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In the world of coach training, there’s no doubt you can pay a lot for a coaching certificate that might be worthless, but can you truly pay nothing for a certificate that has true value?
Coach Julia Stewart says yes, you can.
“We’ve decided that since coaching is such a valuable skill for people who are seeking employment, it would be a service to provide training for free, rather than have people pay money for meaningless certifications,” said Stewart, whose School of Coaching Mastery will now offer audio recordings and written coaching guides of its basic “Coaching Foundations” program to anyone, free of charge.
Live, webinar-based teaching by certified coaches will be added to the free offerings in coming months.
“There are hundreds of coaching schools out there. Many are very good, but perhaps because of the high unemployment rate, there has been an explosion of diploma mills and certification mills in the coaching profession. That’s not good for coaches, their clients or for the profession of coaching.”
The School of Coaching Mastery currently offers an online and webinar-based coach training program leading to a certification from the IAC for $3,595.00. That training program will continue, though SCM’s IAC license will not be renewed when it expires in December.
In her “manifesto” announcing SCM’s free coaching program, Stewart says she will surrender her IAC license. “To re-license our materials, we have to drop our IAC license,” Stewart says. “The IAC doesn’t allow re-licensing. Our students are fine with that. Some will still become IAC certified coaches.”
Is free coach training a case of paying it forward—or getting what you pay for?
Stewart insists free training will open the doors to potentially great coaches who can’t afford training—and force other training programs to do a better job of justifying the prices they charge. “Anyone can start a coach training school, but now they’ll have to compete on merit, not price.”
Free’s not necessarily a new idea in coaching, where free webinars, e-books and introductory coaching sessions are standard offerings. The concept’s also been tried in higher education, where schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology frequently give away course materials, lectures and other content at no cost. M.I.T.’s giveaways are good for students who, for geographic, financial or other reasons can’t experience the lectures as a student. But, as author Chris Anderson has argued, they also benefit professors and schools as well.
“A college education is more than lectures and readings,” Anderson wrote in his book on the concept, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. “For universities, free content is marketing. Top students get their pick of schools. Sampling the mind-blowing fare of a particular program or professor can win them over.”
It can also get a professor a book deal, Anderson notes, describing how a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s free lectures became popular on YouTube and in turn generated interest from publishers.
And Stewart’s up front on that part of the equation—she’s not giving it all away for free. “Master coach training won’t be free,” she says. “But it will be valuable.” SCM will, in essence, specialize in training master coaches—with free coach training as a public service and a lure.
“People may wonder what School of Coaching Mastery gets by offering our curriculum for free. First, we get to spread the value of coaching to anyone who wants it, which is something we believe in,” said Stewart. “Second, we’re concerned about coaching diploma mills, which seem to be flourishing in the recession, so we hope to discourage coaches from going that route. Finally, we think a few of the coaches who take our free coach training will go on and try some of our advanced courses.”
How much value would you assign to a certificate from a free coach training course? Do you think it’s mere marketing—or a bold new idea?
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There are 15 Responses so far...
I think Julia’s idea is brilliant marketing (isn’t that essentially what Thomas Leonard did with Coachville?) and also great for the coaching profession. Whatever Julia does is done with integrity, so I know that she is doing this with good motives. I also know that the quality of her coach training is top notch. I’ll be referring people to the free coach training. It’s a win-win-win.
Gosh ~ Thank you Barbra!
PS: I’ve come to believe that honest marketing is as noble as coaching.
The concept being suggested is a good one in the present economic climate. But I think that there should be some measure of an accreditation process for people pursuing the free courses to become coaches.
Coaching as a career is still very new, at least in the Caribbean Region and the last thing that is needed is for the profession to get a bad reputation from persons who will flock towards the free coaching courses without some form of assessment or exam. The current Coaches in Training, in the Caribbean Region, are paying their “dues” by pursuing accredited courses in the hope that they will get the knowledge and interaction needed, to be able to provide a quality service to their clients.
Once the organization is prepared to offer some kind of accreditation to individuals, then I believe it will work.
Hi Janice – I agree with you. Without genuine standards, the coaching profession will inevitably get a bad reputation.
The Free Coach Training program has an online exam. Those who pass it will receive a Coaching Certificate from the School of Coaching Mastery.
Hi Julia: Thanks for responding. What about the verbal interaction between coach and client?? If there is going to be an oral assessment exam as well as the online exam, then I can see the free coach training program working and being of benefit to alot of people.
Do let me know when it is up and running…. thanks…
Julia is not only a brilliant marketer but a brilliant coach trainer. I can get behind anything she does because she embodies excellence and integrity.
It blew me away when she told me what she was doing. My sense is that when people experience her free coach training not only will they be wowed by it, but it will also raise the bar for other coaching programs. That’s great news for everyone, a win-win all around.
I know Julia delivers. Her focus on coaching mastery in her paid programs is a purposeful and powerful expression of Julia’s talent and expertise.
Looking forward to the experience..
Thomas Leonard, who popularized coaching in the 1990s, used this identical paradigm, giving away for free much of his intellectual property around coaching. Many of today’s coach training programs are based on his work, and many of the trainers in the universities were trained on his work. Bottom line, whether the training is free or expensive, good content (and Julia’s is) studied by many people will have a ripple effect. A good coach will go on to study further, digging deeper. I see this when I mentor coaches, and even more at CAM. Bravo to Julia.
I echo the comments made by others in response to the direction taken by Julia. Some people might balk at the risk of providing valuable work for at no cost, but as Chris Anderson has pointed out in his book, Free…, there is not only a significant marketing payoff, but also considerable spiritual and emotional value.
We stumbled onto this idea when we started our web presence in 1991, and the return has been exponential. Way to go Julia!
I am so happy that I have been able to generate some comments on this post. As indicated, my concern is that proper oral and online assessments are put in place. Only then can I see the free coach training program working and being of benefit to alot of people.
I applaud Julia for putting this practice together, whether for herself or for us, because either way I’m using the information I’ve been able to gather.
I’m sorry to disagree with Janice when she says, “Only then can I see the free coach training program working and being of benefit to alot of people” in reference to verbal interaction with coaches. I see a lot of benefit, albeit not a full-license benefit. That would be greedy and expecting Julia to do it all for free… I’m guessing she must eat like the rest of us.
I just want to say I’m very pleased to get the useful information Julia’s willing to delve out and eager to sink my teeth in and make it my own. They say that coaches can be taught, but REAL coaches are born, and I believe it. Only the ones needing to be spoonfed every ounce of information are lacking the integrity to do some work and make their own discoveries known. This is known as “piggybacking” in the marketing world. I am an explorer!
Thanks Rey, Janice and MJ ~ The feedback is great!
Dear MJ Brewer: I fully applaud and love Julia’s idea “to spread the value of coaching to anyone who wants it” and to provide a certificate for this training. All I am saying is that the certificate should be provided upon completion of an assessment of the individual. In Trinidad, the citizens can attend University and get access to Tertiary Education for “free” because the government will pay the “school fees” but that does not mean that we get away from having to take exams and graduate from the respective institution that we will be pursuing the program/course with.
A certificate from SCM must be able to stand up to scrutiny and protect the reputation of the organization.
Hi Janice – We do have those certifications, but they’re labor intensive and expensive to administer, so we don’t offer them for free.
No probs Julia…. I am smiling…..