Three candidates chosen by the ICF’s own nominating committee—See Luan Foo, Kaj Hellbom and Bernie Siegel—share a vision of a group that reaches out to new parts of the world, builds visibility for coaches in the marketplace, and reaches out to communities with volunteer programs.

As coach Cyn Liggett, who let her ICF membership lapse recently put it, “nice bios and statements, (but) none of them covered what I want to hear about the profession. Go global? Sure. With what? I think they’ve forgotten to truly address what might be most important to the membership in total, even the members they lost this year.”

One key question the chosen candidates don’t mention is the issue that has roiled the ICF’s Board and membership over the last year: credentials, and the Board’s proposal to do away with the existing three-tiered credentialing system.

Of the two petitioning candidates, one hits the credential issue right up front: “I will work hard for you to ensure that any changes to the current credentialing system are fair, ethical, and only approved with extensive member input throughout the process,” said Jeff Auerbach, an MCC from Pismo Beach, California.

“As a petitioner, I have very strong chances of creating an upset to the established system,” said Auerbach. “Usually the ICF Board nominating committee nominates the ballot and the board-selected nominees will win. That won’t happen this time.”

Auerbach also mentions “expanded Board of Directors transparency” and a commitment to coaching research and an international public relations campaign to encourage the hiring of ICF-certified coaches.

Auerbach signed the “ICF Coaches Take a Stand” petition regarding credentialing, and many of the coaches who supported that grassroots effort have also endorsed Auerbach’s candidacy, including David Matthew Prior, Margaret Krigbaum, Marcia Reynolds, Christine Martin, Vikki Brock, Carol Courcy, Pat Williams, Suzi Pomerantz, Tracy Stevens and Diane Foster—all MCCs.

“I have tremendous support from senior leaders,” says Auerbach, who has been an ICF chapter president and ICF conference co-chair in addition to serving on the ICF credentialing workgroup.

Aside from Auerbach, none of the other Board candidates’ names appears on the list of ICFCTAS signatures.

But don’t call Auerbach the “Coaches Take a Stand” candidate.

“I have had no formal contact with the leaders of Coaches Take a Stand, and don’t even know what their structure is,” said Auerbach. “If you look at my endorsers you will see many senior leaders who endorse me who did not sign the (ICFCTAS) petition. That being said, it is obvious…that many leaders who did sign the petition…are endorsing me, so you can conclude that I am willing to speak up about issues that are critical, that the Take A Stand people also are passionate about.”

Auerbach notes that many of his supporters did not sign the petition, however, including the leaders of many coach training schools and business owners, which he believes indicates a broad range of support among coaches that’s based on much more than the single issue of credentialing.

“I think the fact that I have such extensive support amongst former ICF board leaders and the Master Certified Coaches means that those who have been intimately involved with ICF feel that an ‘independent’ board member was necessary to have on the ICF ballot for the well-being of the organization,” said Auerbach. “Hence the members successfully petitioned to place me on the ballot, rather than only relying on the ICF Board Nominating Committee process candidates.”

Voting for the 2011 Board began Wednesday and runs through October 15, but at least one slot won’t be going to a vote of ICF members at all—Janet Harvey, a US-based MCC, has been designated president-elect after the ICF received no petitions to run for the job.

Harvey is a former corporate executive who now serves as CEO of inviteCHANGE, a coaching company based in Edmonds, Washington.

“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.

With over 700 signatures on an online petition that urged a “collaborative, open” debate on the ICF’s plans for revising its credentialing system–what, if anything, does the grassroots group ICF Coaches Take a Stand (ICFCTAS) do next?

“There is a clear imperative to take a stand for the future of the coaching profession,” said Alix von Uhde, who’s joined other ICFCTAS coaches in “brainstorming” the potential path forward.  ”The entire credentialing issue is just a symptom.”

“We worked really hard for ten years to get established as more than a trend or a fad, that we were really developing a profession, and the ICF was going to lead us” said Susan Klein, who helped create the ICF.  ”It’s gotten away from what we intended, and we need to do something to pull it back–and if we can’t, we need to create something else that will take us in the direction we want to go.”

In a post on the Coaching Commons last month, Klein included “establish a new organization, or align with other coaching organizations/associations” among the ICFCTAS options for where to go next, something Klein says is “the last thing in the world” she wants to do, after having worked too hard to establish the ICF.

“At least we have an organization (in ICF Coaches Take a Stand) that people can get behind, and discuss and come up with ideas and answers–and a direction,” said Klein.  ”There’s power in that.”

The power of people uniting to express concerns–and to chart a course–started without any intentions of creating a group of any kind.  Coaches who’d been on an ICF assessors’ call got in touch to swap notes and to express displeasure with the ICF.  Within a few days, there were 17 coaches meeting on a phone call to talk;  a week later there were 47.  And just days after that call, when ICFCTAS posted its petition online, 80 coaches signed their names.  That number has since climbed to 756.

“It’s a grassroots effort that really took a stand,” said coach David Matthew Prior.  ”We created this space for that dialogue and debate–rigorous debate–to happen what wasn’t happening.”  

The group, Prior said, will not advocate for a “next step,” but will likely continue to provide a place for coaches to consider their options.

“We’re allowing people to make their own decisions,” said Prior.

“ICF Coaches Take a Stand has done its work, and it can’t go beyond what it has done,” said von Uhde, who pointed out that beyond creating an online platform to sign a petition and connect coaches in debate, the structure of an ongoing, organized movement is not there.  ”If people want change to happen, then something else has to emerge.”

Many coaches believe that is exactly what needs to happen next.

“What is the ICF’s purpose?  To be honest, at this point in time, I do not know,” said coach Michael Stratford.  ”I have no idea where the ICF is going.  There’s no unified vision.”

What Stratford does have clarity on, he said, is that the ICF is not serving its members, and in some of the debate over credentials, was at times, even insulting them. Treating member coaches, Stratford said, as “discarded old voices resistant to change.”

“Where can the ICF go?  I think its current incarnation, while some may see it as a teenager, I see it as a dinosaur,” said Stratford.

For some coaches, a break from the ICF would mean a difficult separation from a professional identity they’ve built for years.  

Coach Sara Arbel was ICF’s very first member in Israel, and has worked for over a decade to spread the ICF name.  ”I have spoken about ICF all over the country and in all media,” she said.  ”I have led a revolution here, holding the ICF flag, and then I discover that whoever I was hoping was holding the flag with me on the other side of the ocean, is lowering the flag.”

“By bringing up this ISO thing, I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Arbel.  ”There is a leadership that needs to be looked at a bit closer, and the whole process of choosing the leadership.”

Will the coaches of ICFCTAS convince the ICF to change its course–or will they jump ship?

Many of the hundreds of ICFCTAS coaches are already at work brainstorming a vision for coaching, including “taking a stand” for the future.  What would that look like?  

Von Uhde and Prior shared an outline of some of the items being talked about:

“The stand for the future calls for:

1. Broader Stakeholder involvement (e.g., academic partners, the business community, coaching clients) for the purpose of engaging multiple perspectives related to decision making processes to create the highest standards of quality, competence, and credibility in a professional coach credentialing system.

2. An organization that promotes transparency by proactively and clearly articulating positions for consideration.

3. An organization that encourages live forums for discussion and debate.

4. Forward thinking leaders who encourage rigorous debate in pursuit of excellence, integrity and collaboration.

5. An organization that holds its elected officials accountable to its membership and to a code of ethics that extends to leaders, staff, and the organization as a whole.

6. Leaders who model leadership competence and character while achieving members’ desired results.”

Did you sign the ICFCTAS petition? If so, what do you think needs to happen next?

Move on from ICFCTAS?

Or potentially move on from the ICF itself?  And if not the ICF, then what?