Professional Coaching Competencies book now available in Amazon

Professional Coaching Competencies: the Complete Guide is now available

By Pat Matthew and Damian Goldvarg

A new book, Professional Coaching Competencies: the Complete Guide, has been released. The book fully describes the ICF core coaching competencies as well as the behavioral markers that are now used to assess coaches. At this time, this is the first and only book available on the topic.

One of the foundations of the book was an original book on coaching competencies which was published in Spanish by Damian Goldvarg, MCC and Norma Perel, MCC in 2012. Since then the International Coach Federation (ICF) developed a series of behavioral markers and has trained assessors in these markers.

The authors of this new book, Damian, Norma and Pat Mathews, MCC have expanded upon the work and have included transcripts of two actual coaching sessions and given examples of evidence of the behavioral markers present in the coaching for each session.

Pat was one of the core team of subject matter experts that developed the behavioral markers which were introduced in 2014. The goal of developing the markers was to provide a more consistent and more objective method of assessing coach performance. ICF has been collecting data on assessment using the markers and has determined that the use of the markers and the comprehensive assessor training have improved the consistency in the assessment of coaching performance.

This book would be a useful resource for assessors. For those who teach coaching, for mentor coaches and for those who provide coaching themselves, the book provides rich content and examples. Each chapter presents a specific coaching competency and examples of the application of the competency. The ICF core competencies are the following:

Meeting ethical guidelines and professional standards, creating the coaching agreement, creating trust and intimacy, active listening, powerful questioning, coaching presence, direct communication, creating awareness, designing actions, planning, and goal setting and managing progress and accountability.

The audience for this book would include students in coach training programs as well as established coaches who are interested in developing a deeper understanding of coaching practice according to ICF. Mentor coaches will find it particularly relevant for their work. Faculty in coach training programs may wish to utilize the book as a resource for their students.

Readers of this book will find that it is an indispensable comprehensive guide to understanding and artfully applying ICF professional coaching competencies.

The book is available on Amazon. 

Damian Goldvarg, MCC is an executive coach, mentor coach, and coach supervisor. He has worked worldwide and published five books, but this is his first contribution in English. He is the past Chair of the International Coach Federation.

Pat Mathews, MCC is a leadership and executive coach and mentor coach. She is a past Chair of the ICF Credentialing committee, Global ICF Board member, and Vice Chair. She is also the former director of the Leadership Coaching program at Georgetown University.