10 Tips for Hiring a Coach

Written by Pam Solberg-Tapper | Edited by naga

Last updated on Aug 03, 2022

Sections of this topic

1. Be clear on your objective:

Most coaches have an area of expertise such as: career, entrepreneurs, life, executives, financial, or branding. Match your goal with the coach’s expertise. Ask the coach about their limitations –do they coach clients with your needs?

2. What are the coach’s qualifications?

Is the coach certified and by what training organization?

3. Background and Experience:

Find out what life/work experience the coach has had. Have they been in situations similar to yours? How many clients have they coached, in what industries and with what results?

4. Cost/Contract:

The fees for coaching vary widely. Be sure to ask about the terms – do you prepay? Is the fee schedule set up by the session, month or program? What is the length of each session? How often will you meet? What if you prepay and decide to discontinue? If the coach uses assessments will there be extra charges? What about travel costs if the coach does not live near you?

5. Test Drive:

Most coaches will offer an initial complimentary session. It is wise to interview at least 3 coaches to help with your selection. Be sure to assess whether their personality aligns with yours.

6. Interview the Coach’s Clients:

Even though coaching is confidential, most coaches have clients that will talk to prospects and share their experience. What were their successes? What did they like and what could have been better? What advice do they have for you?

7. Success Rates:

Find out your expected return on investment. How does the coach measure success? What are some of the coach’s success stories?

8. Finding a Coach:

Word of mouth, online referral services, coaching schools, local chapters of coaching associations and HR departments are ways to find reputable coaches.

9. Face to Face or Virtual:

Decide weather you prefer to coach in person or virtually. Many coaches will do both and offer a combination. Virtual coaching usually consists of phone, email or technology such as Skype.

10. What does the coach do to stay on top of their profession?

How do they stay apprised of industry changes, specialty skills and professional development? How do they apply this to their coaching?

What other tips can you add?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

Pam Solberg-Tapper

Recommended for you

How to Start Your Private Peer Coaching Group

How to Start Your Private Peer Coaching Group Introduction Purpose of This Information The following information and resources are focused on the most important guidelines and materials for you to develop a basic, practical and successful PCG. The information is intended for anyone, although it helps if you have at least some basic experience in …

Leadership Skills

What Makes for An Effective Leader?

What Makes for An Effective Leader? © Copyright Sandra Larson, Minneapolis, MN. Sandra Larson, previous executive director of MAP for Nonprofits, was once asked to write her thoughts on what makes an effective leader. Her thoughts are shared here to gel other leaders to articulate their own thoughts on what makes them a good leader. …

Leadership Skills

How to Design Your Leadership Training and Development Program

How to Design Your Leadership Training Development Program Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright; Authenticity Consulting, LLC (Note that there are separate topics about How to Design Your Management Development Program and How to Design Your Supervisor Development Program. Those two topics are very similar to this topic about leadership development, …

Leadership Skills

What is the One Best Model of Group Coaching?

Group and team coaching are fast becoming a major approach in helping more organizations and individuals to benefit from the power of coaching. There are numerous benefits, including that it can spread core coaching more quickly, be less expensive than one-on-one coaching, provide more diverse perspectives in coaching, and share support and accountabilities to get …

Leadership Skills

How to Avoid Confusion in Conversations About Learning and Development

It’s fascinating how two people can be talking about groups and individuals in almost any form of learning and development, but be talking about very different things. You can sense their confusion and frustration. Here’s a handy tip that we all used in a three-day, peer coaching group workshop in the Kansas Leadership Center, and …

Leadership Skills

Reflections on the Question: “Is it Group or Team Coaching?”

I started my first coaching groups in 1983 and since then, have worked with 100s of groups and taught hundreds of others how do design and coach/facilitate the groups. I’ve also read much of the literature about group and team coaching. Here are some of my lessons learned — sometimes painfully. 1. The most important …

Leadership Skills

Single-Project and Multi-Project Formats of Action Learning

In the early 1980s, I started facilitating Action Learning where all set members were working on the same problem or project (single-project Action Learning, or SPAL). My bias in Action Learning has always been to cultivate self-facilitated groups, somewhat in the spirit of Reginald Revans’ preferences for those kinds of sets, too. However, at least …

Leadership Skills

What is Group Coaching? How Do You Develop It? (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1, we described group coaching, starting with a description of coaching and then group coaching. We also listed many powerful applications of group coaching. Basic Considerations in Designing Group Coaching It is very important to customize the design of group coaching to the specific way that you want to use it. There are …

Leadership Skills

6 Steps to Resolving a Level 1 Disagreement

A disagreement arises in a meeting you are facilitating. This is an inevitable scenario in many types of meetings where a group needs to come to critical decisions - such as strategic planning or issue resolution sessions. How do you - the person in the room responsible for building consensus - resolve it without breaking group dynamics or creating a tense environment of division? It's a tough job, but you can (and need to) do it. Here's one way to resolve the disagreement.

Leadership Skills

Extensive, Free, Practical Online Resources for Action Learners, Facilitators and Coaches

(The aim of this blog has always been to provide highly practical guidelines, tools and techniques for all types of Action Learners and coaches. Here are links to some of the world’s largest collections of free, well-organized resources for practitioners in both fields.) The Action Learning framework and the field of personal and professional coaching …

Leadership Skills

Action Learning Certification — There is No Independent Certifying Body (Should There Be?)

The field of personal and professional coaching has a widely respected and accepted, independent certifying body called the International Coach Federation. It is independent in that it does not concurrently promote its own model of coaching — it does not engage in that kind of conflict of interest. There seems to be a mistaken impression …

Leadership Skills

How to capture information using formats, abbreviations, and headlines

As a meeting facilitator, you must employ several techniques for recording information in a session to make it a manageable process. When you are gathering input, ideas, and issues from your group at warp speed, it will inevitably be challenging and tedious. Here are a few methods to make the process easier.

Leadership Skills

What March Madness teaches us about facilitation

Here we go. It's now down to the Final Four in this year's NCAA March Madness. As I analyze the four remaining teams and highlights of their seasons (and take a look at my butchered bracket!), I think about how March Madness and - more importantly - the game of basketball really does embody what we know about facilitation. Let's consider that thought for these reasons.

Leadership Skills

What kind of a Tough Leader are you?

Alan Frohman Articles, books and experience identify at least two types of tough leaders. Each is demanding, but in very different ways. The first type is described in these terms: Critical Judgmental Lacks compassion Micromanaging Disrespectful They rarely view themselves that way. But that is how their people describe them. They see themselves as being …

Leadership Skills

6 Things You’ll Hear in an Unprepared Meeting

Many times, we, as facilitators, are not prepared (or ill prepared) for meetings, and that leads to some horrific results – including those feelings you experienced while watching a fellow facilitator suffer through a meeting. What are some things you'll hear in an unprepared meeting? Look out for these words. And, don't let this happen to you.

Leadership Skills