International Coach Federation Colombo Chapter unveiled

With the evolution in the human development landscape, leaders are increasingly called to supplement their industry and functional expertise with the capacity for learning—and they are compelled to develop that capacity within their teams. 

No longer can managers simply command and control as that is considered archaic. Nor will they succeed by rewarding team members merely for executing the assigned tasks flawlessly. Instead, with full institutional support, they need to reinvent themselves as coaches whose desire it is to draw energy, creativity, and learning out of the people with whom they work. The growing recognition of the importance of coaching in nurturing individuals’ potential has led to a growing coaching profession in Sri Lanka among several professionals. 

Currently, there are than 200 trained, certified professional coaches and approximately 30 accredited coaches associated with the International Coach Federation (ICF), which is the world’s largest professional coaching body with a membership of 44,842 across 150 countries and territories.  

ICF defines coaching as, “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential”. Today, in this world of volatility and tremendous change, these skills have become a necessity to power any form of sustainable transformation. Coaching encourages self-discovery in alignment with what the client aspires to achieve, empowers the client to generate solutions and holds the client accountable for outcomes. Coaching is therefore a partnership which is steered through meaningful conversation, between the coach and a client.

In this context the Sri Lankan coaching community had a vision of forming the ICF Colombo Chapter as its next stepping-stone when they launched the Association of Professional Coaches in 2018, in the hope of enhancing the professionalism of the coaching industry. This enabled a membership of more than 40 coaches to communicate, interact and upskill themselves. The purpose of the association was to give credibility to an emerging profession and give coaches a place to connect with one another. 

The ICF Colombo Chapter was launched on 29 October. The Executive Committee of the Chapter envisions this hallmark occasion as the beginning of a coaching journey that will take professional coaching in Sri Lanka to greater heights. It paves a new way of serving coaches, coaching clients, our communities, and the world, as we pursue the ICF vision of making coaching an integral part of a thriving society. 

This certainly is a unique opportunity for all other professionals and corporate leaders and institutional leaders of government and non-governmental sectors to raise awareness and understand the impact of coaching by experiencing the global practices of coaching in Sri Lanka.

ICF’s coaches are trained and assessed on their knowledge of coaching ethics and coaching competencies to powerfully partner with clients’ progress; offering the best quality of service to their clients, irrespective of whether it’s individuals, groups/teams, or organisations; in which the coach is an expert in the process of facilitating positive change. Having an ICF Colombo Chapter will raise the bar for standards of coaching in Sri Lanka, while simultaneously enabling both the clients and sponsors to enhance their knowledge regarding professional coaching and expand their understanding of its benefits pertaining to individuals, teams and organisations in evolving into the next level of development.