How Can I Work As A Coach After Qualification?

Many people who join Animas do so because they want to become an independent coach. In other words, they want to build a full or part-time practice that exists outside of their work or even replaces it.

As an independent coach, you get to choose when, where, with whom and how you work, and you create ways to find your own clients.

Many of our coaches want to become full-time, self-employed coaches but wisely start by creating a part-time practice around their current work, offering some stability as they gain experience, confidence and a sustainable way of securing clients. This is certainly our advice though we have also see our qualified coaches take a leap straight to full-time self-employment and, with the right tenacity, it can work.

What we see for sure is that, though not easy, the route to become an independent coach is one that inspires joy, meaning and fulfilment.

Many organisations either employ full-time coaches to work in-house or, more usually, allow individuals within their workforce to coach as part of their role. Typically, this is referred to as “internal coaching” or “in-house coaching” and an excellent book on the subject is: Internal Coaching by Katherine St John-Brooks.

Internal coaches will need to gain excellent coaching skills as well as being able to navigate the difficult boundaries between possibly being coach, manager and colleague to the same person. Often, though, large organisations have devised ways to avoid such role clashes as internal coaching becomes a recognised space for professional development.

Typically internal coaches are developed from within a business and offered training such as on our Accredited Diploma in Transformative Coaching but such roles are also available through external recruitment. If you think this route might be for you, accreditation is likely to be vital.

Another way you might use coaching is within your existing role to expand or improve the impact you have and the way you work.

Coaching often dovetails well with leadership roles, management, HR, learning and development, teaching, the caring professions and more.

Many coaches combine coaching within their workplace with developing an independent lifestyle business alongside.

An increasingly popular option for coaches in the last few years has been the growth of associate organisations.

Companies such as BetterUp, CoachHub and many more offer coaching to organisations and use a large pool of freelance associate coaches to provide the service.

The advantage of being an associate coach is that the agency will find your clients for you. Again, you’ll need to have undertaken accredited coach training to follow this route.

A significant trend in coaching nowadays is one of integration. Coaching is becoming very popular as an add-on to an existing service that you might already offer whether as a therapist, counsellor, complementary health practitioner, consultant, fitness trainer or any number of other area of practice.

Not only might coaching support your existing service but it can add a whole new standalone service and create more opportunity to support your clients.