Coaching Professional

On a coaching professional apprenticeship course, you’ll help provide skills coaching to individuals and teams.

The professionalisation of coaching is growing increasingly common, including one-on-one coaching, team coaching, leadership coaching, and integrating coaching abilities inside cultural and governance infrastructures to support future ways of working.

In this role, you will empower and engage a broad set of people and teams from multiple organisations to improve their professional performance.

Coaching is a non-directive way of leading that encourages individuals to learn via deep listening and contemplative, open questioning rather than lecturing, delivering advice, or making suggestions.

You’ll discover how to apply emotional and social intelligence to assist students in developing self-awareness, flexibility, resilience, wellbeing, motivation, and confidence. 

You’ll also discover how to apply emotional and social intelligence to assist students in developing self-awareness, flexibility, resilience, wellbeing, motivation, and confidence.

What you’ll learn

On a coaching professional apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Resolve competing objectives and ensure appropriate time for record-keeping and other job responsibilities. Time management, including scheduling coaching sessions and self-leadership, is necessary.
• Set explicit goals with coaching clients, including visualisation tools, timelines, and confirmation of achievability, record outcome-focused, prioritise action plans and track progress toward goals
• Contract with all necessary parties, such as logistics, coach and client preferences, system issues, goal setting, outcome realisation, and contract closure.
• Uphold high ethical standards, particularly in the areas of confidentiality (for example, when retaining coaching records) and boundary management (including your competence and values, relevant codes of ethics, and relevant legislation, policies and procedures)
• Pay attention to stakeholders’ plans and objectives.
• Acknowledge the personal values, emotional state(s), and responses of those receiving coaching, validating their understanding of themselves and their circumstances, dealing with difficult coaching relationships, and ensuring non-dependence on the coach are all part of building and maintaining rapport/trust.
• Provide coaching feedback in a relevant, acceptable, nonjudgmental, and meaningful way to the people receiving it.
• Identify mental patterns, beliefs, and both restricting and enabling behaviours.
• Develop self-awareness in those getting coaching, open inquiries, broaching difficult subject areas (e.g. emotional condition, components of broader systems), and confronting false, restricting assumptions are all used.
• Demonstrate emotional intelligence through showing empathy and genuine support for individuals being coached (“unconditional positive regard”), as well as customising language and behaviour to the whole person.
• Apply coaching theories, models, methods, approaches, and concepts to bring about insight and development, in addition to the important communication skills.
• Manage and accept diversity in coaching practice, demonstrating how diversity and inclusion inform professional practice.
• Demonstrate awareness of one’s values, beliefs, and behaviours; recognises how these influence one’s practice; and use this self-awareness to manage one’s efficacy in helping persons receiving coaching and, if appropriate, the sponsor achieve their goals.

Entry requirements

You’ll usually need:

• Depending on the employer, but likely A-levels or equivalent qualifications or relevant experience for an advanced apprenticeship 
• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this before taking the end-point assessment.

Assessment methods

The End Point Assessment comprises three assessment methods:  

• Observation with questions and answers
• Interview supported by a portfolio of evidence
• Knowledge test

Duration, level, subjects and potential salary upon completion

Apprenticeship standard

More information about the Level 5 Coaching Professional Apprenticeship standard can be found here.

Apprenticeship end point assessment

For more information about the End Point Assessment Process, please read the Institute of Apprenticeships’ information page.