Clean Coach Certification Programme (accredited ICF Level 1 programme)

If you're a coach or interested in becoming one, you've probably noticed the vast array of coaching approaches available. What unites participants in our courses is a shared belief: everyone has the inner wisdom needed to solve their own problems and achieve their goals. They are drawn to Clean Language because it provides a clear way to help clients access this inner wisdom without imposing their own ideas, opinions, or judgments, or falling back on leading questions.

If this philosophy resonates with you, we’d love to support you to learn this powerful coaching methodology.

Clean coaching utilises Symbolic Modelling to focus on the metaphors clients use, developing them into a 'metaphor landscape' with its own structure and logic. We all use metaphors regularly, often without realising it. For example, words like "approaches," "tap into," "keep," "resonates," and "support" are metaphorical. Even abstract words like "wisdom" and "opinions" can be explored - and developed into metaphors - through clean questions: Is there anything else about wisdom? What kind of wisdom is that wisdom? Whereabouts is that wisdom?

By sticking to simple clean questions, you, as a coach, minimise the risk of interfering with your client's process. This ensures that the wisdom you are helping them to develop is theirs alone. Clean coaching with metaphors helps to evoke insights, awareness and shifts in perspective, while the practice of asking clean questions also encourages you to listen deeply and with curiosity, allowing clients to explore their metaphor landscapes and to delight in the changes that occur both during and after their sessions.

Training that leads to ICF accreditation

We offer several approaches to learning Clean Language, and this, our most in-depth course, leads to ICF accreditation. We understand that many people seek accreditation for their coaching, so we partnered with experienced ICF coaches Søren Holm and Lena Sobel to develop a programme that culminates in this accreditation - thus providing you and your clients with the assurance that your coaching meets high standards.

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. This definition aligns well with what happens during clean coaching sessions, and our accredited course enables you to use Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling effectively within your practice.

During the course you will:

Establish Definitions: Define coaching, Clean Language, and Symbolic Modelling, and learn how they combine to produce powerful and often life-changing experiences for your clients.
Learn Clean Questions: Understand the basic clean questions of David Grove and how to use them effectively.
Practise Clean Set Up: Use Caitlin Walker's Clean Set Up model and explore its applications in coaching contexts.
Reach Agreements: Discover how to use clean and clean-ish questions to reach and maintain agreements with your clients.
Identify Key Statements: Recognise problem, remedy, resource and desired outcome statements and learn how to use clean questions to direct your client’s attention towards their desired outcomes.
Explore Metaphors: Determine the best clean questions to move a client's attention from their everyday world to a more metaphorical or symbolic expression of that world.
Clarify Thinking: Help clients clarify their thinking by developing the unconscious metaphors they use.
Understand Metaphors: Gain a deep understanding of the importance of metaphors in everyday communication and coaching.
Cultivate Trust: Learn how Clean Language naturally cultivates trust and safety with your client.
Participate in Practice Sessions: Engage in coaching practice sessions that foster personal development—an essential component of becoming a coach.
Enhance Listening Skills: Improve your listening skills and develop a strong coaching presence.
Design Goals and Actions: Partner with your client to design goals, actions, and accountability measures that integrate and expand new learning.
Relate Skills to ICF Competencies: Learn how Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling relate to the ICF Core Competencies.
Understand the ICF Code of Ethics: Understand the ICF Code of Ethics and how to apply it in your coaching practice.
Access Online Resources: Gain access to an online manual and the Clean Campus—our online community of practice—where you can connect and practise with others on the course and participants from other clean courses.

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 accreditation you will also need to do 100 hours of client coaching and pass the ICF Credentialing Exam. Please note that there is an additional fee, payable to the ICF, for the credentialing process.

This training will take place over 15 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. Once the training is complete there will be a further two sessions devoted to group mentoring and you will also receive 3 hours of 1-2-1 mentoring. The final performance evaluation is also included in the price.

We understand that committing to a training program like this is a big decision. That's why we don't offer online bookings. Instead, we invite you to have a conversation with Marian, our Education Director, to ensure the course is the right fit for you.

We know you may have questions, and this informal chat will give you the chance to express your thoughts and concerns. Consistent with all clean practices, Marian's goal is to assist you in making the best decision for yourself, not to sell you on the course.

If you’re keen to find out more, book your free call with Marian here.

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 started the Clean Coach Certification programme after a few years of deciding what would be the best next step for me to combine Clean Language skills with a planned programme of study to help me develop the next stage of my career. I am a nurse, working in healthcare and knew that I wanted a more focused approach to support the change that I wanted in my career. I joined the Clean Coach Certification programme with some trepidation as I expected it to be mainly experienced coaches and I would feel an outsider! That was not the case at all. The design of the programme and the skills of the leaders allowed me to fully engage in the process of exploring and challenging myself. I had attended some Clean Language skills training before, but as a face-to-face programme, and discovered the power of using clean questions in many conversations. This training was online, delivered over a few weeks (which went by too quickly) and I remain amazed at how much I grew in my skills and enthusiasm for coaching using CL. So much so, that I am now describing myself as a coach and changing how I earn a living! The focus of this training is the development of skills via practice and feedback, just what I needed to develop my confidence and areas of development/training need. And…I have made new friends from across the world. I would recommend this training for anyone who wants to put their heart, as well as their head, into their coaching practice. I learnt so much about who I am as a coach and what I bring.
Sue Cradock

This is the best training workshop experience I've had in my professional career. How the programme is structured and organized, and the support are all exemplary. And Marian Way is a superb teacher who makes complex Clean Language topics easily understandable - generous, always on focus, and kind. And most valuable is her rich experience and knowledge. Best of all is learning a whole new way to become an even better coach, transcending the role of just being a provider of advice or just some accountability project manager, but facilitating true genuine self-directed life-changing transformation for clients, on their own terms. And that it also qualifies for ICF certification is just the icing on the cake. I cannot recommend this training and development programme for coaches highly enough.
Jonn Kares

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