A Commitment to the Craft

I've just been awarded my ICF Coach Supervision badge, and I'm rather pleased about it.

It's another milestone in my development as a coach, and an opportunity to reflect on something that's become increasingly important to me over the years: the commitment to continually developing our professional craft.

I suspect this is true of most professions. We begin by learning what to do. With experience, we become better at doing it. And with continued reflection, we begin to understand more deeply what we're doing, why we're doing it and the impact we're having.

Professional development, at its best, is about becoming more thoughtful, more discerning and more capable of responding to the complexity of the work in front of us.

Learning your craft

My own journey has taken me from Associate Certified Coach (ACC) to Professional Certified Coach (PCC), with plenty of learning along the way.

There have been training programmes, Continuing Coach Education Units (CCEUs), mentor

coaching, supervision, assessments and, of course, thousands of hours of coaching conversations and each has contributed something different.

Training introduces new ideas, frameworks and approaches. Practice helps us develop fluency and confidence. Mentor coaching provides feedback on how we demonstrate our coaching competencies. Continuing education exposes us to new thinking and challenges us to keep our knowledge and skills current.

And then there's supervision. For me, supervision has opened up another dimension of professional development. It's helped me develop a deeper understanding of myself, of the challenges I face as a coach, and of the challenges other coaches encounter in their work.

Perhaps most importantly, it's helped me appreciate just how interconnected those challenges can be.

A question about boundaries may also be a question about identity.

A difficult coaching relationship might reveal something about our assumptions, expectations or desire to be helpful.

An ethical dilemma may be connected to organisational pressures, personal values or the systems in which we're working.

Very little happens in isolation and supervision gives coaches the space to explore those connections, examine our own contribution to what's happening and consider perspectives we might otherwise have missed.

Sometimes the most valuable learning is seeing something familiar in an entirely different way.

The people along the way

And then there are the people I've met along the way. Too many to list by name, but you know who you are... trainers, mentors, supervisors, fellow coaches and clients who have challenged my thinking, shared their experiences, offered encouragement and occasionally asked the uncomfortable question I probably needed to hear.

Some have become colleagues, others friends, and many have helped me see things I might never have discovered on my own. And that's (one of) the unexpected joys of professional development is that you don't just acquire new knowledge and skills. You become part of a community of people who are equally curious, equally committed to their craft and generous enough to share what they're learning.

And I suspect I've learned at least as much from the conversations between the formal learning sessions as I have during them.

Another milestone on the journey

Having completed my coach supervision training and achieved accreditation as a coach supervisor with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), I'm delighted to have now received recognition from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) as well.

I'm also continuing my development in team coaching, exploring another fascinating dimension of human relationships, group dynamics and organisational complexity.

Each new area of learning connects with what has come before, sometimes reinforcing what I already know and sometimes challenging it, and that's part of the joy of it.

The qualifications and badges matter. They represent investment, commitment, assessment and professional standards. They also offer clients and organisations a degree of reassurance about the people they choose to work with. But for me the real value is in the development that takes place along the way, and in how that development influences the quality of our work.

A commitment to the craft

I think this is what continuing professional development is really about - going beyond collecting qualifications, adding more tools to the toolkit or accumulating letters after our names.

It's about becoming more thoughtful, more discerning and more capable of responding to the complexity of the work in front of us.

About being willing to question what we think we know, to explore our blind spots, to learn from others and to recognise that experience, however extensive, doesn't make us immune to getting things wrong.

So yes, I'm celebrating my new badge, because it represents another stage in a journey that continues to challenge, surprise and delight me.

And I rather like the idea that there's still so much to learn.