Since the European Mentoring and Coaching Council was set up it has produced four policies and codes and has started work on two major research bodies. Julie Hay of the EMCC explains why the council was set up and what it hopes to achieve.
The coaching and mentoring industry seems set to grow and grow - which is great for all those individuals (and their organisations) who will experience the benefits of these developmental processes.
However, it is possibly not so good for consumers (those same individuals and organisations) who must try to choose wisely from a bewildering array of options.
The Origins of the EMCC
Enter the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, a body established precisely to meet the need for standards and professional practices, with individual, organisational and provider membership categories and open to all with an interest in raising coaching and mentoring standards.
Set up originally by a group of people providing coaching and mentoring services, training, consultancy, etc who set aside their potentially competitive interests in order to create a pan-European body, the EMCC aims to be a unifying and inclusive body covering as broad a spectrum as possible.
Establishing Standards
We have been very busy during our first year or so of existence.
It began with a Code of Ethics, closely followed by a Complaints Procedure just in case anyone breached the Code.
Next came a Diversity Policy, closely followed by Guidance on Supervision - the latter aimed at those coach/mentors who do not have supervision arrangements by virtue of membership of professional bodies such as the BPS or BACP.
Details on all of these policies are freely available at the EMCC website. Research This includes sorting out coach/mentoring typologies and the corresponding competencies (for example, do we need different skills for executive versus life coaching, and are they different to traditional mentoring?). The other research project is related to the characteristics of mentoring schemes set up within organisations. Again this is focused on standards, this aims to identify the key characteristics that make a 'good' scheme, such as how important is contracting with all stakeholders, providing training to mentors, having allocated resources, etc? Join In
Two major research projects are also now in hand - the most significant being to establish the competencies of coaches and mentors.
To get involved in one or both research studies send an email with your contact information and brief details of your coaching and/or mentoring background to Julie Hay with either 'Standards Research' or 'Schemes Research' (or both) as the header.
