How do you know if a coach is competent?

Video transcript:

So you're thinking about using a coach
Of course an obvious question is
How do I know if this coach is
competent or not?
How do I know if this coach is
competent or not?
Now you can certainly
and this is coming from 20+ years of
teaching coaches and doing a lot of coaching
thousands of hours of coaching in my time
How do you really check that someone is
competent because you could look at all
their qualifications, their memberships
to coaching bodies, their experience,
the number of people they work with
etcetera, etcetera.
But, trust me, none of that will actually
tell you whether that coach is competent
or not. The only way you can judge
whether a coach is competent or not is
Do they work for you?
Do they work for you?
Now as a rule of thumb, even with even
major issues in coaching, major lifetime
inhibitions, things holding people back,
serious issues that require a mixture of
therapy and coaching and so on
If you're not making significant progress
within 2 sessions, 3 at the most
If you're not making significant progress
then that coach is not competent for you.
They may be really, really competent for
somebody else with their particular coaching
style or methodology but not for you, OK.
And that's the key thing.
Now certainly its worth, the most important
thing before you take on a coach
have a chat with them, gauge for your self
what the fit is like, how it works together.
You know very quickly, within 10-15 minutes
you'll get a good feel for
whether the coach is for you or not.
Things like qualifications and stuff like that
are kind of 'nice to haves' but, and trust me
I've got loads of them, but I've also met people
with loads of coaching qualifications that I
wouldn't go near with a barge pole - for all
sorts of reasons; usually inflexibility for one,
lack of creativity. You know, a total focus
on qualifications and how 'clever they are'
rather than actually serving the purpose of
the coaching client they are working with,
etcetera, etcetera.
The most important thing is, certainly by the
end of the first session you'll know what
coaching really feels like with this coach.
By the end of the second session you should
be making serious progress on any major
issue you've got.
And by a third session you
should be well on your way to overcoming the
issue that's stopping the performance that
you'd like to get or something you're trying
to achieve in life.
If that's not working then that coach is not
competent for you.
It doesn't mean they're not a competent coach
but it's not working for you and
select another coach.
Alright, so let me know what you think in terms
how you judge a coach is competent or not
and it would lovely to hear what you
think from your own experience.