How to Mentor Other Coaches

As of August 2023, there are 33,000 ICF credentialed coaches in the world. Most coaches in their career require mentoring, whether for credential renewal or leveling up their credential. Many coaches also engage in mentoring for professional development. Because coaching can be a somewhat solitary endeavor, mentoring provides a wonderful opportunity for a coach to engage in a meaningful and beneficial conversation to grow their coaching skills at a deeper level.

The ICF allows coaches to mentor each other as long as they are mentoring coaches who are at their credential level or below. But there is a lot more that goes into mentoring coaches besides having the same credential, including creating an effective mentoring conversation that optimizes learning and development for the mentee.

To become an expert mentor, some of the skills we have developed over the years of mentoring thousands of coaches include finding creative ways to help a mentee build on their natural coaching strengths, and develop in their identified growth areas. Most importantly, we support each coach in demonstrating the Core Competencies through their own coaching style. As mentors we have a lot of expertise. However, the work involves partnering with our mentees to have a mentoring conversation that will help them develop their own expertise to the next level.

Here are some of the most important things to be listening for:

1. Fully setting the agreement for the session which includes identifying not only what the client wants to discuss, but also what they want to take from the session that will meaningfully impact their situation. (See ICF Core Comp #3, sub points 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10)
2. Avoiding any leading or advising which can be quite challenging, but ultimately respects the client’s autonomy and responsibility for their outcomes. (ICF Comp #7 – Evokes Awareness)
3. Competently closing the session which includes inviting the client to summarize and identify any steps they want to take forward. (ICF Comp #8 — Facilitates Client Growth)

Of course, being an effective coach mentor means continuing to learn and grow your mentoring skills and competencies. What we have outlined above, is just a brief overview of what we teach in our Mentor Coach Certification course. Here’s the bottom line—we love working with coaches and find great satisfaction in training them to be effective coach mentors.

In our Mentor Coach Certification course, we not only teach skills we also focus on developing each mentor’s own style to be accepting, and graceful in the approach to giving feedback and support.

Click here to learn more about our Mentor Coach Certification Course and take advantage of the Early Bird Special!