Core CCEUs are valuable. Resource Development CCEUs are easy to get, not as prestigious, almost throwaway. You can get them for just reading a book, after all. This attitude, which flows directly from how the ICF categorises continuing education is quietly contributing to the 82% failure rate of coaching businesses, yet nobody is talking about it.
Understanding The Hierarchy
The ICF awards two types of Continuing Coach Education Units. Core CCEUs are awarded by accredited training programmes for teaching core competency-related material – the actual coaching skills. Resource Development (RD) CCEUs are awarded for “other” – everything else that supports your coaching practice but isn’t directly about coaching competencies.
Examples of what typically counts for RD CCEUs include business development, marketing, sales, client attraction, email systems, leadership or organisational development, personal growth work, tools and assessments that support coaching outcomes, new models or research that inform your practice, self-study like reading books or articles, attending conferences where learning is broader than core coaching skills, and research or writing on coaching-related topics outside core competencies.
Basically, if it’s not about coaching delivery, it’s RD, and because coaching is held in such high esteem within our profession, core CCEUs are considered valuable whilst RD CCEUs are not considered to be as valuable.
What Training Organisations Choose To Deliver
This hierarchy affects more than what coaches choose to learn – it affects what training organisations choose to deliver. I had a conversation recently with a coach trainer who expressed surprise at the fact that The Coaching Revolution’s Business Development Diploma for Coaches offers 40 CCEUs, 23 of which are core. They were very surprised indeed, they said (I’m paraphrasing), “Gosh, I didn’t even bother to get our business stuff accredited – RDs are too easy to get elsewhere.”. And that, dear coach, is the crux of it.
Because business development fits into the RD category, it’s not as ‘prestigious’ as things that fit into Core category. That attitude filters down, and in the end there’s this fractionally distasteful view of learning client acquisition skills – without which you don’t really need any other business development skills, because without clients you don’t have a business. There’s a sort of ‘throwaway attitude’ to the skills themselves.
That coach trainer who didn’t get their business development content accredited won’t be teaching anything like what we teach and it definitely won’t be in the depth we teach it. What they do teach is probably similar to what many other coach training organisations teach which we know from experience isn’t usually that great.
The Implied Hierarchy
What happens is that when we’re reaccrediting, we prioritise Core CCEUs over RD CCEUs. We pursue advanced certifications and masterclasses in coaching skills because they give us core hours. We choose training based on whether it counts towards core rather than RD. The message is clear – core CCEUs are what serious, professional coaches invest in, whilst RD is something you can tick off by reading a book or attending a free webinar.
If something counts as resource development, it’s perceived as ‘easy’ and not as complex or intellectual as core coaching skills. This attitude comes from how the ICF has structured its CCEU categories, with core representing the ‘real’ professional development and RD representing everything else.
The fact that things that fit into RD are perceived as easy, as simple as reading a book, means coaches don’t expect them to be difficult. Client acquisition is just marketing, and marketing is just common sense, isn’t it? You can figure it out as you go along. It’s not like learning to coach, which requires proper training and practice.
Except client acquisition is genuinely difficult and is clearly demonstrated by the number of us who really struggle with it, and that the majority fail to recognise that this idea of it being easy and not as valuable as coaching has leeched into our belief systems. That makes it even more embarrassing when we can’t make it work. If it’s supposed to be easy, if it’s not as intellectually demanding as coaching, if you can learn it just by reading a book, then what does it say about us when we fail at it?
The Impact On Coaching Businesses
What actually happens is that we invest thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours in our coaching training. We pursue advanced certifications, we rack up core CCEUs by attending masterclasses and workshops on coaching skills and we become excellent coaches.
Then we struggle to find clients. We might take a generic business course or read a book about marketing, tick off some RD CCEUs, and consider that job done. After all, it’s just RD – it’s the easy stuff, the bolt-on skills, not the real professional development.
When that surface-level learning doesn’t translate into clients, we don’t think “I need more in-depth training on client acquisition” we think “marketing doesn’t work” or “the profession is saturated” or “I’m just not cut out for running a business.” We give up and become part of the 82% who fail.
Many of us never realise that client acquisition is a professional-level skill that requires professional-level training, just like coaching does. We never realise that the RD classification has led us to undervalue the very skills that would actually build their business.
Equalising Skill Sets
Both delivery skills and ‘creating the opportunities to do the delivery’ skills are skill sets we need to have a financially viable coaching business. We need good coaching skills, and we need good client acquisition skills to succeed. One without the other doesn’t work.
You can be the most skilled coach in the world, with impeccable core competencies and dozens of core CCEUs, and you’re business will still fail if you can’t find clients. Equally, you can have the best client acquisition skills in the world, but without good coaching delivery, you won’t retain clients or build a sustainable reputation.
The two sides of our business – delivery and client acquisition – are not hierarchical, they’re equal.
What The Two-Tier Structure Gets Wrong
The problem isn’t that the ICF has separate categories for core and RD CCEUs. The problem is the implied value hierarchy that’s developed around those categories. The problem is that “resource development” are treated like optional add-ons rather than essential business skills, because “RDs are too easy to get elsewhere” – and that’s the crux of it.
Client acquisition isn’t easy. Marketing a profession that nobody understands (but thinks they do and they’re wrong) isn’t simple. Building a coaching business without monetisable credibility isn’t something you can figure out by reading a book. These are complex, professional-level skills that require proper education, practice, and ongoing development. When they’re ‘just’ RD skills, they are somehow diminished in the collective mind of our profession.
An Attitude Shift
This impression that learning about business development – of which client acquisition is a major part – is a bolt-on and not as important as coaching might be erroneous. In fact, it’s demonstrably erroneous given the 82% failure rate.
If core coaching skills were all we needed, the high number of coaches who set out to build a coaching business wouldn’t be failing. If client acquisition were really as easy as the concept of ‘RD’ implies, the majority of coaches wouldn’t be giving up within two years. The evidence is right in front of us, but we’re not looking at it because we’re too busy pursuing more core CCEUs and treating business development as an afterthought.
We need to start valuing client acquisition skills at the same level as coaching skills. We need to stop treating marketing training as something you can pick up for free in a webinar or learn from a generic business book. We need to recognise that building a coaching business requires two equal skill sets, and both deserve serious investment of time, money, and effort.
The ICF’s two-tier CCEU structure isn’t going to change, but the attitude of our profession towards it can. We can choose to recognise that RD CCEUs in client acquisition are just as valuable – perhaps more valuable in the first two years of our business – as core CCEUs in coaching competencies.
We can choose to invest in proper, coach-specific client acquisition training rather than believing it to be an easy add-on. We can choose to recognise that the skills required to market a profession nobody understands are complex, counterintuitive, and absolutely essential. Or we can keep treating business development as less important than coaching, keep failing to find clients, and keep contributing to that high failure rate whilst wondering why good coaching isn’t enough.
The choice is ours, but I’d argue that the current hierarchy isn’t serving us, and perhaps it’s time we acknowledged that.
An Opportunity
If you’d like the change for a robust conversation about this – or to just flat-out tell me why I’m wrong – why not join my next free challenge, Nail Your Niche? We run it several times a year and there’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me for just £99 (inc VAT) – that provides us with time for a lot of robust conversations!
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