Professional activity: What do coaches do?

What is coaching? What does the work of coaches look like?

Coaching refers to supporting people in their professional and personal learning, change and development processes. The focus is on the conversation: the coach asks questions, provides feedback, carries out interventions and gives homework. The aim of coaching is to encourage clients - known as coachees - to develop their own solutions for their situation.

The most important tasks of a coach are To help people to help themselves, to strengthen the self-healing powers of the coachees, to help them develop alternative courses of action, to increase awareness and self-responsibility and, if necessary, to provide concrete relief in acute crisis situations.

Depending on the issue, coaching can be completed after one session (e.g. coaching to prepare for a specific meeting) or continue over a longer period with several sessions. Coaching sessions are possible with individual coachees to deal with personal issues or specific professional questions, as well as team or group coaching sessions to improve collaboration, support change processes or accompany a project.

Coaching begins with getting to know each other and building a relationship. The question, approach and objectives are discussed and recorded in writing. After each session, the coach and coachee reflect on what has been achieved and agree on the next appointments. At the end of a coaching session, the coaches obtain feedback and agree any further checks to see how the coachees are coping with the situation discussed.

There are many ways to specialize in coaching training, e.g. in work situations (job coach, sales trainer), personal situations (life coach, mental coach), in the business sector (leadership coaching, agile coaching), etc.

Where do coaches work?

Coaches can be permanently employed in a company and work full-time as a coach or mentor or take on individual coaching tasks within their other function.

Coaches are often self-employed and run a management consultancy whose services also include business coaching as part of the client relationship.

Coaches who offer personal coaching for private individuals usually work independently and often offer specialized consulting or seminars and courses in addition to coaching.

The distribution of tasks is as varied as these business models and offers. In addition to the actual coaching sessions, permanently employed coaches spend part of their working time on company meetings, discussions and administrative and organizational tasks (writing reports, coordinating appointments, etc.). In addition to coaching sessions, self-employed coaches are often busy writing invoices, managing their bookkeeping and administration and with advertising and marketing measures.

Target group and skills: Who is coaching training suitable for?

Target group

• People who would like to become self-employed as coaches and are looking for sound training
• Managers who want to strengthen their leadership skills with coaching
• Specialists and project managers who want to take on coaching tasks
• Teachers and vocational trainers who want to strengthen their coaching skills

Personal requirements

• Professional and life experience
• Good communication skills and high social competence
• Strong ability to reflect
• Enjoy dealing with people
• Ability to accompany and support people in their own processes

Requirements for admission

The admission requirements vary depending on the course and educational level and must be clarified directly in each individual case. The following is usually required

• Completed apprenticeship or comparable training
• Several years of qualified professional experience
• Minimum age 25 years
• Willingness to work on your own personal development and leadership skills
• Admission to the postgraduate courses requires a degree from a higher technical college (NDS HF), university of applied sciences (CAS, MAS) or comparable further education.
• Admission to the federal examinations (professional examination for company mentors with a federal certificate and higher professional examination for supervisor coaches with a federal diploma) requires several years of qualified professional experience in the field of the qualification and proof of own counseling, coaching or supervision sessions, documented own coaching or counseling processes as well as participation in practice and revision groups.

Content of the training and skills taught

Contents

The basic coach training covers the following topics:

• Basics, models and methods of coaching
• System-oriented, solution- and resource-oriented as well as person-centered approaches
• Language in coaching and counseling
• Role definition, framework conditions, rules of the game and mission clarification
• Phases of coaching (assignment to evaluation)
• Coaching of individuals, teams and organizations
• Coaching and change management
• Dealing with difficult situations and problems, analysis tools
• Collegial advice

The composition of the topics differs accordingly in specific further education courses - such as intercultural coaching, supervision or organizational consulting.

Mediated Competence

Successful graduates of a coaching course have in-depth specialist, methodological and reflective skills in their chosen coaching specialization.

They have dealt with the basic questions of coaching and developed their own coaching approach. They are able to accompany their coachees on the basis of their personal coaching concept with the help of targeted questions and other interventions (such as Gestalt therapy methods, NLP, team constellations, biography work, etc.) in a resource-oriented way towards the defined coaching goal and also support them during difficult phases of change. They help coachees to recognize their resources and discover new perspectives. They are also able to address issues such as team development, group dynamics or questions of organizational culture in team and organizational consultations.

Costs and financing of further training

The cost of coaching training depends on the type of training and the training objective. The course fees are to be paid either at the beginning of the training or by the semester. Sometimes individual installment payments can also be agreed.

The following information is a rough guide. The actual costs for a specific course can be obtained from the relevant training provider.

• For an introductory coaching course of 3-10 days, you should reckon with approximate costs from CHF 400 per day, i.e. 3-day courses from CHF 1200, 10-day courses from around CHF 4000.
• Some schools offer introductory courses in coaching that can be attended independently, but also serve as a mandatory preliminary stage for the subsequent courses to prepare for the professional examination to become a company mentor with a federal certificate. Anyone who passes the professional examination can then also apply to the federal government for half of the costs of the introductory course to be reimbursed (provided this was not more than five years ago).
• The costs for the entire training to become a coach - up to the start of the professional examination to become a company mentor with a federal certificate - amount to around CHF 15,000-16,000. The fees for the professional examination amount to CHF 2250 (as of January 2024). After taking the professional examination, half of the costs of the preparatory courses can be reimbursed by the federal government, regardless of the examination result*.
• The costs for the preparatory courses for the higher professional examination for supervisor coaches with a federal diploma are around CHF 17,000. The examination fees amount to CHF 4050 (incl. registration, diploma issue and SERI register entry). After passing the higher professional examination, half of the costs of the preparatory courses can be reimbursed by the federal government, regardless of the examination result*.
• The costs for postgraduate courses at colleges of higher education (NDS HF) and universities (CAS etc.) start at around CHF 7000.
• Depending on the course or training program, there are additional costs for teaching materials, training documents, supervision, hotel accommodation and internal examinations.

* Since 2018, preparatory courses for federal professional examinations and federal higher professional examinations have been financially supported by the federal government. After taking the federal examination, graduates can therefore apply for a refund of up to 50% of the costs paid for the preparatory courses. Further information is available here:www.sbfi.admin.ch

Duration, teaching form, teaching times and effort Self-study time

Short courses with the school's own degree as an introduction to coaching or to individual coaching topics usually comprise 1-14 days of classroom instruction. Occasionally, courses are also offered online.

The in-depth training courses are designed to take place alongside work and take a relatively long time - measured in terms of the number of teaching days - as self-reflection tasks have to be completed between the teaching days and supervision hours also have to be completed. The in-service training courses last:

• 6 to 9 months with 12 to 22 attendance days until completion of a CAS
• 1.5 to 2 years with 16 days of classroom instruction and 10 hours of supervision up to the federal professional examination
• 3 to 4 years with approx. 520 to 650 attendance hours to achieve a degree with BSO or SGfB association recognition or the federal higher professional examination
• 2.5 to 5 years with 58 to 80 attendance days and a total of 1800 hours of work (attendance classes, supervision, group exercises, Master's thesis) to complete an MAS

Degree and diploma

Coaching training courses are available in different orientations, levels and degrees of specialization. The degrees (with or without examination, examination form) and titles are correspondingly different, for example:

• School's own coaching certificate of course participation or (after passing the exam) school's own diploma
• School's own diploma plus association diploma as "dipl. Coach & Supervisor" or "Consultant SGfB"
• Federal qualifications and titles as "company mentor with federal certificate", "federally certified counselor in the psychosocial field" or "supervisor coach with federal diploma"
• Federally recognized title, e.g. as "dipl. Business Coach NDS HF"
• Higher education qualifications, e.g. "Certificate of Advanced Studies CAS [FH] in Coaching" or "Master in Advanced Studies MAS [FH] in Coaching, Supervision and Organizational Consulting"