the impact of the COVID pandemic is going to be felt for a little while, and I don't necessarily only think that perhaps the list of things people want to be coached on would be completely changed or has been completely changed. But maybe this the pace accelerates a little bit. So we saw a lot of resilience requests. How to be more resilient, how to be a leader when your mind is frankly, with your sick parent or whatever that might be. So how to be present in a way that you can offer leadership traits to people who maybe never been through circumstances like that.

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Look, I look at my own staff and our staff is young and vibrant. And I realized that many of them never in their life went through a large, mind you universal and global, but even more localized difficulty, like we did with COVID. They don't even remember 911, which probably is last in the States, that would mark such a circumstance. So it was like, how are they supposed to be resilient? It’s their first experience.

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So resilience definitely presence. Definitely something more practical showing up would be how do I motivate virtual teams, remote teams? So this new way of work is popping up quite a bit. But also, not surprisingly again, burnout. And that has several facets, how do I know burnout? How do I deal with burnout? Or how do I prevent burnout in my staff? So these are things that are definitely popping up. What we see on a coach's side training, I think the resilience is still showing up there. But also more so into team coaching, group coaching. This is even more important now when the teams may not be physically together for their work. So we see quite a bit of that requests.

And well, late last year, ICF issued the core competencies, additional core competencies for team coaching, to help out in this situation as well. And this is I hereby declare the bias. But I think the coaches need to take care of themselves. This is not a new thing, necessarily. But I think that again, the pandemic really, really showed it that coaches are very good at asking people to take care of themselves and not very good at doing it themselves.

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Ross 

It is a human down downfall, isn't it? I think was it Gödel’s law that it talks about, you can't see the label of your own jam jar when you're inside the jam jar. And it's very easy to observe someone else's outside of their jam jar but not your own. You know whether the cobbler's shoes are always bad, all of these same things is that when we are a particular thing, we don't apply that same thing, that same medicine to ourselves.

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And I am delighted you brought that up, because it's so important. And it reminds me of the reality on airlines. When the oxygen masks are deployed, we're told to put it on ourselves first before the children. So if we're a coach, and we aren't putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first, how can we serve? How can we serve with presence? How can we serve with our best selves for who we are wanting to help or shift and move? And I think making the space and time for that is a selfless, not a selfish act.

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Magdalena 

Exactly. In fact, it's in service of the clients, I would say.

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Ross 

It's absolutely in service. And I think for many, that's an adaption of a mindset and a mindset shift that “I’m last, I have to put others first,” but others first you have to put yourself first to be able to do that well, rather than 10% of you is all that's left. So I'm glad you brought that back up because it resonates with me of this challenge of when in our roles as CEO’s, what is the vision? How do we curate multiple collaborations and partnerships to deliver on that vision and give people the environment that fosters creativity, that fosters wellness. And this shift between just activities to becoming part of the operating system.

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And so that integral part that coach can play is it becomes part of the operating system, not to be called in when there's a big opportunity or a big challenge or something's gone wrong, but it becomes part of the breathing, of work, of the future of work. And for me, that's the sort of vision that I see is that coaching becomes part of the great breathing of organizations.

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Magdalena 

Yes, definitely. And that is another as we said, the word is stretchable, for some integral chord means everybody's got an access. For others, it may mean everybody who wants to be a coach can. Others would say everybody's adopting coaching style, or whatever they do. So that there’s or as you just suggested, that coach is available as a part of the general canvas of a person's activity. And not only just the toy, if you will, when maybe. So again, I think it's a quite nice wording of something that may mean different things to different people.

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Ross 

Yeah and that's the beauty of it, isn't it of those things. And you've just gone through a rebranding ICF. And that opportunity to be very intentional and relevant. And that's a continual thing to reevaluate and to have the bravery and courage to say no to things and say yes to other things. I'd like to finish up because we're coming close to the end point here, Magdalena. In terms of, you must have an absolute immense list of things, of projects, of to do and initiatives of all of these pieces.

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And one of the challenges is prioritization within any organization of what are the most valuable, the things that are going to get you closest to the outcomes that you're wanting. And of course, we now got multiple stakeholders within any organization of these things. Any years time, if we were having a conversation, what would delight you with joy and happiness of something that was achieved by ICF in the next 12 months that you'd go, “That's something we set out to do. And we're there and that was our biggest priority of either project or shift.” What would that thing be?

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Magdalena 

You dangerously did not give me a limit. So I'll go with three. One is in, well being super optimistic five years, but say ten years, in ten years time, I want to anybody who thinks coaching thinks ICF. And that of course, translates into because of highest quality, because of credibility, because, because, because, so coaching ICF. The other one is you mentioned you use the term I was smiling to myself that this is a big kids table now. Yes, I want coaching to be actually a solution for even larger initiatives.

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Ross 

Political government, you know, right at the top of how society functions.

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Magdalena 

Yes, exactly because it can, and because it has already, except it's not amplified, maybe in such a way. And quite frankly and that would be more me talking is if we were to pick one of these 17 sustainable goals. And we created a curated application of coaching to show sustained progress that I think would be very happy to see and to have that case study, if you will, of coaching truly being part again, part of a solution of systemic issues because more things than not are systemic that we're facing and with the system with the Sustainable Development Goals. I'm a systemically trained coach, so I can't help myself. But nothing operates in a vacuum. So if ICF could spearhead a way of bringing coaching to bring huge impacts because of addressing some of this larger, systemic societal problem issues I would be very happy for the organization and for the profession.

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Ross 

I think that's lovely in the way that you've mapped those things out from this situation of awareness that coaching equals ICF. Great, I mean, I don't know if you have the same, but there was a vacuum cleaner brand called Hoover. And now people for many years have said, “Oh, are you doing the Hoovering? No, it's the vacuum cleaning, not Hoovering.” So ICF in coaching get that, I liked that piece. The next of going up the food chain as well as going down. So going up to government and parliament and the way in which our society structures and leverage coaching as a lever for change, for better outcomes, those things.

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And the final piece is having a contribution to moving the needle on one of the SDG’s on the global goals. And that couldn't resonate with me more, Magdalena. You know of my own personal ambition of moving the needle on those goals. And it's certainly a massive purpose of my life, to move those needles. And that whilst it's big and you have big aspirations, you can start small. And that I think is something everybody can take forward is deciding how they choose to share their gift, their gift of time of presence and of care. And I look forward to watching and maybe influencing and collaborating with ICF of how we can both co-elevate to achieve some of those goals and impacts would be wonderful.

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Magdalena 

Well it takes a village, takes a village?

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Ross 

It certainly does, it certainly does. So to close out, where's the best place if people hadn't heard of ICF or they have but they've never really acted on it? What's the best first onramp to connect with the organization? Where should they go? How should they connect in with ICF?

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Magdalena 

I would suggest as a first step to go to our website CoachingFederation.org And then we mentioned the language issue. On our website that we see a list of our chapters, many chapters have their own websites in their local languages. So should the language be barrier,  that could be a great place to check. But yeah, check us out, check the six family organizations, see some of the larger initiatives that we're undertaking on behalf of the coaching profession and then there are 85 of us waiting for your call if you have any specific questions about ICF.

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Ross 

Thanks, Magdalena. You've been so generous with your time and just your stories in Canada. I do this to learn and to meet great people doing great things. And I want to say thank you, and I look forward to our next conversation.

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Magdalena 

Thanks so much, Ross.

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Voiceover 

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Outro

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