Jan. 26, 2026
Why Most Coaching Certifications Don’t Create Real Coaches
Send us a text Scripts crumble the moment a client surprises you. What holds is identity. We dig into why traditional certifications often stop at information and how real growth happens when you train your way of being: emotional presence, grounded attention, and trust in your instincts. If you’ve ever memorized a framework and still felt lost in a raw moment, this conversation gives you a path forward. We unpack four traits that define a high-impact coach: staying fully present instead of ...
Scripts crumble the moment a client surprises you. What holds is identity. We dig into why traditional certifications often stop at information and how real growth happens when you train your way of being: emotional presence, grounded attention, and trust in your instincts. If you’ve ever memorized a framework and still felt lost in a raw moment, this conversation gives you a path forward.
We unpack four traits that define a high-impact coach: staying fully present instead of chasing the next question, refusing to rescue so clients keep their power, leaning into emotion without losing your center, and trusting yourself without a script. You’ll hear how these skills shift from theory to muscle memory through deliberate practice, live reps, and clear feedback. No more hiding behind a workbook. No more jumping in the pool with your client’s story. Just clean attention, courageous curiosity, and questions that arise naturally when you actually listen.
The payoff reaches beyond the session. When you become a coach rather than put on a coaching hat, the posture shows up at home, at work, and in every relationship. Confidence stops being a pep talk and becomes evidence you’ve earned through repetition. We also tackle the “how long will it take?” question and why focusing on timelines can mask doubt. Instead, we point you toward habits that accelerate identity change and make your craft portable to any room, any topic, any level of emotion.
If this resonates, take the next step with us: subscribe for more conversations on high-impact coaching, share this with a coach who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so others can find it too.
Interested becoming a High Impact Coach?
The High Impact Mastery Academy by Modern Leadership Coaching helps you:
- Serve Your Clients Better
- Accelerate Client Progress
- Stand Out as a Certified Coach
Join the waitlist today:
https://www.modernleadership.us/mastery
Chapters
00:00 - Why Certifications Fall Short
01:40 - Identity Over Information
03:17 - Four Traits Of Real Coaches
06:18 - Practice, Feedback, And Confidence
08:20 - Becoming A Coach Everywhere
Transcript
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So if you've ever become certified, taken the courses, learned the skills, but you still feel unsure in real coaching conversations, this video is for you.
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And let me be clear, it's not because you're doing something wrong.
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It's because most certifications are not built to help create real coaches.
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So here's what I mean is a lot of times I find that certifications tend to like lead with information equals coaching.
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But that's just not the case.
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Like I know that we teach in our certification like frameworks, skills, but a lot of times like people are now thinking that they need to know exactly what to say, they need to follow a script, and that's what's gonna help them actually coach.
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But that's not the truth.
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It's not just information that you need in order to become a more effective coach.
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As a matter of fact, we call that mentoring.
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But to really become a high impact coach, you got to take this a step deeper.
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And really, it's about working on your identity.
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So less than the questions that you ask is more of the person that you are when you're asking them.
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And how you'll know when you're accidentally going down this path, which by the way is not your fault.
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It's just how most certifications are designed.
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But it's when you get into those sticky moments, those emotional moments, when your client says or does something that's unpredictable, that's when you'll know that you're a real coach.
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Now, if you've been in those situations and what we're sharing kind of connects with where you're at, we want to let you know that this is not your fault.
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Even in our certification, we have a lot of people that reach out to us and want to know how many modules there are, how many scripts there are, what does the workbook look like?
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And I understand their desire behind that, but that's really not what we train.
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Yes, it's an important part of getting started, but really changing who they are in the room and really being able to step into a coaching identity so they can bring that with them anywhere that they go.
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Now that is the key to becoming certified.
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Now, I want to give you some ideas of what I mean by real coaching.
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Now, there's a lot of things that we teach inside of our certification that you can't just learn in a book.
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You have to be able to experience it.
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But I pick four that I really want to share with you to see where you're at.
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Now, number one is coaches have emotional presence.
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What I mean by that is they're not thinking about what's the next question that I can ask.
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They're not thinking about like three steps down the road.
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They're not doing what we call jumping in the pool, which is accidentally giving too much power to the things that your client is going through.
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Instead, they're physically, mentally, and emotionally present with their client, not making it mean anything about them and making it entirely about their client.
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Think about some of the things that you might miss if you're not being fully present like that.
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The second is coaches are not meant to fix or to rescue people.
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I see this happen a lot, where you want to rescue how your client feels.
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You want them to change how they're showing up.
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And all of these things are actually you preventing your client from finding their best answers, for getting them to lean in, for getting them to take ownership and to take the actions that they need to take.
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And instead, we accidentally plant the seed that they are broken and they're not.
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No one is ever broken.
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The third thing that real coaches do is they stay grounded when their clients are getting emotional.
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Now, we talk about this in our certification.
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Like when I hear an emotion come up, I really like to lean in as a coach.
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And I even like to verbalize it.
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I like to say, hey, you know what?
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Like this really is important to you.
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That means it's of utmost importance to me.
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And if you're okay with it, I'd like to go down that path and help you.
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Now think about how a client would feel if they start going down that path and you as the coach start getting nervous, start going into a different direction.
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I mean, there's just a lack of confidence there, and that's really something they need in that moment for somebody to be able to lean in.
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And having a script in that moment is not something that's really gonna help.
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Now, this leads us to the fourth thing, which is trusting yourself without a script.
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Remember, it's less important what you say, and it's more important who you are when you're in that room.
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When you know that no matter what they bring, you're gonna be able to help guide them through this.
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You're gonna have an awesome question for them.
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And it's not because you're sitting there preparing while they're talking, you wait for them to stop, and it immediately pops into your mind.
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That is what a real coach looks like.
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Now, in the beginning, it does take some time, energy, and effort, but it takes a couple other things that we want to talk about right now.
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So a lot of what we've been talking about so far has a lot to do with confidence and who you are in the room, right?
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That doesn't happen by autopilot, it doesn't happen on accident.
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It happens by you intentionally taking action, practicing, getting feedback, and leveling up.
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And I see a lot of different certifications that they don't even have practice sessions anymore.
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It's more of like watch these modules, take these actions and follow these steps, and then you can become certified.
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Now, this is not a knock on certifications.
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I mean, I went through a certification, it was really powerful.
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We did have practice sessions and feedback like this.
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But since then, it's actually changed and it's become full-on modules.
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But the truth is, is that I know that I would not have gotten to become the coach that I am today without actually getting practice, feedback, and getting other people to lean into me, to give me some ideas, to give me some direction to really not only help me feel confident in the room, but to know that I could be a coach in any situation, in any circumstance, and I'm gonna be able to help somebody out.
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Now we talked uh about identity, the identity of a coach, right?
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And I know like when we think about this, a lot of times people say, I'm gonna put my coaching hat on, right?
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And we are very like adamant in terms of like, yes, we want you to wear your coaching hat.
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We want you to wear it all the time because we really wanna be able to help people change their identity.
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So I'm curious, like when you think about identity change, what you've seen in our certification, like what comes up for you in terms of how do we help people really lean into that identity?
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Um, and then maybe what are some other things that come up along the way?
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I think uh for for me, it's something that I've seen happen with the different rounds that we've done of our certification and just like seeing all the different coaches kind of go through this.
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And it's really about thinking that, like you said, they don't just put their coaching hat on.
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It's they've become a coach.
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Like that's part of who they are.
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So they take this into other areas of their lives.
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So they never truly take the coaching hat off, like they just use it in different ways.
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So with clients, they use it in a specific way.
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But as parents or as uh spouses or as leaders, they use coaching uh concepts and they truly embody that.
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So that is something that I have noticed where people, that's when it starts to click.
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When it's not just about like when we're in the room and we're helping them, you know, become coaches.
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They're already identifying that this is very helpful in their everyday life.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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Like one of the things I do want to bring up too, um, because we have a lot of people on our certification who are brand new, but we have a lot more people who come in who've been certified before, right?
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And they've gone down this path of like learning the scripts, learning the frameworks, having the workbook and being able to take people through it.
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But then they question like, what should I do next?
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Or how should I help some this person?
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And and kind of what you were talking about right then is is I see the switch in the identity, and it's not the same for everybody, right?
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They come in wanting to learn some of these things.
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We teach them, right?
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And then we kind of like get them an opportunity to practice live with us and get some feedback.
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And you can see that that when somebody makes that change from just doing coaching to being a coach, they do exactly what you said.
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Where they come back the next week, we ask them a question, right?
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Because we always have these positive check-ins in the beginning of a call.
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And they're like, this is how coaching has changed my life today.
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And it is very minimal when it comes to like, oh, this is how I coach somebody today.
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It's all of like, this is how it's helped me transform.
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Because when you change your identity as a coach, you bring that person with you everywhere in the relationships with your family, conversations with your kids, work, all of these places, every place elevates.
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And that's how you know I'm not just doing coaching, I've become a coach.
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And then it's so much easier to be able to have those conversations with others and be able to guide them through it too.
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Yeah.
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That's when you know that you really truly have become a coach.
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And I know some people are like, well, how long does that take me?
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Right.
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I'm curious, like, what would you tell them?
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And if somebody was like, Yeah, but how long will that take?
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Yeah, and I think it all depends on how you go into it, like how much effort you put into it and how much you understand that concept, that the more that you practice and that you receive feedback and you do all those things, it's different for everybody.
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But I feel like the the more you dive in and the more you take it seriously, the the sooner um you'll become that type of coach that really kind of takes this everywhere, not just like in the classroom.
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Yep.
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I love it.
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I love it, I love it.
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One one thing that also does come up for me is like sometimes we'll ask ourselves questions that actually aren't so helpful, right?
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It's kind of like when you had a baby, right?
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And you take your baby home from the hospital.
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You don't ask yourself, well, like, how long is this gonna take me until I change my identity into a father?
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Right?
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It's like, I don't know.
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I just I'm gonna focus on the things that I need to do.
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How I can how can I get better?
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And from there, just that identity shifts, right?
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And sometimes it's in a moment and sometimes it takes a little bit of time.
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I think focusing on the time is the wrong thing because maybe you're actually what's really driving it is like there's there's a belief in there that like maybe this isn't possible or you know, something like that.
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Or there's gonna be a cutoff where if you don't see it, you're gonna pop for me.
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It'll never happen, right?
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I mean, these are all things that our brain tries to tell us to keep us safe, which just is a coaching conversation in and of itself, right?
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And so when you think about this, when you think about the idea of becoming a coach, this is what we really mean is changing you fundamentally on an identity level.
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And it's crazy what happens after that because clients will start coming out of the woodwork.
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They'll start asking for your help, and then you'll start bringing this into everything that you do.
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Now, if you're someone who really connected with this video and you want to have a mastery over coaching, not just what you do, but who you are, we'll leave a link inside of the show notes talking about how to become a high impact coach.
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That's the term we use for coaches who've reached the level of coaching that we've talked about here today, both to help with the internal and the external sides of performance, but to fundamentally become a different person in the process.
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And if we're not a team that you feel most connected with, I would encourage you to find a certification that not only helps you with this depth, but helps get you practice, feedback, and continuing to develop not only your skills as a coach, but the identity of who you step into the room as.
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