My name is Bruce Stopher (rhymes with gopher). I am an internationally credentialed life coach, and a fully-trained coach supervisor. Here’s my coaching “story.”
I was exposed to coaching in the corporate world in the early 2000s. Our CEO experienced such fantastic results with his executive coach that he mandated that every leader in the company who had direct reports (subordinates) learn to coach at least on a basic level.
After my four-hour training class on coaching in the business world, I embraced the concept and took several opportunities to grown in my coaching abilities. I was particularly interested in Motivational Interviewing. I eventually became know as “the guy who asks questions.”
It was 15 years later that I began to hear about life coaching. The little that I read online seemed to be similar to what I had been doing in corporate life – but different. I began to look into growing more in the world of personal coaching.
My first coach training consisted of simply watching multiple videos on my laptop and gathering the documents the instructors suggested I needed to use. At the end of that training, I was certified by that company as a “Master Certified Life Coach.” However, I had never observed a coaching session, nor had I done it myself during the training. There had to be something more!
A few months later, I found the ICF (International Coaching Federation), the world’s largest coaching association. I began to learn what they considered coaching, which was far different from what I had experienced in my previous trainings. I found an ICF-accredited coach training company, and as I increased in my training of evocative coaching (asking questions rather than providing answers), I also took courses from other ICF-accredited companies.
The training companies that I attended include: Coach Training for Leaders (5 hours), Coaching Outside the Box (9 hours), Creative Results Management (35 hours), Fluxify (4 hours), Institute for Life Coach Training (56 hours), Professional Christian Coaching Institute (139 hours). That’s 248 hours of LIVE coach training, along with certification for two other programs.
In addition to my Life Coach training, I have also completed 150 hours of coaching supervision training through Goldvarg Consulting Group, a program that meets the accrediting requirements of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). The ICF does not currently endorse any supervision training, but does recognize those accredited by the EMCC.