This course provides an overview of the ICF’s eight core coaching competencies with particular emphasis on four of them. Students must demonstrate a strong understanding of these competencies and how to embed them into their coaching situations. This training involves reading assignments, watching 8 videos (one for each competency), responding to cases studies, and demonstrating how to apply them via various coaching scenarios. A reflection paper is submitted by students at the end of this course.
A summary of key learnings highlighted in this training includes:

• Applying coaching ethics and standards to coaching situations.
• Demonstrating personal integrity and honesty in interactions with clients, sponsors, and stakeholders.
• Defining what coaching is and isn’t; clarify the distinctions between coaching, consulting, psychotherapy, and other support professions.
• An overview of coaching and its history.
• Steps for getting started as a coach.
• An introduction to individual and ongoing coaching agreements.
• Ways to use powerful questioning approaches and practices.
• Strategies for coaching individuals, teams, cohorts, and congregations.
• Ways to cultivate trust and safety in all coaching relationships.
• How to further develop your coaching presence.

This course begins with a brief summary of the history of coaching and how it has evolved in recent years. It defines what coaching is and isn’t, providing clarity about the critical differences between coaching, counseling, consulting, and mentoring. This course also describes how a coach creates and maintains a mindset that is open, curious, flexible, and client- centered where clients are responsible for their own choices, learn to reflect, and take consistent action. The course wraps up with a list of approaches coaches can employ to spark their ongoing learning and development, how to be more aware of their emotions and the context of their coaching, and when
to seek help from outside sources when necessary. Students will submit a reflection paper based on the 5 key elements of a coaching mindset outlined in the course.

This course addresses ways that coaches can demonstrate personal integrity and honesty in interactions with clients, sponsors, and stakeholders. It equips coaches to be sensitive to clients’ identity, environment, experiences, values, and beliefs, and use language that is appropriate, respectful, and abides by the ICF Code of Ethics.
Students will practice setting initial and ongoing coaching agreements, demonstrate ways to maintain confidentiality with client information, and create a safe space for coaching conversations. Students will watch and receive feedback on coaching demonstrations related to the initial coaching session.

This class is designed to enhance one's listening skills through a variety of coaching demonstrations, case studies, and readings. Participants will listen to and evaluate two recorded audios through the lens of ICF's Listens Actively core competency indicators. Students will learn to pay attention to what the client is saying and not saying in light the client’s desired outcomes. Participants will learn to:

• Summarize what the client communicates to ensure clarity and understanding.
• Recognize shifts in a client's tone, body language, energy, and other non-verbal cues.
• Summarize what the client communicates to ensure clarity and understanding. 
• Recognize when there is more to what the client is communicating and how to observe, acknowledge, and explore the client’s emotions, energy shifts, and non-verbal cues.

Students will practice active listening during this course and will be assigned active listening practices to complete and reflect on following the course.

Evoking new awareness is the primary goal of coaching. Everyone experiences thoughts and beliefs that, sometimes, prevent them from achieving their goals.
Students will learn:

• Powerful questioning approaches and techniques.
• When and how to use silence to question assumptions and rethink courses of action.
• To help clients 1) review their results, 2) rethink what's possible, and 3) reinvent their futures.
• How to help clients imagine new ways of thinking, doing, and being.

This course focuses on helping people take specific, concrete action that moves them toward their preferred future.  It begins with building new awareness, calling forth new possibilities, and then designing goals, action steps, and accountability measures.  Students will learn ways to review results, rethink assumptions, and re- imagine new ways to move forward that focus on short-term wins and SMART goals. Students learn to help clients celebrate bright spots, list new learnings, and identify next steps toward their preferred future. Students will post learnings and questions online and respond to other students’ comments.

This class comprises six 2-hour segments and provides opportunity for students to receive feedback on their coaching, as well as to offer feedback to other students when they coach. In addition to student feedback, faculty will offer constructive feedback throughout this lab through the lens of PCC-level competencies.  Students may be asked to pay attention to particular core competencies during these sessions. During onsite training, these are referred to as coaching demonstrations.

Direct communication (responding) is the ability to communicate effectively during coaching sessions and to use language that has the greatest positive impact on the conversation and its participants. Students will learn about:

• Truth-telling: Sharing what you are seeing from the facilitator’s perspective.
• Feedback: Giving honest assessments and opinions.
• Insights: Sharing intuitive thoughts.
• Interrupting: Learning when it’s appropriate to interrupt clients and how to use this technique.
• Advising: Learning to offer advice that is appropriate, and is sought out before it is offered.
• Directing: Learning how to steer conversations back to the client’s stated goals.
• Messaging: Finding ways to speak ‘truths’ that helps clients to respond more effectively.

This learning modules addresses ways to use coaching approaches to nurture spiritual growth and congregational vitality, with particular attention to helping individuals and teams create life-giving, faith- forming norms that sustain a culture of vibrant faith.

Participants will gain insights from experienced coaches on ways to manage multiple coaching relationships, projects, and communications, along with ways to streamline workflows so that you can spend more time coaching and less time and effort managing tasks related to coaching.

The course further develops a coach’s capacity to embed ICF’s core competencies into all coaching relationships. Students read and respond to case studies, apply core competencies to current coaching relationships, and describe ways the coaching process is different when performed at a PCC-level competency verses an ACC-level competency. Students will submit 16 brief writing assignments as well as a reflection paper at the end of this course.

This class will instruct new coaches on approaches to introducing the coaching agreement, reviewing it on a regular basis, and how to make course corrections to the coaching relationship to maximize the impact of coaching.

This course will assist coaches with helping clients become more aware of limiting beliefs and false assumptions. Students will listen to coaching sessions, engage in case studies, and practice addressing limiting beliefs in ways that lead to new insights and awareness for their clients. Coaching demonstrations will model a PCC-level proficiency.

This course provides students with a wealth of practical and proven strategies and approaches for building your coaching practice based on the experiences of veteran coaches. Interviews and online panel discussions will be part of this course.

This course will use case studies and demonstrations to develop one’s expertise in using direct communication in common coaching situations. The course will provide ample opportunities to demonstrate this competency.

This course will further refine a coach’s capacity to embed action and accountability into coaching relationships. The competency will be modeled, and then students will be given coaching assignments where they’ll address specific scenarios related to action and accountability.

This course is designed to offer students opportunities to “try on” a variety of coaching models, frameworks, and approaches. A significant amount of time will be devoted to coaching demonstrations and feedback.

Coaches will be introduced to three change models that can be used as foundations for coaching clients through times of transition and disruption. Participants will practice all three models during coaching demonstrations.

Participants will learn about conflict management styles and gain practical and proven approaches and strategies that lead to breakthroughs in conflicted situations. Assigned readings must be completed before the start of this course.

Practice Lab-Level Two is an opportunity for students to receive feedback at the PCC-level on their coaching from the facilitator of this class as well from other students through the lens of the ICF’s core competencies.

This Practice Lab is an opportunity for students to experience being part of group coaching as well as practice being a group coach. This course is highly experiential and will include demonstrations related to coaching a team of paid staff, elected church leaders, and a community-based task force.

Mentor Coaching is about a student being coached on their coaching skills rather than on practice building, life balance or other topics unrelated to the development of a student’s coaching skill. Mentoring is intended to serve as a development process for the student that takes place in a repetitive cycle of receiving feedback regarding student coaching, reflecting on this feedback and practicing new skills. The focus must be on the development of skills using the ICF Core Competencies

The Vibrant Faith Coaching School offers 10 hours of Mentor Coaching. These 10 hours are integrated into the total coaching curriculum and occur periodically throughout the course of the training. The Mentor Coaching hours are divided into seven (hours) of Group Mentor Coaching and three (3) hours of Individual Mentor Coaching.

During Group Mentor Coaching everyone coaches and everyone is coached. Students review the ICF Coaching Core Competencies before and during each Mentor Coaching session. Prior to their Mentor Coaching session, each student selects which competency they would like to highlight. Although every core competency is assessed, the particular competency the students selects is emphasized during the feedback process. Students receive feedback from both, their peers and the mentor coach. The mentor coach also provides an assessment on the level of coaching (ACC, PCC, MCC).

The goal of these sessions is to assist students with refining their coaching skills. Usually, the final individual session is reserved to evaluate a recording of their coaching, which could be used as an ICF certification requirement.

Per ICF policy Mentor Coaching CANNOT be completed in LESS THAN 90 DAYS.

This course is the first of a two-part class designed to meet the mentor coaching requirement. Your mentor coach will help you refine your demonstrated coaching skills
and will assist you in developing a plan for the ongoing development of your coaching skills.

This course is the second of a two-part class designed to meet the mentor coaching requirement. Individual mentor coaching provides new coaches with one-on-one learning with a seasoned, approved mentor coach, as well as in-the-moment feedback on their coaching. The feedback is based on IFC's Core Coaching Competencies. Each participant will provide their mentor coach with at least one recorded coaching session (at the PCC level) to be submitted to ICF for approval.

Provide insights into the specific needs and desired outcomes of target audience along with some potential red flags to watch for in each of these unique settings. The course addresses how each setting requires different approaches to the pre-work and facilitation process. This class is designed to help leaders understand that they can effectively utilize coaching skills to impact their professional and personal settings in a powerful and positive way. Leaders will walk away from this class with practical steps for how to implement coaching practices into their daily lives and improve their overall leadership effectiveness.

Although all coaching is about change, there are changes that consistently arise in coaching conversations, which include 1) exploring new callings and career paths, 2) personal and professional development, 3) managing conflicted relationships, 4) seeking wholeness, and 5) planning for new life stages. Coaches will gain insights, ideas, and approaches for coaching clients about how to navigate major transitions in their lives.

Provides the coach with insights, ideas, and a plan for developing concrete steps for growing as a masterful coach. Your facilitator will infuse the conversation with short-video clips from other coaches, share their plans or road map on ways that they are developing themselves and their coaching business, and help participants identify their next steps as a lifelong learner. Students will be coached, and coach others, on how to develop a strong personal foundation for ongoing coaching success.

Provides students with insights and ideas for branding yourself and your services to your potential clients. Participants will view sample coaching websites, social media accounts, E-newsletters, business cards, and publications that coaches currently use to describe their services and set themselves apart from other coaches and coaching organizations. Panel discussions will be held to provide students the opportunity to ask other coaches what they did, and are doing now, to make coaching an impactful and financially rewarding endeavor. When students complete the course, they'll have access to resources along with a list of action steps to create their own marketing resources.

This class highlights 10 key tools designed to help coaches learn about coachees, gather important information from the client, raise powerful questions, clarify expectations and next steps, and evaluate the coaching experiences. Participants will also receive a 56-page Coaching Toolkit that will have other helpful resources.

Many leaders are ill-prepared to lead paid and unpaid staff. Coaches will learn in this course how to

• equip and empower leaders to select the right staff, 
• position them for maximum impact, 
• align their efforts with their intentions, and 
• have a plan for ongoing personal and professional development. 

This course includes some pre-work and the submission of a brief reflection paper.

Effective marketing and selling of your coaching services starts with selecting and defining a target market that you are passionate about, developing a clear definition of the type of coaching services you provide, and articulating why you are the best solution to meet your potential clients’ needs. This is critical because when clients look for help, they don’t look for a coach. They look for a solution to solve a specific challenge they are facing. You will work on practical exercises to help you put a stake in the ground regarding how you define your coaching practice.

• WHOM do you serve?
• WHAT TYPE of coaching services do you provide?
• WHY are you the best choice?

These are also some of the most important and hardest decisions because they require choosing the types of clients you want to attract the most. However, next time someone asks, “What do you do?” you’ll be ready. By clearly defining your coaching practice you will be more effective in:

• Attracting the clients that are a good fit for the coaching services you provide
• Unifying and focusing your marketing efforts.
• Defining your coaching practice, which is the foundation for creating a consistent identity and voice across your marketing materials: your business card, website, social media, brochures, newsletters, blog, etc.
• Increasing your value as an expert specializing in your clients’ needs.
• Becoming more articulate and persuasive in selling your services.
• Making it easy for your clients to refer you to others.
• Creating a platform for future products and services to build your business.

Coaches will learn ways to help leaders define what leadership is, describe their own preferred leadership style, and then develop a plan for leading well that's sustainable, that's aligned with their values, and that helps people do what matters most. Participants will read several short articles and watch two videos as part of this course.

If we are what we consistently do, then perhaps coaches need to help their clients pay closer attention to the norms and habits that shape their daily lives. Coaches will learn ways to help clients form, celebrate, learn from, and sustain habits that lead to better lives now, and in the future.

This course addresses ways a coach can help church leaders assess the impact of their faith-forming activities and then re- imagine ways that faith might be formed at church, at home, online, and in the community. Participants will also explore ways to evoke new awareness for fostering spiritual faith at and beyond the congregation.

What do authentic, intergenerational relationships look like? How might a church create a culture that fosters deep relationships centered around what matters most in their lives? How might a coach help facilitate conversations that don’t result in doing more of what we’ve already done, but instead lead to new understandings and approaches for connecting deeply with others?

Using many of the core coaching competencies, and a series of case studies, we’ll explore ways to coach people beyond self-imposed limitations and falling into assumptions, and into new awareness that leads to life-giving, loving relationships.