Credentialing for Life Coaches

There have been numerous attempts to instill false credibility into the profession by requiring coaches to attain various certifications to supposedly create a set of standards and qualifications for coaching. Many of the coaching schools sell additional courses to qualify graduates to obtain coach certifications. Several “Coaching Associations” also provide credentials to their member coaches as an income producing process. Unfortunately, virtually all certifications are sold and most require continued payments, and have become profit generators to create the illusion of greater credibility for the buyers of coach certifications. And too often, people calling themselves coaches certify themselves. One “Life Coach” who was a star actor on “Starting Over” was promoted to be the holder of a specific certification for years, until she was forced to admit she gave herself the certification.

The Professional Life Coaching field has been operating and doubling in size almost every year, since approximately 1991. There are approximately 25,000 to possibly over 40,000 coaches today. It can be estimated that the approximately 500 life coaching training schools would produce approximately 20,000 people a year who would consider themselves coaches, if they graduated only 50 coaches per year for each school. Life coach certifications are sold to the graduates as marketing tools to be promoted to deceive people of the bogus superiority of the credential holders.

A complete Guide to Coach Credentials has been laboriously compiled and expertly presented by Rey A. Carr Ph.D. to provide you a very clear and in-depth Guide to Life Coach Credentials. He also maintains the current status of credentialing, as it has been expanding rapidly. We encourage you to visit this live report.

Using coach credentialing as a means of selecting a coach provides little, if any value to you. Life coaching credentials do not provide any indicator of the characteristics or the capabilities of the person who bought the credentials. Which of the approximately 65 certifications listed by Rey Carr,  and generated by the sellers themselves should you consider important?  There is really no life coach rating scale, nor any life coach certification scale. How could there be? Coaching is a very personal individual one on one connecting process. A coach someone else rates very high, may not be rated as high by you.

TCC has devoted over 2,600 man-hours screening coaches to accept only those coaches who have proved through considerable experience that they can really coach and who possess TCC’s specific life coaching characteristics. TCC’s 130 active Member Coaches have been rigorously screened out of over 2,400 who have applied. And TCC’s Member Coaches are constantly monitored and evaluated by TCC clients and TCC to be sure they continue coaching at the exemplary level they reached to be accepted in the first place. (TCC has released 55 Member Coaches over the past ten years).