If you’re looking to work with corporate businesses or deliver one-to-one leadership training, making your coaching or consulting business stand out is one of the keys to your success. We asked our community of certified practitioners for their experiences of how a RocheMartin Emotional Intelligence certification has helped them build highly successful businesses.
Differentiation is becoming increasingly critical for business coaches. It’s not difficult to see why. Today, the formal barriers to being a business coach are low. No set qualifications are needed. There is no official industry body. No recognised minimum standards. As a result, there is huge competition in an increasingly saturated market. “The coaching space is getting very full in comparison to when I started coaching 20 years ago,” says Brenda Dooley, CEO of Axis Healthcare Consulting.
RocheMartin’s EQ certification, with its academic background and almost 15,000 customers, provides credibility and justification for coaches and consultants around the world. It has consistently helped our certified practitioners overcome a range of potential obstacles as they negotiate coaching investments.
“My primary source of coaches are internal to the company, who use ‘budget constraints’ as a means of blocking spend,” says Chris Gibbons, Coach at Bank of Ireland. However, Emotional Intelligence certifications provide strong external validation. This can help to reduce resistance and to pave the way to successful agreements.
Executive Coach Dr. Mary Collins of Recruiters agrees. She says: “The main challenge is around pricing leadership coaching. There is still a reluctance to pay reasonable fees for the investment. This is partly because the market is saturated with coaches charging low rates. So it’s important to distinguish between general coaching services and leadership coaching.”
If you’re a business coach, having proven and established frameworks, models and systems is ultimately critical for engaging senior level leaders in productive discussions that lead to confirmed bookings.
What Are the Typical Use Cases of a RocheMartin Emotional Intelligence Certification?
Emotional Intelligence certifications are used in a variety of different ways. Some of the examples we’ve seen include:
• Fuelling leadership development
• Advancing negotiation and influence skills in customer-facing teams
• Enabling effective graduate leadership development
• Ensuring ongoing wellness and wellbeing
• Facilitating individual Executive coaching
• Guiding productive talent management and development
• Helping coaches tasked with overseeing change management
In fact, the true strength of Emotional Intelligence from a coach’s perspective is that it can be applied in so many beneficial ways in a business environment. “I use Emotional Intelligence to help leaders, colleagues and team members manage relational challenges,” says Patrick Boland, Managing Director at Conexus. “It helps everyone to appreciate different perspectives, styles and approaches to communication and conflict, as well as different understandings of management and leadership.”
Fabio Grassi, Executive Coach at Coreideas agrees: “Probably the most common situation Emotional Intelligence comes into play is around conflict, when communication leads to misunderstanding that can develop into a blame game.”
Two of RocheMartin’s leading products, the Emotional Capital Report and the ECR 360 Multi-Rater Report, provide crucial frameworks to help business coaches support their clients.
• The Emotional Capital Report (ECR) interprets professional people’s leadership potential based on their Emotional Intelligence.
• The ECR 360 Multi-Rater Report (ECR 360) enables you to frame transformational coaching discussions with your clients by highlighting differences between your client’s ‘self’ scores and how they are perceived by other raters, such as their managers or peers.
Kathleen Halligan, Business and Leadership Coach adds: “When executives come looking for development, and they’ve all the degrees and MBAs they need, I always recommend an ECR 360 as a means to take a temperature check on how their Emotional Intelligence is influencing outcomes.”
A Valuable Tool for Differentiation
Emotional Intelligence is an essential part of every business coach’s toolkit. It's a valuable differentiator in a crowded market. While most senior corporate professionals will have experienced some form of personality test, the RocheMartin certification and our ECR enable you to highlight the Emotional Intelligence aspect of your work and position yourself on a different level to your competitors.
“It helps individuals and teams become more aware of their Emotional Intelligence and discover ways to strengthen competencies based on reporting,” says Valerie Stevenson.
Fabio Grassi adds: “Emotional Intelligence is at the core of my coaching, from building relationships with my coachee and creating the space they need to think and feel comfortable in, through to helping them navigate their own emotions in an effective way.”
For the business coaches that use it, the ECR is a proven winner. It has respect, comes from a scientific background, and talks the language of leadership -- all of which is vital for coaches strategically positioning themselves for executive coaching rather than, for example, life coaching or small business coaching.
The ECR speaks the language of the executive clients you want to be more engaged with, while the ECR 360 takes things to an even more advanced level.
“When I’m pitching for a coaching assignment to a HR director, I will always highlight my ECR accreditation and, where suitable, offer an ECR 360 assessment,” says John Conway, Executive Coach at Harvest Resources.
Why Is the RocheMartin ECR Better Than Other Emotional Intelligence Tools in the Market for Business Coaches?
First and foremost, RocheMartin data is normed against business / leadership professionals, so it’s ideal for use in multiple business contexts. Because of our founders’ extensive expertise in this field, the ECR combines science with the latest understandings of clinical psychology and human behaviour -- which is a key reason why we have such a long track record of delivering results across global, high performance organisations. There several other reasons to consider, including:
Simplicity
The ECR is simple and clear, with the emphasis on Transformational Assessment enabling you to focus entirely on leadership and conversation. “I use several psychometric tools in my work, and I find the ECR to be the most practical. It can lead to very insightful and positive challenging conversations with clients,” says Kate Quinlan, a chartered member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. “The ECR 360 is also excellent. I always recommend it to associates if they are putting in a tender to organisations.”
Transformational Assessment and Clear ROIs
With the ECR, the RocheMartin platform does all the heavy lifting. It takes the data, conducts the analysis and presents it in a way that enables you, as a coach, to have a real impact with your client. You also learn a methodology called Transformational Assessment, which was designed by John Broderick, Martyn Newman and Judy Purse to help you to drive measurable impact in your clients’ Emotional Intelligence capabilities, rather than simply interpret the results of a one-off Emotional Intelligence tool.
The combination of Transformational Assessment and ongoing testing means you can deliver a clear ROI for your clients, because you measure and see where an individual is developing various competencies. That’s one of the principal reasons why RocheMartin is more committed than others to a test, re-test process. And it’s important to remember you might also see progress in other areas away from individual competencies, such as business performance, revenue growth, employee satisfaction surveys.
“Not having Emotional Intelligence in my toolkit is like not having a Phillips screwdriver in my toolbox,” says Kathleen Halligan.
Kate Quinlan, Associate Faculty at IMI adds: “The ECR is a profile that business people can identify with. It’s insightful and concise, and therefore a great tool to use with clients.”
Adaptable to Several Different Use Cases
At RocheMartin, we’re teaching coaches and consultants to have an impact. Once you’re certified, it’s an opportunity to build a long-lasting relationship with a client rather than a one-touch engagement. That’s because certification provides you with access to a platform that enables you to drive deeper and longer lasting relationships through multiple use cases, including helping people to recruit and develop the best talent, to build the best culture, and to drive performance.
If you’re a good coach, you can use your Emotional Intelligence certification in several ways. That isn’t necessarily true of a personality test or other HR tools. RocheMartin certification has been designed to teach practitioners how to think and behave for long-term business success.
Credibility
Our business is not about how you measure Emotional Intelligence: it’s about how you build it. That emphasis, on building Emotional Intelligence together, along with the suite of tools you get to make your business successful, is a key reason why a RocheMartin certification is a better option than others on the market.
Dr. Mary Collins says: “Having an Emotional Intelligence certification brings credibility, depth and trust to the coaching work. It’s important to have a certification in a rigorous, evidence-based tool. Compared with other Emotional Intelligence profiles I’m qualified to use, the ECR is concise, accessible and evidence-based. It doesn’t take too much time to complete and is not overly theoretical compared to other products on the market.”
In short: this certification is a badge of honour among coaches, HR professionals and L&D departments.
How Can Business Coaches Get Certified With RocheMartin?
You have three main options: you can choose from in-person, webinar-based or digital delivery. Whichever method you choose, you will be taking a major step towards meeting the modern expectation that all business coaches should have credibility in Emotional Intelligence.
The benefits are clear:
• Dr. Mary Collins has been using the ECR with medical consultants for the last three years. “It works really well because they value the evidence-based nature of it and like getting their individual data.”
• Executive Coach Valerie Stevenson helped a CIO navigate and resolve a self-identified problem of a lack of empathy. “He readily agreed to undertake a self assessment, which created a greater understanding of Emotional Intelligence generally and its importance in his role as a leader, particularly as a leader in local government.”
• Andrew McLoughlin, Senior Specialist at IMI said: “I had a senior team engagement using the ECR for the individual team members. It was described as the best value-for-money that they’d ever had.”
• And John Conway helped one client secure a substantial promotion in less than a year after her line manager had identified significant interpersonal gaps in the client’s skillset. “The ECR 360 feedback was quite stark, but it provided the spark for her to engage seriously with a coaching programme. She worked exceptionally hard on her personal development and within 12 months she’d secured her senior appointment.”
What Support Do Business Coaches Get When They Complete a RocheMartin Certification?
We are currently developing an entire ‘first meeting’ presentation for all our certified practitioners. That will show you how to pitch what we do, along with all the details of the tools and case studies that come with it.
You’ll also get a full range of support through our alumni network, which is designed to help you grow your business and open doors to customers:
• Presentations
• Talent management programme framework
• Leadership programme framework
• Culture programme framework
• Recruitment programme framework
• Transformational Assessment methodology
• Case studies
• Ongoing professional development seminars to expand your skills and expertise
How Can a Business Coach Best Sell Emotional Intelligence Into an Organisation?
Getting the go-ahead for your proposals is in large part to do with how you present your offering.
“Focus on the sheer uniqueness, practicality and research attached to the ECR,” says Kate Quinlan. “Most individuals can identify with that, and the fact that we as individuals can grow our Emotional Intelligence. The ECR uses simple terms and doesn’t intimidate clients. It’s a very strong psychological tool and the report is not overly complicated. Its biggest strength is taking the psychological concept and making it simple for the individual to understand and identify with.”
Patrick Boland recommends including the ECR as part of the proposal or referencing “the use of two ECR 360 reports as part of tracking progress (one at the start and one at the end of the coaching)”.
Ultimately, you will only learn what truly works best for your coaching business and your clients through practice and refinement. The important thing is to get started.
Find out more about how to become a RocheMartin certified practitioner
