Choosing Your Coach: Different Strategies

But then on what criteria to choose your coach? There are many strategies…

Choose by word of mouth: listen to recommendations

“Do you know a good coach? “: the question is common. Indeed, as with the choice of a dentist or a plumber, we feel more confident when a practitioner is recommended to us. Asking around for advice remains a good way to choose a coach, because you can thus have information on the person, the methods used or the prices, as well as the feedback of your loved one on their experience. A simple way to facilitate your discernment!

Choose according to your needs and the proposed themes

It is not the same thing to seek the help of a coach on questions of choice of professional orientation than on problems of team management. It therefore seems essential that the coach you choose is suitable for working on your subject! To do this, you can search by keyword or have people recommended to you according to your specific needs: support for a retraining, work on communication, interactions, work on self-confidence, support for taking decision, etc.

Find out about the training, certifications and accreditations of coaches

Finding out about the backgrounds of the coaches and their training is also a good way to sort through the multiple proposals available to you. Some coaches have an initial training in psychology, other coaches are trained after careers in HR, training, management, but there are also people who come from many other disciplines!

While there are several hundred coaching schools in France, not all of them are necessarily of the same level of quality! To remedy this, many coaches choose to be accredited by major coaching associations in France such as the SF Coach the ICF (International Coaching Federation) or the EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council). The profession is also supervised by the State, which offers a certification registered in the national directory of professional certifications (RNCP).

Consider budget

Who says support project necessarily says funding! We are not going to hide it from you, coaching is not necessarily given. Prices can vary from simple to triple, ranging from a few tens of euros to 100 or 200 euros per hour. The gap widens especially when companies bear part or all of the cost of support: coaching can then cost several hundred euros per hour. If you are in a difficult professional situation, you can try to ask your employer for funding; otherwise, unfortunately, you will often have to go out of pocket. Indeed, since coaching is not considered as training, it cannot be eligible for funding via the professional training account.

Don’t overlook the importance of location and setting

If the question of the place may seem anecdotal, the place where your future coach exercises is important… Because if you have an appointment every week, the trip should not be too big a brake on your motivation. In these times of confinement, only remote coaching is possible and the coaches are, for the most part, quite connected to online video conferencing tools. However, in normal times, it may be legitimate to look for someone close to your place of work or your home, especially if you combine heavy hours, dependent children and extra-professional activities. Face-to-face or remotely, the question of the setting of the meeting has its place in your choice!

Trust your intuition

Finally, the most important thing before you start is to feel comfortable with the person who will accompany you. For this, nothing better than to trust your intuition. A person who has had good contact with one of your friends is not necessarily the coach you need! To find out as much as possible about the person and his favorite subjects before contacting him, you can for example visit his professional site, look at his career, read any articles or conferences he or she may have written or given, etc. It is imperative to see, first of all, how the human contact is established once you have met the person!

In an ideal world, each of the criteria mentioned has its place in your final decision! This time of confinement may be just the right time to study the subject and dare to take the plunge. And if you are afraid to get started, it is always possible to discuss with several practitioners before deciding to start the actual work. Coaching is above all a matter of relationship, normal to want to feel confident before starting an accompaniment. More about, the first meeting serves most of the time to get to know each other before committing. And it is you who keep the power to decide what happens next!