At the heart of our business are the coaching practice, our coaches, and our conviction that coaching can do good in people’s lives and the world. Today, we have 8 years of experience of working with coaches from more than 50 countries, 8 years of matching the right coaches with our client’s needs. So we thought that it’s about time to compress our learnings and convictions: And we have come up with 3 coaching principles that simplify and clarify what we see as essential in coaching: (1) Deep Passion and Purpose for Coaching, (2) Master of Coaching, and (3) Master of Leadership.

Together with Sandro da Silva, one of our coaches and also Director of Leadership at bettercoach, the bettercoach co-founders and the Coach Pool team developed and defined the 3 coaching principles. In line with competence standards by coaching federations and certification institutions, such as the ICF or EMCC, but predominantly based on our hands-on experience with matching coaches to real-word problems in organizations, the principles come to life.

The Why makes all the difference: Just as we at bettercoach are convinced that coaching brings forth the best in people, we expect this conviction and purpose from our coaches, too.

The 4 competencies of this principle

• I live coaching inside and outside the sessions
• I am aware of my role as a coach and strive for professionalism
• I like to relate to others in an open, non-judgemental and communicative way
• I am very curious and strive for development of my coachee’s and my own potential

A coach who is exercising this principle to a high degree integrates coaching theory and practice into their life. They are striving to follow coaching values and attitude, and comply with legal and ethical standards at all times. They are proactive in researching what supports their work, they seek supervision, and they learn and develop themselves as much as they believe in their coachee’s potential to learn and develop. They show respect, impeccable communication skills, curiosity, and motivation.

Any artist must know their craft well – and so does a coach.

The 4 competencies of this principle

• I am a very experienced coach
• I live my role as a coach consciously and fulfill it with great professionalism
• I quickly build up an adequate trusting relationship with my coachee
• I exercise my role with self-awareness

“Master of Coaching” we call a coach who has extensive experience of coaching in different organizations, at different management levels, with various coaching approaches. This experience is backed by their research and knowledge of all things coaching, and they are an active member of a coaching association. They create rapport with their clients with ease and great self-awareness, and respect the boundaries of the coaching relationship.

Everyone is a leader, and leading begins with yourself. Mastering leadership is a continuous, self-reflective learning journey, and our coaches excel at it.

The 3 competencies of this principle

• I am experienced in leadership at personal, group/team and organizational levels
• I exercised/exercise my leadership role consciously (and am flexible in my style)
• The leadership essentials resonate with me and I embody them actively

A “Master of Leadership” knows from experience how organizations operate, and how change can unfold in organizations. They reflect on their leadership and impact with self-awareness, and can exercise appropriate leadership styles in any given moment (situational leadership). They are highly skilled in giving and receiving feedback, create spaces of psychological safety, and show passion for leadership development. Our five Leadership Essentials (Emotional Intelligence, Change, Interdependence, Change, and Purpose) resonate with them, and they embody them actively.

In our team, we all share the conviction that coaching is a powerful means to support people’s growth, and that it can make a real difference in people’s lives. But coaching can only be that if we look closely at what makes it so successful. This is the essential idea that went into the numerous hours of researching, discussing, and defining the principles. We actually were aligned quite fast on the three main principles, and then spent much time on the details: What does each principle mean to us? 

Through the coaching principles, we want to be more aligned on what high quality coaching means to us, and provide more transparency of our coaching standards – towards our clients, our coaches, and also ourselves as a team.

What is important to say is that the coaching principles represent what we already do. So our core processes don’t change, we just use the principles to refine them.

Since we are not inventing anything new, and rather defined the coaching principles to help us clarify our understanding of excellent coaching (and of an excellent coach), I’d say that we and our coaches already embody the culture inherent to these principles.

We see the coaching principles as guidelines rather than rules. For sure, they inform our coach onboarding and regular assessment that we do with all coaches. It’s not always super easy and objective to create these measures – after all, the coaching principles entail many soft, vague, human factors. Besides quantitative data like certifications, number of clients, hours spent coaching, hours spent in supervision and so on, we use self-assessments, client ratings and feedback, the onboarding interviews and project-related work with the coaches to evaluate the fit. After some years of experience, we really must say that we get a full understanding and assessment not merely by data, but by authentic exchange with coaches as well as clients. Practice makes experience – this counts for the coaches as well as for us.

Besides better alignment and clear expectations among us and our stakeholders, we hope for the coaching principles to fuel our mission to support people in their growth and in their path to being fulfilled. Coaching is always a very individual process and hence there is no secret success recipe when a coaching is good and when it isn’t. But these key principles shall ensure that everyone who receives coaching through a bettercoach coach has the best condition to make it a successful coaching. One that leads to growth and fulfillment. This is what we want for the world, and what I feel as the spirit of bettercoach. I truly enjoyed working on the principles with my colleagues, they fill me with purpose and passion – and so I hope they will help fill others with purpose and passion in turn.