We are ICF

Like other professional organizations, members of the International Coach Federation choose to be a part of its ranks for numerous reasons. For Gürkan Sarioglu (an executive and leadership coach in Turkey), it came down to the Code of Ethics; Code of Conduct; globally recognized accreditation and credentialing process; and the experience sharing through regional and global conferences.

Gürkan joined the ICF global community in 2007.

When asked what member benefit provides him the most value, Gürkan responded “All the information I could reach through the ‘members only’ section of the website is the most valuable benefit for me, as I could come across at least one or two articles, surveys, or papers on almost every subject I am looking for, which would enlighten me, inspire me or make me knowledgeable.” 

Other reasons people choose to be a part of the ICF will be shared in future blog posts.

Learn how you can become a member of the ICF here.

Strengthening our ICF Community: What Will You Do?

For the past 15 months, the ICF Global Membership & Community Committee has spent almost all our time discussing, listening, researching, and making recommendations about membership. It has been all membership, all the time. And it’s been good. Really good. We have learned a lot through extensive conversations with ICF members, and our recommendation for minimum eligibility requirements for membership has been approved by the ICF Global Board (look for more on that next month).

However, with our focus on membership (and quite appropriately so, given the direction provided to us by the Board), perhaps we have unconsciously drifted away from the “community” part of our Committee name. Membership AND Community Committee.

So how do we renew our focus on community? I believe the answer lies beyond the rules and procedures, the research and recommendations.  Community can’t be mandated. And community is not the responsibility of just a few hundred Chapter Leaders, and Global Board and Committee members. Community is up to each one of us, in our day-to-day actions as ICF members.


Community at the 2010 ICF Annual International Conference



So as the evolution and growth of our ICF community continues, and as we steadfastly pursue raising the standards for our organization, and for the coaching industry itself, I’m curious: What will YOU do to contribute?

• Are you a coach in a region where an ICF Chapter is just now emerging?  What could you do to lend a hand to those who are leading the charge?

• Are you a member of an established ICF Chapter, attending its meetings and events?  How could you help your Chapter Board with all the behind-the-scenes work they do?

• Do you read the monthly Coaching World newsletter?  What special knowledge or experience could you write up as an article?

• Are you a graduate of an accredited coach training school?  When will you go back and tell new coaches-in-training about what the ICF offers and how they can get involved in your local Chapter?

In this month’s Coaching World, our ICF President, Ed Modell, writes, “The future of ICF is in our hands! Remember we are ICF. Let us co-create our future together.” Indeed. So what will YOU do?

Kara Exner, M.C.Ed., CPCC, ACC
Chair, 2011 ICF Global Membership & Community Committee

Get up-to-date with ICF Credentialing

Interested in the current work of the Credentialing and Program Accreditation Committee? You will want to listen to this recent 60-minute call recording.

It’s easy to listen: first, click here. Login: coachcredentialing; Password: suzee. After you log in, choose “Recordings” from the menu across the top. The recording you will want to listen to is #2411.

Next week: learn more about the enhanced online credentialing application, to be introduced this month at Coachfederation.org.*

*Note: Enhancements were made to the application, not to the credentialing requirements.

Co-Active Summit Experience

• How do we connect, together, to create collective action in the face of our perilous global situation?
• What's calling you, right now?
• What moves you, personally, to make a bolder commitment?

Last month, I had the delicious opportunity to present a session at CTI’s Co-Active Summit, on Marco Island, Florida. As a long-term student of designed learning, I got to play in, and contribute to, a most elegant design. Many factors combined to make this event sing. Here are a few:

• The Summit was designed as a whole to directly engage a relevant question for the many of us who see the pickle that we as a species have gotten ourselves into: “What is my piece?” Many people I know see the problems, but feel overwhelmed, or have difficulty discerning how they can be part of the solution. This process engaged us collaboratively and creatively in the question; doing so is in itself part of the solution.

• The community process began months ago with proposals that were voted on by the community (my own proposal was solicited and eventually selected.) So, before we even arrived at the venue, the community had a stake in the agenda, and shaped it in significant ways.

• Top notch keynoters Kevin Cashman (his comments about presence as a "meta-competency” were music to my ears; this is what I’ve been teaching for years) and Lynne Twist (“we have less than 4 years to change the trajectory of civilization. You’re part of it. GO!”) were compelling and provided incisive input on the themes.

• A central participatory experience provided an overarching metaphor to which all other components of the design connected. The image of a transformational leap, taken with preparation and rigor, and with unknowable results, served the process well. Assembling, with 450 people, a giant jigsaw puzzle in about 15 minutes (get it? “What’s your piece?”) was both fun and powerful.

• Concurrent sessions ("Pathways" sessions, including mine) had been selected by the community, and arranged consistently with the metaphor. These sessions provided a strong personal developmental stream within an overall community context.

• The two remaining co-founders of CTI, Karen and Henry Kimsey-House, were conspicuous on stage, both in convening and holding the space for the event. They also raised the stakes by declaring that the future trajectory of the CTI organization would be significantly shaped by the unfolding process that everyone was creating together. ("Hey! This is for real!")

My own experience was significant. The new half-day workshop I developed and presented strongly validated a somatically-based approach to experiencing ourselves in an evolutionary context. And, I am newly committed to aligning my work more explicitly and directly to the context of the accelerating environmental/spiritual/social crisis that is unfolding on our earth.

More broadly, this event is a bold response to the moral imperative for us, as change agents, to engage ourselves and our clients in these crucial questions, and to contextualize our work in the broadest possible frame.

Without judgment, I found myself pondering the incongruity of convening a conversation about responding to our environmental crisis in a high-end Florida venue, accompanied by a certain sense of indulgence and a high carbon footprint. This may well be necessary, for now, but illuminates the necessity of learning how to initiate and sustain our conversations and resulting actions through forms that are themselves sustainable.



Doug Silsbee, PCC

The real value of the event, and the long term payoff for the environmental cost, lies not in the delicious experience itself but in what it catalyzes in terms of on-going action. How will the CTI community/organization be shaped by this? What actions will the 450 participants take as a result? And, how will I translate my three days of inspiration into years of committed action?

We can't fully know the answers to these questions, but I'm optimistic about all three. And, something has come alive in me... I'm listening.



Posted by Doug Silsbee, PCC, author of The Mindful Coach, and leader of the ICF-approved Presence-Based Coaching training program. For other posts, or to comment on this one, visit http://www.dougsilsbee.com/blog/summit.

The Bucket List of Fun and Adventure

A couple of weeks ago over dinner, my husband and I compiled our “Bucket List of Fun and Adventure” for the next six months. We do these lists twice a year. We find that there is magic in building them! We get positive emotional hits when we are envisioning, researching, collaborating and then doing enjoying the adventure! This exercise and the list keep us on our toes as we honor our shared values of fun and discovery. We have some really great adventures together as a result. Our energy and vitality at dinner, that night, noticeably increased with our enthusiasm…despite the blizzard raging outside.

Our clients are coming to us to make changes in a positive, desired direction- whatever that may be. We coaches need tools and strategies to access those sweet spots of positive change for ourselves and for our clients. With all that is going on in the world; how do you show up in your life, alive and vibrant, amidst life’s inevitable blizzards?

After a particularly trying time in our family, I looked at my husband and said, “Who am I to life coach anyone when we are running into this problem in our life?”

He looked at me and said, “Who better to share and coach others than someone who has lived it, survived it and thrives in spite of?”

We are all a “work in process.” We have the opportunity 24 hours, 7 days a week for 70-80ish years, if we are lucky, to get this life thing- to live. Our challenge personally and professionally is to learn how the “good stuff” can bubble up to the top instead of sinking to the bottom. Through all my life challenges, I have learned and collected so many ways to do just that. What I am talking about here is resiliency- the ability to bounce back from adversity.

Do you know the question all resilient people ask themselves when they are challenged?

If you want to learn more about this and get the answer to that question then you may want to join me on my webinar, “Rise and Shine Anytime” 5 Steps for Bringing Your Best to Work and Home. Learn more about it here: http://www.annejolles.com/Rise-Shine/Webinars.html.

If you are ready to access more energy, focus, enthusiasm and positivity for increased productivity and success, this webinar series is for you! (Not only that, but it is an easy way to earn CCEUs!) Sign up today to get the specially discounted price (only $125 USD) by calling me at +1.781.878.8589 or e-mailing me at abjcoach@comcast.net.

You won’t want to miss it!
Anne