Coach Training Alliance Reviews: Here’s What To Expect

For those interested in becoming the best life coach possible, one of the essential steps is establishing your coaching brand by getting certified. The most highly-respected industry certifications will always be from programs accredited by the International Coaching Federation, or the ICF.

The ICF has determined the ideal evidence-backed industry best practices and a comprehensive code of ethics that can be applied uniformly to the entire worldwide coaching industry.

Any life coach training program that wants to gain this accreditation must demonstrate that they can adhere to strict academic, professional, and ethical guidelines, and one of these programs has become a recognized leader in the coach training industry, the Coach Training Alliance.

We’re going to dig into CTA and look at who they are, and what they can do for your coaching career.

Click here to jump straight to the Coach Training Alliance program overview.

Attend CTA’s Free Workshop

First things first, the easiest way to get introduced to Coach Training Alliance is by attending their ultra-popular “Becoming a Certified Coach Workshop,” hosted by Director of Admissions, Lisa Pisano. The live workshop is 100% free and offers you the opportunity to get a feel for the program and ask any lingering questions you might have after reading this article.

Click here to learn more about the workshop – this is Step #1.

Student Reviews

Other than attending an event hosted by the company, the most reliable way to learn more about the CTA experience is by reading the experiences of past students. Luckily, Coach Training Alliance has compiled a list of exactly that – pages and pages of glowing reviews for the CTA program.

Click the image above to see the full list, and scroll down for a bonus nugget of wisdom from Fortune Magazine speaking on the topic of life coach certification.

BBB Rating

An A+ rating is the ultimate vote of confidence from the Better Business Bureau, meaning that the BBB carries the highest degree of certainty that Coach Training Alliance stands behind its promises, cooperates to resolve complaints, and has their students’ genuine best interests in mind.

Length of time in operation also plays a role, and with over 20 years in the life coach training business, CTA has an abundance of experience to draw from in training its students to become the best coaches they can be.

Course Offerings

CTA makes it relatively easy to find the coach training program that fits your needs since it offers multiple program options that are each designed to meet unique learning styles and business goal requirements.

Students can advance through the program at their own pace and can make the most informed decisions about which program option fits their career goals and general lifestyle.

Successfully completing CTA’s program will give you a great way to begin promoting your new business, since you’ll be able to leverage its graduate directory and the connections to thousands of alumni. All graduates will have gone through the program before, and the CTA website claims that more than 15,000 students have been certified through their Certified Coach Program.

To research the full line of CTAs coaching program options, you’ll need to prioritize your time, determine your budget, and have a clear grasp of your business goals. As you’ll see, the price of a CTA certification is one of the most compatible with the highly competitive landscape of the life coaching industry. Now, let’s dig into the details of the actual programs.

Certified Coach Program - CCP

This is CTA’s bread and butter – here’s a full breakdown of their flagship program.

Cost

The cost of the Certified Coach Program or CCP, is $3,897. This may seem substantial, but there are payment plans available.

Curriculum

The CTA Certified Coach Program is the flagship course of the organization itself, as well as the most common option for aspiring coaches as well as one of the most commonly recommended. The CTA curriculum is divided into 5 actions, with each one being designed to help you break down the core essentials of building success as a new life coach.

First, you’ll learn the process of coaching using the foundations of your own lived philosophy and values, essentially using lived experiences as well as how you already support others to guide your new messaging as a coach. With such a massive part of the effectiveness of the close relationship that coaches develop with their clients.

A major key to cultivating that closeness is the new coach’s ability to draw insight from their own experiences and personal experiences. The flagship course of the CTA is going to help build this foundation.

Next, you’ll be taught the business skills that you’ll need to help you plan, execute, and grow your new coaching practice. In the CCP students will receive 1:1 coaching as well as exposure to existing organizations. Then you’ll start to learn that evidence-based coaching tools are there to help you.

You’ll be ready to understand the various breakthroughs and physical turning points in the lives of your clients. You’ll learn the foundations of powerful and effective coaching sessions so that you’ll be able to make the most of your time.

Additionally, and this is something that gives the CTA a clear edge over many competitors, you’ll find an education that helps you grow the communication skills you need to discover, sell to, and retain the clients you add to your network.

The vast majority of the reviews that are found online for the Coach Training Alliance are praising the business development angle as a unique advantage not available from other certification bodies.

A major factor that other programs don’t address, and that the CTA has addressed beautifully, is that most of the coaches becoming certified for the first time, are also starting and running a business for the first time. In addition to that, many of these aspiring coaches report that the ability to develop their business skills has stopped them from starting their own coaching practice.

Method of Delivery

This CTA program runs for six months and is delivered through software, online media, and engaging online class sessions. Students benefit from communicating directly and instantly with not only their peers but also their expert coaching instructors as well.

The expert coach mentors for each student are assigned through Group Mentoring programs and 1-to-1 “Coach the Coach” sessions. These sessions will acclimate students to their own coaching style and expose them to new ideas.

Some of the information is presented online with the self-study method, but students are also able to observe coaching sessions where they can have their practices and techniques critiqued. Classes are limited to 12 students, and the remote sessions average 60-90 minutes in length.

The Certified Coach Program does include the Coach Training Accelerator, which is a multimedia approach to learning the core, foundational elements of life coaching that will be useful throughout your career.

Organizational Coaching Program - OCP

The Organizational Coaching Program, OCP, takes life coaching to a far more targeted level and allows you to help not just individual people, but entire organizations. Your skills and training will help you coach these organizations and their personnel to overcome the various challenges they’re likely to face periodically.

Organizational coaching is a great career path for those who are fascinated by the interpersonal dynamic of people within a company, and who are great at uncovering and discovering hidden potential that can benefit the organization significantly.

Individuals

Curriculum

The individual track to CTA’s OCP will eventually certify you with the title of Human Capital Coach. Along the way, you’ll learn a range of coaching techniques that will help you find success as a life coach in the industrial-organizational landscape.

Students will practice how to adapt their coaching to reach specific organizational goals and benchmarks, while still bringing benefits to the individuals involved. Individuals that are considering becoming Human Capital Coaches will learn how to integrate their roles and create needed opportunities within the organization.

Method of Delivery

The course for Human Capital Coaching is twelve weeks long, with each week containing two hours for self-study. Students will also have 90 minutes each week to participate in engaging online classes where they can connect with other aspiring coaches, receive coach mentoring, and have an opportunity to practice presenting the new skills that are learned in the program.

The self-study portion of the course is considered supplementary and, while it’s not required for eventual certification, it is designed to help students fully master the skills and coaching concepts that are presented in the course.

Organizations

Curriculum

The Organizational Coaching Program for enterprise clients is commonly referred to as the Co-Creative Leadership Program. This program is designed to create the internal tools that enterprise partners will need to coach around large or enterprise-scale changes, coach through challenges in interpersonal dynamics or development, and build prospective members of management from the human capital pool.

For companies or organizations that want to bring an intense level of coaching and development to the table, the Co-Creative Leadership Program is an ideal way to reach that goal. The program places an overall emphasis on managing talent at every level in the organization while creating effective strategies for personalized employee morale coaching and inclusion.

Following the devastating workforce effects that the recent pandemic inflicted, the Organizational Coaching Program from CTA has never been more useful or relevant than it is, right now. The drastic shift from the standard office culture to one of primarily remote work or even hybrid schedules has created massive challenges that many companies could never have anticipated.

These are the kinds of challenges that an organizational coach will thrive on, so they can help refine the organization into a new, more effective paradigm.

Method of Delivery

This program runs for a full 12 weeks and consists of 90-minute classes conducted remotely. The program includes 4 hours of self-study and a class size cap of 12 students.

There is the potential for on-site content delivery on a case-by-case basis, so if your organization is considering implementing CTA best practices on its campus, the OCP for organizations could be the perfect option for managing human capital challenges while simultaneously investing in your team.

Self-Study Track

Cost

The self-study track for OCP is usually around $150, but there are times when CTA will discount the price to less than $80.

Curriculum

The curriculum for the CTA self-study OCP course is called The Fundamentals of Organizational Coaching. This course will spend less time focusing on the essentials if you need the versatility of taking the course while also managing other priorities.

The curriculum covers a wide range of coaching techniques that are specific to the organizational and team-based environment, including strategies for differentiating between coaching and leadership, tips on how to excel by investing in your personal and professional development as an asset, and how to leverage the impact of life coaching to drive more effective or desired behavior on an organizational scale.

Students can also expect modules to cover coaching neuroscience as well as coverage of the foundational components for those who are just getting into coaching.

Method of Delivery

The OCP self-study track is a five-hour course that will require the completion of a final exam before becoming certified. Students will have 5 hours of training, 6 video presentations, a minimum of 2 hours of pure reading time, and an hour’s worth of a coaching demonstration to help get a clearer understanding of the new coaching skills in the context of an organizational implementation.

It’s an online certification that can be earned relatively quickly and is the perfect option for an individual looking for an effective, though brief, introduction to life coaching applied at the organizational level.

Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator

Cost

The Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator has a cost of $599.

Curriculum

If you’re considering starting a career as a life coach, and are a very DIY-type of person, you may find a tremendous value in the Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator. It’s a very effective and highly affordable way to jumpstart your career in coaching while getting an ICF-accredited certification .

Since the curriculum is based entirely online, students retain access to all information in their training course as well as all associated resources, such as audio and transcripts from coaching sessions.

The Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator program offers a range of tools for coaching, where you will start by learning how to create your own unique model of coaching that is not just effective but also in full alignment with your personal truth and values. The curriculum itself is the same as is included in the CCP, even containing a condensed version of the pillars outlined in the 6-month course.

Method of Delivery

The Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator is a tool rich with media and contains audio clips, online reading assignments, and online training modules that are designed to completely support your development as a life coach.

If you find that hearing one on one coaching sessions is a better way to learn, you can study the audio files, if you find that it’s easier to start with the foundational concepts of coaching, the assigned readings will get you all of the reasoning and context you need to be a highly effective coach.

Upon purchasing the Self-Study Coach Training Accelerator, you’ll be able to jump right in and start as soon as you’re ready, enjoying full lifetime access to the course and materials from that point forward. The course is a shorter, denser version of the Certified Coach Program, so it also includes access to live support from CTA anytime you need it.

School Philosophy

Many aspiring coaches will wonder what it is that sets CTA apart from other coach training programs, and what it comes down to is the significant array of options that CTA provides for becoming a certified coach. It’s not just the programs and comprehensive training, it’s the philosophy of creating excellent coaches.

CTA approaches teaching coaching techniques with the basic assumption that all change centered around making someone a better person is the most powerful type of change.

The CTA’s Exclusive Learning Model allows you to get the most out of your training by helping you learn in the way that’s best for you, resulting in a higher proportion of retained information. Students will learn rapidly, by doing, and will receive significant real-world experience with clients, helping them to be more confident in their coaching practice.

The CTA learning philosophy centers around “Pillars of Wisdom” which include things like data, experience, knowledge, and information. Delivering this curriculum, the CTA helps students to access all aspects of their training and create an individually curated coaching plan that’s based on the person you’re coaching or supporting.

The biggest benefit of this is that it helps students to feel more empowered and prepared to begin their life coaching career since they’ve already created change and are looking at the results.

Finally, it’s essential to remember that even though countless other coach training programs have popped up recently to capitalize on the remote learning shift, many of them did not utilize remote learning before the pandemic, and have been caught just as off-guard as many other businesses. However, this means that CTA has had a strong head-start for years since they were using telecourses well before the pandemic started raging.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right coach training program for your needs can become a daunting task, but hopefully, we’ve been able to simplify that for you. No matter what course you end up choosing, you should be sure to look for a program that comes with an ICF-accredited certification, so that potential clients and organizations know they can trust your education and expertise when it comes to coaching.

The program you choose should also give you a price point that finds a balance between cost and value, an industry-current curriculum that you have permanent access to, business development training so that you can hit the ground running with your new coaching practice, coaching techniques backed by results, and even resources that you can curate for clients, no matter what challenges you’re coaching them through.

The Coach Training Alliance has not just certified thousands of individuals as effective life coaches, but they’ve put in the effort and commitment to create a versatile and individually tailored curriculum that best prepares you for a career as a life coach.

Not only will you get a globally-recognized coaching certification, but you’ll join a massive network of expert coaches, and gain resources provided by the CTA for years of effective coaching.

Disclaimer: The above is a sponsored post, the views expressed are those of the sponsor/author and do not represent the stand and views of Outlook Editorial.