The Guide The Gate The Grievance

What’s on your checklist?

Guides and Gates

Culturally, we have clear ideas about who is qualified to do certain jobs. You need to be an MD or DO to practice medicine. You need to pass the bar to practice law. Few are going to argue with a standardized approach to education and skills testing to certify people who are working in areas as critical and specific as heath care or criminal defense. Or, for that matter, for electricians or plumbers.

But we carry the idea that certain jobs must have certain qualifications into corporate settings and often never look back to consider if they are valid. Do people really need a college degree to work in advertising? Maybe if they are in finance and need specific accounting skills. But the rest of us?

I was an English major, but most of my early career was in sales. I didn’t take one course in college or grad school about sales. The training I got, and there was plenty of it, took place when I was working in sales, because I worked for companies who thought sales training was important, so they provided it.

I doubt I would have gotten those jobs if I didn’t have a college degree. The fact that that diploma said Stanford University also helped, I’m sure. I’m coming from that level of privilege to say many of the accepted things on the checklist of corporate competence may be outmoded and serve not as guidelines to maintain excellence or guarantee a certain skill level, but they have become barriers to entry, especially to people with less privilege or money or time.

First, let’s acknowledge that many jobs and careers clearly require specific education and training. But does that training always need to occur between the ages of 18 and 21 or in a four-year college or university setting?

Second, are we considering equivalencies? Let’s say I’m looking at hiring for an account management, producer or project management role, especially entry level, and I see a woman returning to the workforce after staying at home with a young family for a few years. I understand the skills she is bringing that a peer, who got a certificate in project management, does not have. Because I was a working single mother, and it taught me all about managing projects and people.

People who come from immigrant families bring multi-cultural competency that isn’t being taught in college, and often speak multiple languages, which is always useful, but we don’t always consider that in the plus column.

All I’m saying is, take a critical look at your job descriptions, especially for entry level and junior positions, and be clear about what you actually need in terms of formal education and specific job experience. Are there equivalencies? Is this a real guideline, a necessary safeguard? Or is it an assumption we made once that is now acting as a barrier to getting the best talent we can?  

I’m writing this quickly, Wednesday morning, because I was leading an all-day training yesterday. And I’m thinking about this particular topic because I have a grievance. Bear with me as I vent.

The Grievance

There is a well-respected organization called the International Coaching Federation or ICF. I’m a member. They offer useful services, and I especially like their code of ethics. Since you don’t need any kind of education or qualifications to hang out a shingle as an executive coach, or life coach, or wellness coach, the ICF provides some useful guides so people can make sure the person they are hiring has met certain criteria, and is agreeing to abide by important ethical considerations, like maintaining confidentiality and avoiding inappropriate relationships with clients.

While I’m a member of the ICF, I didn’t get my certification through them. I have a Masters in Transformational Leadership from Seattle University. I went to grad school while working full time, and it was expensive, both financially and emotionally. My son died when I was halfway through the program, and I took some time off. So, when I finally got that diploma, I was pretty proud of myself. Moreso when I paid off my student loans.

Based on that degree, I became an executive coach. After years of coaching, and hundreds of hours, I decided to get certified. But the ICF wouldn’t consider my graduate degree or the hundreds of hours of coaching I had been paid to do in a way that made sense to me.

So, I went to the CCE, the Center for Credentialing and Education. This is set up for people, like me, who have a graduate degree in something like counseling or psychotherapy and experience with coaching. I still had to complete 60 hours of new training, much of it redundant, and pay for that. But that was half of what I would have needed for the ICF Certification. I still had to show my transcripts, prove I had done the coaching I said I had done and get recommendations from clients as well as pass an exam.

Boxes checked, I became Board Certified through the CCE. And saved myself thousands of dollars and lots of time.

Lately I’ve been thinking about getting more training and get a certification for team coaching. The Advanced Certification for Team Coaching is only offered through the ICF. And I can’t get it because my certification doesn’t come through the ICF. There is no path to assess equivalencies, like the hours I’ve worked, previous graduate course work or letters from the teams I have already coached. I’d have to go back and spend thousands of dollars to get their flavor of certification because mine doesn’t count.

I understand that makes them money. And business and organizations get to prioritize profits. I work for myself, I can and have get work as a team coach with the education, experience and qualifications I have.

But what about people who need that certification to be considered for a job with an organization? What about someone who can’t afford the thousands of dollars and hours of classes because they are paying off loans for their graduate degree and working full time?

To me, this is an example of an organization with good intention – to develop a set of standards as guidelines for coaches that can protect people who want coaching – that has let those guidelines turn into gates. They have become gatekeepers, and may be keeping people out who have the equivalent or better education and experience, just because it’s not through their specific channels.

I don’t mind following rules if they make sense. This one, and many of the demands for college degrees from four-year universities for corporate jobs, don’t make sense anymore. Get out your red pen, turn up your common sense, and look at the criteria for jobs and advancement where you work and see if they are guides or barriers.