ICFCTAS: Questions Answered, But “The Work Goes On”

The grassroots group ICF Coaches Take a Stand is not standing down—and while its original objective has been resolved, major questions remain.

“The work goes on,” reads a message on the group’s website. “Our passion for excellence endures.”

“We have actually been holding the ICF accountable,” said David Matthew Prior, referring to the questions outlined in the ICFCTAS’ original seven-question petition to the ICF Board. The ICF’s responded to each question, and now, Prior said, “We’ve completed what the letter’s mission was.”

“So now, the question is who will hold that role? Who will be taking a stand from now?”

It’s been nearly five months since ICFCTAS members wore buttons and handed out literature at the International Coach Federation’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida. The objective at that time was an open airing of questions about the ICF’s intended transition to a single credential.

In September 2009, the ICFCTAS issued a detailed list of requests to the ICF Board, including tabling the decision to move away from a three-tiered credentialing system—a request that was honored in January, when ICF president Giovanna D’Alessio announced any further moves toward a single credential would be tabled until 2012.

Does that mean mission accomplished and close up shop for ICFCTAS?

Not quite. The issue of credentialing in particular, the group believes, isn’t over – but is reaching a tipping point.

“The timing is now,” said David Matthew Prior, who believes shelving the credential question—and others—rather than resolving them now, with coaches fully engaged in the issue, risks wasting all the momentum for change that has built over the last seven months. “If this is not capitalized on now, when it’s been really heated…then we’re going to lose…an opportunity. If we had to start over, what would we wait until 2012 until another decision is made? We’re really losing a critical moment in time and an opportunity.”

The group’s members say they’re pleased with a new sense of transparency from the ICF, but remain critical of the ICF president’s plans to appoint a series of task forces.

The ICFCTAS letter last year had specifically requested the creation of a “Coaching Knowledge Base Advisory Board”—not a task force operating at the pleasure of the ICF Board or president—to “assess and examine the coaching body of knowledge that can be annotated and tested for validity and reliability.”

The intent, ICFCTAS says, was to advance the profession of coaching, something far less likely to happen in the hands of a non-independent task force answering only to the ICF itself.

“It was bigger than just having somebody look at this (issue),” said ICFCTAS Vikki Brock. “This was a structure to put in place for the profession.”

Brock and Prior say the ICF has used committees and task forces to look into coaching knowledge before—a process they believe was ultimately hobbled by its lack of independence from the ICF leadership.

“And here we are again with a task force appointed by the president,” said Prior. “There’s no independent coaching advisory board with subject matter experts that acts as a kind of institutional body that’s going to have institutional memory going forward.”

Instead, a task force may simply be swept away with the arrival of a new Board or ICF president. “It’ll simply evaporate,” said Prior. “Then we’ll have another president with another task force. The cycle repeats.”

The ultimate answer, some ICFCTAS members believe, is a change in the governance structure of the ICF. “As long as the structure doesn’t change, everybody serves at the pleasure of the current president,” said Alix Louisa von Uhde. “How policies are made, how policies are changed, the criteria for board members, the criteria for committee chairs, the criteria for task forces—all of these stay in very nebulous terms.”

ICFCTAS placed an “ICF Leadership Transparency Plan” among its seven original questions, and got mixed results from the ICF. A request to allow members a “greater window and input into their own organization’s governance and decision making,” was addressed with a commitment from the ICF to share “agendas and outcomes” in addition to a 60-day comment period before making “substantial decisions.”

A request by ICFCTAS for a referendum on key decisions relating to the future of credentialing was refused.

“There needs to be a major cultural shift and a restructuring of governance priorities and criteria,” said von Uhde. “What do you need to be a board member?”

“The culture needs to be nudged toward creation of a culture of candor to replace the political correctness culture that’s in place at the moment; where constructive, open debate and even disagreement can hone processes and decision-making criteria so that excellence replaces expediency, and quality replaces quantity, and heart and passion replace apathy, and innovation and thoughfulness and rigor replace walking down these well-worn fifteen year old paths.”

What should happen next—for ICFCTAS and for the ICF itself?

Does the debate need to focus on leadership, governance, credentialing, or something else entirely?

NOTE: You can read the full text of the ICFCTAS’ open letter to the signatories of its correspondence with the ICF Board here.

NOTE: Vikki Brock contributes weekly Coaching History posts to the Coaching Commons.