Why would I register at the IRCM CIC, what’s in it for me?
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Have you seen our call for registrations pop-up recently, and have you wondered why on earth you should register with us? In this blogpost, we want to explain what’s in it for you.
The IRCM CIC (International Regulator for Coaching and Mentoring) has been initiated to protect the “consumers of the coaching and mentoring industry”. These consumers are not only the direct clients of coaches and mentors, but it also includes the coaches and mentors themselves, as they purchase industry-specific services such as membership of professional coaching and mentoring bodies and/or training from coaching and mentoring training organisations. (So, most coaches and mentors will be both “suppliers” and “consumers” in our industry).
Although coaching and mentoring as a service has been traced back to the times of the ancient Greeks, the coaching and mentoring industry as a whole is relatively young and “self-regulated”. This means that anyone is free to call themselves a coach or mentor, to start training people in coaching and mentoring, and even to launch a professional body to assess and accredit professional coaching and mentoring experience and skills.
This wouldn’t be a problem if everyone in the industry would take their job seriously and would strive to provide excellence to their consumers. But unfortunately, that isn’t the case. As in any self-regulated industry, not only genuine professionals have entered our industry, but also more and more charlatans see an opportunity to make quick big bucks in our market. And that is a problem!
If you have been around this industry for a while, you’ll probably have come across examples of this yourself:
- Unhappy clients who felt mistreated, misled or simply not supported by coaches or mentors they worked with before;
- An increasing scepticism of the public around coaches and mentors, with people making comments like “ah, another jobless person who didn’t know what to do so decided to become a coach/mentor”;
- Ridiculous results promised by coaches and mentors in adverts like “we’ll help you build your 7-figure business in 3 months”;
- Training programmes that offer “accreditation” of their own coaching and mentoring training programmes (whilst accreditation should always be an independent third-party validation process).
It shouldn’t be too hard to understand how these issues (and mind you, these are just a few examples, this list could go on and on) are damaging the reputation of our industry and therefore of every individual and every company working in this industry.
As coaches and mentors, we know how much value genuine professional coaches and mentors can provide. But we will only be able to keep providing that, if we collectively raise the bar, set standards to protect our reputation, and find a way to kick the charlatans out of our industry.
And that’s where the IRCM CIC comes in. Through our ombudsman service, we address all those issues that damage our industry. And together with our registered members, we learn from these issues and translate these into standards and codes of conduct to raise the bar.
But we can only continue doing this with the support of the industry. And that means that we need your support as well!
When you register with the IRCM CIC, you can:
- demonstrate your commitment to providing excellence to your customers, and protecting their interests, by supporting our ombudsman service (this will also help you to stand out from the competition!)
- demonstrate your commitment to building trust and confidence, protecting the reputation, and raising the bar for our industry as a whole
- help us bring this industry together for the good of the consumer and everyone working in this industry.
- positively influence the coaching and/or mentoring industry by actively participating in our surveys to help us shape the future of this industry.
Our annual registration fee is only £ 100, with a one-off registration fee of £ 50. For most coaches and mentors this means that you can help us by donating not even one hour of your time to our collective cause!
PS - In a next blog, we will explain to you how registration at the IRCM CIC is different from registering with a professional body, and why you should probably want to do both.
