APPLYING FOR AN MCC CREDENTIAL WITH THE ICF

I thought I’d share some thoughts around my MCC journey over the past year and how it’s affected me and changed my coaching approach…..

In January of this year I approached my MCC mentor, Claire Pedrick of 3D Coaching, for six months of MCC mentoring, proudly displaying my 2500 coaching hours and asking for her support in helping me along the journey of becoming an MCC coach…little did I know what that really meant….

It has been a learning journey of real humility this year, more than I could ever have imagined….firstly of realizing, and then accepting, the bad habits I’d picked up over my 16 years of coaching, how these were getting in the way in coaching my clients, and how I needed to address that….

Along the way, I also got stuck in my performativity and reached out to Karen White, an MCC executive coach and friend based in South Africa, and asked her to share her journey with me and to coach me around my fear and how best to manage how I was showing up with respect to the MCC process…this was really helpful and helped me to relax, to be playful and be more curious in my learning, and to observe how my own Enneagram type 3 and way of being was getting in my way around the MCC process, as well as in my day to day coaching.

I stopped trying and working so hard in my sessions, I became more courageous in keeping the responsibility in the middle with my clients, my coaching became sharper, more challenging, and clearer, and the length of my sessions became shorter, as we reached the outcomes quicker. I am able to go to the core of the client’s issue quicker now and hold the space for them whilst simultaneously challenging them in a more masterful way. The most humbling part to date has been to really see, acknowledge, and then own the habits I’ve picked up over the years that had become my real blind spots as an executive coach, as well as relaxing into the actual process of the MCC accreditation, before I even begin coaching.

During the process, I coached and was coached by two dear friends and coaches, Pat Roberts and Diane Vere, also applying for their MCC accreditation. We practiced with one another, gave each other growth feedback, I needed to swallow my pride and go back to some basics yet again, and step by step, session by session, practice by practice, I started to make progress. Thank you Karen, Pat and Diane for helping me light my way along this journey.

Recently, I have, and am, receiving feedback from Claire, my mentor on recordings I’ve submitted to her for checking for MCC application readiness, and I’m pleased (and a little proud) of the progress I’m making, I have one recording ready for submission and will soon be recording a second client, for submission to Claire…I know that I will be applying for my MCC accreditation with the ICF before the end of this year – and….I am feeling tentatively hopeful ….so watch this space! J In the end, it has very little to do with the coaching hours, and lots to do with humility, untangling habits linked to my way of being, a deep inner search, going back to basics, and abiding by the discipline in my coaching of using the 11 core ICF competencies, that has got me here – let’s see what happens next!