Clean Coach Certification Programme (accredited ICF Level 1 programme)

Are you a coach, aspiring coach or Clean Language facilitator? Or a manager, consultant, HR specialist, health worker or leader who would like to gain skills in coaching with Clean Language? Would you like to gain formal accreditation as a coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF)?

Join our Clean Coach Certification Programme to gain training in clean coaching which also forms the basis of your application to become an Associate Accredited Coach (ACC).

The ICF is the leading global organisation for coaches and coaching, dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high standards, providing independent certification and building a worldwide network of trained coaching professionals. ICF accreditation is often required by those procuring coaching services - as a guarantee of quality.

The ICF defines coaching as: Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential.

We recognised this definition as being a good fit with what happens during Clean Language sessions, and together with our colleagues in Sweden - Lena Sobel and Søren Holm, both experienced ICF coaches - we set out to create an accredited course that would allow coaches to make full use of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling within their coaching practice.

During the course you will:

Establish definitions for coaching, Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling and learn how they can combine to produce powerful and often life-changing experiences for your clients.
Learn the basic clean questions of David Grove and how they can be used for maximum effect.
Practice Caitlin Walker's Clean Set Up model and ascertain different ways this can be used in a coaching context.
Find out how to use clean and clean-ish questions to reach and maintain agreements with clients, both at the start of a series of sessions and at the start of each individual session.
Discover how to identify problem statements, remedy statements, desired outcomes and resources and how to use clean questions to direct clients' attention more to desired outcomes and resources.
Determine which are the best clean questions for moving a client's attention from their conceptual, everyday world, towards a more metaphorical or symbolic expression of that world.
Learn how you can help your client to clarify the structure of their thinking by developing the unconscious metaphors they use.
Gain a deep understanding of the importance of metaphors in everyday communication and in coaching.
Find out how using Clean Language is a natural way to cultivate trust and safety with your client.
Participate in coaching practice sessions that will bring you rich personal development - as essential ingredient in becoming a coach.
Practice the Clean Feedback model during these sessions and integrate this into your coaching practice too.
Improve your listening skills and develop your coaching presence.
Discover how to partner with your client to design goals, actions and accountability measures that integrate and expand new learning.
Learn how the skills of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling relate to the ICF Core Competencies.
Understand the ICF Code of Ethics and what needs to happen for you to apply it in your own coaching practice.
Have access to an online manual and to the Clean Campus - our online community of practice, where you can meet and practise with others on the course and with participants from other clean courses.

The training is either delivered in-person or over Zoom.

The in-person training will take place over two 4-day modules. Some sessions will be devoted to practice where you will receive feedback from experienced clean coaches who have already gained their accreditation with the ICF. During other sessions there'll be teaching, discussion, shorter practice activities, demonstrations and time for reflection. There will also be two sessions of group mentoring which will be delivered over Zoom on Saturday mornings. You will also receive 3 hours of 1-2-1 mentoring, also over Zoom.

The Zoom based training will take place over 17 x 4-hour sessions via Zoom. Some sessions will be devoted to practice where you will receive feedback from experienced clean coaches who have already gained their accreditation with the ICF. During other sessions there'll be teaching, discussion, shorter practice activities, demonstrations and time for reflection. The final two sessions will be group mentoring and you will also receive 3 hours of 1-2-1 mentoring.

The Clean Coach Certification Programme is run according to clean principles, which means that although we’ll be going in a definite direction, the way we get there will be partly down to you and your needs, your questions and your interests. From the outset we’ll be discovering what kind of training you would like to have and we’ll be tailoring what we do to meet your needs. We’ll be checking in with you regularly, because we know that your ideas about what you’d like to have happen are likely to change as new information - about yourself, the process and the course itself - becomes available.

We’ll be respecting and encouraging diverse thinking. We’ll be welcoming your contributions and your questions and we’ll be suggesting you ask them as they occur to you, so that your learning can happen in the moment. We love helping people to learn the skills of Clean Coaching - and to witness the personal development that occurs when these skills are put into practice. We hope you’ll find this programme fun, interesting and challenging, that you’ll enjoy the whole experience and that you’ll learn a lot.

This Clean Coach Certification Programme is accredited as an ICF Level 1 programme. It includes 52 hours training, 10 hours mentoring and your performance evaluation (where you record and transcribe a coaching session and submit this for evaluation). To gain the ACC accredition you will also need to do 100 hours of client coaching and pass the ICF's Credentialling Exam. Please note that there is an additional fee, payable to the ICF, for the credentialling process.

Our mission / vision for being an ICF accredited coach education provider (docx 14KB)

Our learning philosophy (docx 15KB)

Frequently asked questions

What is the ICF and how does it relate to clean coaching?

ICF stands for International Coaching Federation, a leading global organisation for coaches
and coaching. The ICF is dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high
standards, providing independent certification, and building a worldwide network of trained
coaching professionals.

The ICF defines coaching as: “Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative
process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The
process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity
and leadership.”

More detail

Who was David Grove?

David Grove was the creative genius who developed Clean Language, Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge - the clean approaches upon which the entire field of ‘clean’ has been built.

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What is Clean Language?

Clean Language is a simple set of questions developed by counselling psychologist David Grove. These questions are used with a person’s own words to direct their attention to some aspect of their own experience. Asking these questions in the right context often results in an interesting new insight or the recognition of some new possibility. And if that new possibility is then questioned using Clean Language, the result can be quite profound. Clean questions invite people to consider their experience from different perspectives and they are often surprised by their own capacity to generate new, powerful and useful ideas about their own experience.

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What is Symbolic Modelling?

Symbolic Modelling was created by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley when they worked with and observed David Grove over several years, to discover what he was doing to achieve his phenomenal results. They combined David’s ideas with ideas from the fields of cognitive linguistics, systems thinking and NLP to produce a model which could be taught to others to enable them to achieve the same kinds of results as David.

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What is Clean Feedback?

Clean Feedback is a way of giving someone (or yourself) feedback that is likely to be acted upon. This is because it separates out what actually happened from what you are making up about that event and from the impact it is having.

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Testimonials

I want you to know how much I appreciate all the time and energy you put into the success of your Clean students. As someone who has taken a lot of workshops and trainings over the years, nothing compares to what you have created with Clean Learning and the way you carry on David Grove's legacy.
Anonymous

I am delighted to say that I have been awarded the PCC credential! I am ‘over the moon’ and can’t thank you enough for the role you have played in supporting my learning and development as a coach. One of the recordings I submitted for my application demonstrated how impactful Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling can be as a means of evoking awareness. It’s worth highlighting that the assessor feedback indicated that all but one PCC marker was observed for this session. I think that is a real credit to you and the wonderful course! Thank you.
Alastair Callaghan, Coach, Facilitator & Trainer

The Clean Coach Certification Program is one of the best, if not the very best, training programs in which I have participated in any topic. I started the program with an ICF Professional Coach Certification credential and many years of coaching experience. The program has made me a much more confident, relaxed and effective coach. Through highly interactive training sessions with two of the leaders in the field of Clean, Marian Way and Caitlin Walker, the other participants and I practiced progressively more specific and nuanced coaching skills that culminated in our ability to ‘know what we were up to’ to benefit our clients. One thing that made this training so effective and unique was how it was organically designed to meet the specific needs of our group of students. By observing our practice sessions and reviewing the resulting transcripts, Marian not only gave us valuable feedback, but she determined what we needed and then designed our next class around that. I have participated in very good trainings before, but they have all been scripted in advance, so did not feel as personally valuable or impactful to me. Marian and Caitlin really walked their talk and were constantly willing to explore what came up in our group. I continue to be amazed by the profound effect on my clients from providing them the space, curiosity and attention to get in touch with their subconscious metaphorical landscapes. The Clean approach to coaching quite simply changed my life for the better. How’s that for value! I highly recommend jumping at the chance to take this course and any other programs that Marian and Caitlin come up with.
Lisa Taylor

Upcoming events

Clean Coach Certification Programme (ICF ACC)

Places available
Two in-person modules: 6-9 July, 7-10 September, 9:30am to 6pm BST each day. Plus 2 online sessions, Saturday mornings in October and November (see details).
The Practice, West Kirby, Wirral, United Kingdom
With Marian Way , Caitlin Walker PhD

Details & booking