What Is a Personal Development Coach? Everything You Need to Know
Leadership coaching is a personalized development partnership between a coach and a leader. It sharpens self-awareness, strengthens communication, and builds the emotional intelligence needed to lead with clarity and integrity. It's available to leaders at every level — not just C-suite executives — and sessions typically run over several months via one-on-one conversations focused on real challenges and goals. Often this kind of coaching can be sponsored and paid for by your organization.
Why I'm Pursuing the New ICF Mentor Coach Qualification (MCQ) Right Away
Why I'm Applying Through the Credit for Prior Learning Path As Soon As Possible
I've held the MCC — the highest ICF credential level — for many years. More to the point, I've been providing mentor coaching to credential-seeking coaches since 2013. I know this work in my bones. I've sat with coaches in their most uncertain moments, helped them hear themselves differently, and watched the ICF Core Competencies come alive in ways no classroom can fully replicate.
But knowledge and experience, on their own, aren't credentials. And credentials matter — not because they prove you're good, but because they give the people you serve a reliable way to know you've met a verified standard.
The MCQ's Credit for Prior Learning path was designed for coaches in exactly my position: credentialed practitioners with years of documented mentor coaching practice who don't need to be introduced to the work — they need formal recognition that their practice meets a verified global standard.
Given my credential level and track record of mentoring coaches through ACC, PCC, and MCC preparation, I'll be applying through the CPL path as soon as applications open. The ICF indicated in its April 2026 announcement that applications are expected to launch within the coming months.
ICF Mentor Coaching Requirements: Everything You Need to Know (2026 Update)
ICF mentor coaching requires 10 hours of competency-focused mentorship from an experienced, credentialed coach, completed over a minimum of three months. At least 3 of those hours must be in individual (one-on-one) sessions. The remaining hours can come from group sessions. Mentor coaching applies at every credential level — ACC, PCC, and MCC — and has just become significantly more important with the ICF's April 2026 announcement replacing performance evaluations with enhanced mentor coaching requirements beginning in 2027.
What Is Leadership Coaching? A Complete Guide for Leaders and Professionals
Leadership coaching is a personalized development partnership between a coach and a leader. It sharpens self-awareness, strengthens communication, and builds the emotional intelligence needed to lead with clarity and integrity. It's available to leaders at every level — not just C-suite executives — and sessions typically run over several months via one-on-one conversations focused on real challenges and goals. Often this kind of coaching can be sponsored and paid for by your organization.
Growing Into Consistency
All my life, I struggled to be consistent—I struggled with self-care, chaotic emotions, and figuring out who I wanted to be when I grew up. (Does this sound familiar?) “I was doing so well and then, bam!, I just stopped.” I could be absolutely enamored of something one minute and be totally turned off by it the next.
Here are six strategies to work with that experience.
What is coaching? A true analogy
Coaching is the process of unwinding the defaults of the mind so that energy can flow through the whole of who you are. In the process, your goals and dreams get the support they need to come to life. A skilled coach is someone who can see the structures of your thinking layered on top of one another, even though they are unseen to you. She can push and pull and stretch you in order to re-fit the structure so it is strong and flexible, so you actually stand taller.