Congratulations! You’ve done the work, acquired your coaching hours, put in time with a coach mentor, and you’ve finally achieved your ICF coaching credential! This is an amazing first step in your journey to building a thriving coaching practice or implementing coaching with your company. As you know, coaching is a profession built around the coach’s knowledge, understanding, and implementation of the 8 core coaching competencies. This means that earning your credential is just as important as maintaining your credential.
After receiving your coaching credential, you’ll receive a memo from the ICF letting you know that your credential is valid for three years, at which point it will need to be renewed. This process requires continuing coach education and training to ensure that you are keeping up with important advances and changes in the coaching industry.
What is a CCE?
Continuing Coach Education (CCE) involves accruing Continuing Coach Education Units (CCEUs), which contribute to the renewal of your International Coaching Federation (ICF) credential. These units are obtained through ongoing learning opportunities, including courses, webinars, seminars, and the creation of materials like research papers and presentations. Additionally, virtual courses cover various aspects such as coaching ethics, tools, and frameworks, alongside complementary knowledge in areas like writing, business skills, and productivity.
Why is Continuing Coach Education (CCE) Important?
The coaching profession recognizes the importance of continuing education. The foundational skills you acquire in your initial training are essential to the coaching process and require ongoing refinement and practice. In addition, coaching skills, tools, and practices are forever evolving. As new research emerges, credible coach training schools work diligently to incorporate important findings into their curriculum. This cutting edge material is the kind of education that will keep you ahead of your competition and continue to add credibility to your credentials.
Types of CCEs
Core Competencies
Of the 40 hours required for CCEs, 24 of those hours must be in Core Competencies. These are the same Core Competencies on which the Coach Training EDU™ training was built. Continuing Coaching Education in Core Competencies includes things like communication, active listening, goal setting, and managing accountability.
Coaching Ethics
The ICF requires that a minimum of three of the 24 Core Competencies for Continuing Coaching Education Units (CCEUs) be in coaching ethics. This is offered through ICF’s free online course, or you can find another ethics-specific training. These can be found through ICF CCE-accredited programs or ICF Chapter events.
Mentor Coaching
Ten Mentor Coaching hours are also required in addition to the Mentor Coaching hours from your initial certification. These ten mentor hours can be counted as ten of the 40 hours for the CCEs in Core Competencies.
Resource Development
This category encompasses anything that falls outside of the Core Competencies. Professional development topics such as business building, niche building, new coaching tools, assessment certifications, etc. all count toward CCEs in resource development.
Maintaining ICF Credentials
Every coach, regardless of credential level, must complete at least 40 hours of coach training in the three years between receiving their coach credential and renewal. These 40 hours (sometimes referred to as units) can only be obtained through an ICF CCE approved training program. Failure to obtain these hours can result in the expiration of your coaching credential.
The Associate credential has a slightly different process than the Professional and Master credentials. You can review the full requirements here.