Level 3 Program

This course is geared toward those who already have a PCC and want to take their coaching to the next level. We have offered it primarily as a full 75-hour course (monthly plenary and triad sessions over 9-10 months) but can also offer it as interest emerges as a 3-part series (25 hours for each part) that can be done every 6-12 months. 

Since adults learn best through experience, each of these formats will provide lots of dynamic experiential learning (through plenary sessions, triad practice groups between sessions, and time for feedback and mentor coaching by an experienced MCC coach). 

Course Delivery for Each Cohort:

• All sessions are over Zoom in English.

• Plenary Sessions - 8 monthly sessions: two x 8 hours and six x 4.5 hours.

• Triad Application Sessions - 8 monthly, 2.5-hour sessions.

• Mentor Coaching - 7 group hours during a portion of the plenary sessions, and two 90-minute individual sessions.

• Homework - brief reading, podcasts, and videos to highlight competencies, coaching demonstration recordings.

Plenary Sessions 

Plenary 1: Intro/Overview of MCC Coaching

This session will open the world of higher-level coaching and provide an overview of some of the key distinctions of ICF MCC coaching. Participants will be inspired as they get a glimpse of a whole new world of coaching; building on what they know while inviting them into more agility, adventure, and potential to catalyze breakthroughs!

Plenary 2: Foundations of MCC Coaching: Ethical Practice and Coaching Mindset

This session will focus on how we show up as coaches. After all, “who we are is how we coach.” Learning to pay attention to, and adjust, our posture as coaches has the potential to powerfully impact how the client shows up. 

This session will also invite engagement around real-life coaching scenarios to highlight the kind of ethical decisions that are always going on in our coaching. Not the black-and-white issues but the subtle ways we get pulled into ethical gray areas. 

While these foundational competencies are often taken for granted (and thus can get a bit sloppy), strengthening these areas in our coaching can be a game changer. Having a solid foundation enables us to operate with greater confidence, compassion, and agility.

Plenary 3: Co-Creating as an MCC Coach: Agreements and Cultivating Trust/Safety

This session will focus on the partnership we have with our clients, both within the session and beyond the session. The number one challenge of experienced coaches is mismatched expectations, which can undermine trust/safety.  Thus, strengthening this important area can provide coaches with the confidence and skills to have authentic conversations when setting up the coaching arrangement, and throughout their work together. This session will also be a good reminder of how we can apply these important competencies and values to our work and relationships beyond our coaching.

Plenary 4: Co-Creating as an MCC Coach: Maintaining Presence

The session continues on the theme of co-creating the coaching relationship, highlighting the importance of Coaching Presence. This is the key skill for MCC coaching. It can’t be faked or worked around. We’ll do a variety of exercises to gain greater awareness of when we are in presence and when we are not, and learn to better be able to return to this state of being present as/when we slip away. We’ll see that our presence invites our clients into new spaces within themselves, and from the place of mutual presence new thinking, perceiving, and ways of engaging will emerge. Once we have experienced this power of working together we recognize why MCC coaches can achieve so much breakthrough or progress in a relatively short amount of time.  

Plenary 5: Communicates Effectively as an MCC Coach: Listens Actively

The session begins our focus on Communicating Effectively by highlighting the importance of Listening Actively. The focus is not primarily on what the client is saying but on how they are sharing/reflecting. We’ll learn to listen more deeply and holistically; so that listening becomes much like a spiritual practice, connecting the listener and client to something much deeper than either of them was previously aware of. When we listen generatively like this, change can happen at deep levels (and often quite quickly). We’ll see that our listening, like our presence, has the potential to invite clients into new spaces within themselves, which will transform how they show up externally with others. 

Plenary 6: Communicates Effectively as an MCC Coach: Evokes Awareness

The session explores the competency of Evoking Awareness at a MCC level. It isn’t our brilliant insights that bring value but our ability to catalyze the brilliance of our clients that brings true transformation. We’ll focus on making observations, using self-as-instrument, making the invisible visible, working with emotions, and improving our direct communication as coaches. Evoking awareness is at the heart of coaching, so being able to better embody this competency will bring better results for your clients immediately.

Plenary 7: Cultivating Learning and Growth as an MCC Coach

The session focuses on Facilitating Client Growth both within the coaching conversation and more broadly through the coaching relationship. We’ll look at various models of adult development to better understand how people grow and change (or not). Since the goal of coaching isn’t merely a solution to a problem or action steps to a current challenge, coaches need to be able to understand how to support the deeper and more long-term impact their coaching can have with the clients. Similarly, the value of coaching isn’t merely what happens in the coaching session but in the coaching relationship and the ongoing development that can happen for a client. Better understanding and embodying this competency can help deliver better immediate and long-term value to your clients.

Plenary 8: Extra Topics, Consolidation, and Celebration

This session will include some of the topics we haven’t yet covered (e.g. coaching difference, adaptive leadership, transactional analysis, embodied transformation, ontological coaching, and coaching supervision), and also be customized by the needs and interests of cohort participants. We want to ensure cohort participants are introduced to a variety of tools and resources that better enable them to experiment with higher levels of (aka more transformational) coaching and support their ongoing development. This session will also model finishing up a coaching series, as we wrap up the course and celebrate progress together.

Triad Sessions:

Cohort participants will meet in groups of 3 people for follow-up processing and practice between plenary sessions. These smaller groups provide the opportunity for personalized processing and longer practice coaching sessions to experiment with new skills/ideas. The triad sessions will be recorded so participants can use the recordings (or portions of) for further input with their mentor coach.

Outcomes:

• Coaching Education and mentor coaching hours toward your PCC renewal and/or MCC credential.

• Better understand and embody ICF Core Competencies at a higher level.

• Move into greater freedom and experimentation with your coaching.

• Better outcomes and transformation with real-life clients in your context.

Prerequisites:

• To receive a Level 3 Certificate, participants must hold an active ICF PCC credential in good standing. 

• Actively coaching - so you have opportunities to experiment outside the group times.

• Instruction is in English so comfortability listening and speaking in English is essential. Triad practice can be coordinated in different languages if other participants have other language preferences too. 

Note: It is best to take this course well before you get to your 2500 required hours for MCC. Most people find that their higher-level coaching skills grow with practice. You will have an easier time getting solid MCC-level recordings when you need to show MCC competency down the road if you start practicing with that posture now. Also, the hours from this course can be used to renew your PCC and to upgrade to an MCC credential when you are ready.

Pricing:

• $5,800 Early Registration with full payment

• $6,200 Regular Price

All prices in US $ and do not include credit card or international wire fees. Scholarships are available for those working with client's from not-for-profit and charitable organizations. Payment plans can be worked out individually as needed. Please contact info@zovakconsulting.com to arrange.

If you miss part of the course...

Limited make-up ability (up to 5 hours, which assumes participation in the intro session) is available for those who miss an in-person experience (or portion thereof), as the ICF requires the face-to-face time with the ICF facilitator. After that, you’d need to pay an MCC qualified instructor for the extra synchronous make-up time.