1. Are they knowledge based or skills based?

There is a reason you want to be a coach or be able to use coaching skills. I am guessing that you want to be able to actually be effective. 

That is, you want to be able to actively help people. In our information driven world knowledge is seen in many instances to be held higher than skills. This can be especially true in various kinds of training in the helping professions. There is a vast difference between knowing all about coaching theory and being able to provide effective coaching. I have met many a coach that has a degree in coaching who I would be very unlikely to hire as a coach. In the end clients want effective good coaches with good skills They do not care how much theoretical knowledge you might have. 

2. How committed are they?

This matters to me. Do they have a passion for the work they train people to do? Or is it somehow lacking in vision and purpose? If you don’t feel an emotional tug then it might be tough to see it through. That emotional energy comes from the people leading and working in the training company. If they don’t fire you up then it probably is not a good choice.

3. How is their training programme devised and how often updated?

In human psychology and the helping professions avoid programs that lay claim to having not changed much since Freud and Jung were around. Well maybe not that long but the point is what we now know about how the human brain works (neuroscience) and how human behaviour is influenced has grown astonishingly, even since the 1980’s. 

In short,  coach training programmes have to integrate new knowledge and so the application of skills to that new knowledge where relevant. If the programme looks old and stale then it probably is. And beware coaching training organisations who sell themselves as timeless and unchanging.

4. There are no shortcuts to coaching mastery

It takes 20 years to have a 20 year old friendship. And once you have had a 20 year friendship you can answer the question to others about what that is like. 

The same needs to be thought about when considering training. If an organisation offers you a quickie training then most likely it is knowledge based and not skills based. Why? Because skills take time. Sports is a good example. I can take a weekend tennis course and get the basics of tennis up and running. I know how shots are supposed to be taken and the rules of the game. This does not make me fit to take on Andy Murray!

The same applies to providing skills and their mental framework to perform them to clients. I know it is tempting to believe that you can become a world class therapist / coach in 3 months. But the irony often is that the person selling the course will tell you how they have been in the business as a trainer and therapist for donkeys years to cement their authority as a teacher. Nothing wrong with that of course. I would look to see just how experienced a trainer was. 

What I would wonder though would be why they are telling me I can be like them in just a fraction of the time they have spent becoming masters. Either they are very slow learners or they are not being entirely open about the reality of being really really good at a skills based approach to working with people.

Of course they know that you would be unlikely to have confidence in a training programme offered by someone who had just had 3 months training themselves. 

Point is, if you want mastery in any field it takes knowledge and application to skills integration and practice And that is best done with passion.