The Eight Competencies: A Shared Language for Coach, Client and Assessor

By Dr. Nasser Al-Furaih — Consultant and Creator of Professional Qualification Programmes, Founder of CPQLTD

A coach is often asked: what makes you a good coach? They answer with the number of certificates or years of experience. From real practice, I can tell you: the more precise answer lies in eight competencies that show in your behaviour inside the session — competencies your client can feel, your assessor can measure, and you can develop.

Why You Need a Competency Model

Coaching approaches and tools are many, yet the shared question remains: what behaviour makes a session professional? The CPQLTD C01–C08 competency model answers this question with eight competencies, each defined by behaviour observed in a decision, a session or a record.

This model gives you three practical benefits: a training map that tells you what to develop, an assessment language your assessor and supervisor understand as you do, and a clear promise to your client of what they will find in your session. The competencies are the same across all six models, while the practical evidence for them varies with the model's goal and the client's context.

C01 Ethics & Scope — The Highest Weighting

The ethics competency carries 20% of the scale, with a minimum of 60% required in every assessment. It shows when you explain the session's boundaries to your client, protect their confidentiality, notice any risk that appears in what they say, refer them to a specialist when needed, and disclose any conflict of interest.

An example in the session: your client mentions that they have not slept for days and feel they are falling apart. You slow the session down, check their safety, explain the limits of your role, and discuss appropriate specialist support with them — rather than carrying on with goal questions as if nothing had happened.

C02 Professional Mindset & Reflective Practice

Weighted at 10%, it shows in your ability to examine your bias, accept feedback, make use of supervision, and treat your interpretations as hypotheses that need checking. Every coach brings their experiences, values and story into the session; professional maturity means noticing this and not letting it lead the conversation.

An example: your client's topic makes you angry because it resembles something you lived through. You notice your feeling and ask yourself: what here belongs to me? And what serves my client now? Then, after the session, you note the situation to present to your supervisor.

C03 Contracting & Client Autonomy

Weighted at 10%, it shows when you clarify the session's purpose and roles, review the agreement whenever needs change, and return the decision to your client every time they ask you to decide for them. The client owns the goal, the decision and the implementation.

An example: your client says, "Tell me what to do." You receive their request with respect, then ask: "What options do you see right now, even if they are incomplete?" And if you share general information with their permission, you return to their choice: "How does that apply to your context?"

C04 Presence, Listening & Communication

Weighted at 15%, it shows when you listen for meaning and context as well as words, use silence, summarise accurately, and adapt your language to your client. You pay attention to recurring words such as "always", "impossible" and "must", and to changes in tone and rhythm, then check what you have picked up.

An example: you say to your client, "I hear that you want to change, and at the same time you fear its effect on your stability — have I captured that accurately?" This reflection gives them the chance to correct your understanding, and protects you from interpreting what they say as you please.

C05 Inquiry & Awareness

Weighted at 15%, it shows when you ask one clear question at a time, test assumptions, and help your client distinguish between facts and interpretations. A good question is short, open, and linked both to what you heard and to the session's goal.

An example: your client says, "My team doesn't respect me." You ask: "What facts led you to this understanding?", then "What interpretation did you give them?", then "Are there other possible interpretations?" They separate what they actually saw from what their mind added, and their options widen.

C06 Goals, Action & Accountability

Weighted at 15%, it shows when you help your client turn their awareness into a small experiment of their choosing, agree together on the criterion for reviewing it, and then learn from the result — and from non-implementation too — without blame. Accountability in coaching is an agreement to review and learn, far from monitoring and reprimand.

An example: at the end of the session you ask your client: "What exactly will you do? When? What will be the first sign that you have done it? What obstacle do you expect?" and then: "How ready are you for this step, from zero to ten? And what would you need to move up one point?"

C07 Context, Inclusion & Systems

Weighted at 10%, it shows when you take into account the effect of culture, power, organisation, resources and accessibility on your client's options, and distinguish between an organisational obstacle and a personal weakness. Some of what a client faces at work lies outside their sphere of influence, and a professional coach acknowledges this.

An example: your client complains that their decisions are delayed, so you ask about their actual authority and their organisation's policy before assuming the problem is their self-confidence. You may discover together that the most fitting step is for them to request clarification of their authority.

C08 Evidence, Development & Growth

Weighted at 5%, it shows when you document learning, review the impact of your interventions, keep your knowledge current, and draw on research to the extent that it serves your client. This is the competency that makes your practice grow from one session to the next.

An example: after every session you write down what you agreed, the step your client chose and what you yourself learned, then in the next session you review the impact of the step without exaggerating what the session achieved.

The Eight Competencies at a Glance

C01 Ethics & Scope — Weight: 20% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did I protect boundaries, confidentiality and safety?

C04 Presence, Listening & Communication — Weight: 15% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did I listen to understand, and check what I understood?

C05 Inquiry & Awareness — Weight: 15% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did I ask one clear question at a time?

C06 Goals, Action & Accountability — Weight: 15% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did my client leave with a step they chose and a criterion for reviewing it?

C02 Professional Mindset & Reflective Practice — Weight: 10% · Your question to yourself after the session: What bias did I notice in myself?

C03 Contracting & Client Autonomy — Weight: 10% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did the decision stay in my client's hands?

C07 Context, Inclusion & Systems — Weight: 10% · Your question to yourself after the session: Did I take account of my client's context and real constraints?

C08 Evidence, Development & Growth — Weight: 5% · Your question to yourself after the session: What did I document, and what did I learn?

Where the Competencies Appear in Your Session

At the start: you clarify the nature of the session, its time, its confidentiality and the limits of your role — so C01 and C03 appear.

When choosing the topic: you check the outcome your client wants and the criterion for its usefulness, so that neither their manager nor you imposes it — so C03 appears.

During exploration: you listen, summarise and check, and ask one question at a time — so C04 and C05 appear.

When using a tool: you ask permission before challenging, slow down at silence or emotion, and re-examine your assumption — so C02, C04 and C05 appear.

When building action: you help your client choose a small experiment and leave its implementation to them without blame — so C06 appears.

When reading the context: you distinguish between an organisational obstacle and a personal weakness — so C07 appears.

After the session: you document the agreement and the step securely, and identify a topic for supervision — so C02 and C08 appear.

The Assessment Card: How Competencies Become a Score

After a session that is permitted to be assessed, the assessor writes brief behavioural evidence before giving a score: What did you say or do? At what moment? What was its effect? They then give each competency a rating from 1 to 5 and calculate the weighted score by dividing the rating by 5 and multiplying it by the weighting. They always start with C01; if boundaries, safety or confidentiality were not protected, there is no point moving on to the total.

CPQLTD-T1 — Description: Qualified Practitioner Coach · Pass mark: 70 out of 100

CPQLTD-T2 — Description: Professional Coach · Pass mark: 75 out of 100

CPQLTD-T3 — Description: Senior Specialist Coach · Pass mark: 80 out of 100

CPQLTD-T4 — Description: Coaching Teacher and Supervisor · Pass mark: 85 out of 100

At every level you must reach 60% in C01, and your performance must be free of serious failure: a breach of safety, unauthorised diagnosis or treatment, exploitation, falsified evidence, deliberate unjustified disclosure of confidential information, or ignoring a serious risk. Safety and integrity come before any numerical total.

Questions That Build Your Competencies at Every Stage

Opening and agreement: "What topic is worth working on now?" · "What would make this session useful for you?" · "What do you need from me today?"

Exploration: "What exactly is happening?" · "Which aspect matters most to you?" · "What is a recent example that shows this?"

Building awareness: "What are you assuming here?" · "What might you not be noticing?" · "How does this connect with what you say matters to you?"

Planning: "Which option do you want to choose now?" · "What is the smallest step that would show you are serious?" · "Who or what will support you?"

Closing: "What will you take with you from this session?" · "How will you know you have made progress?"

Let your client answer in their own words; their own wording strengthens their connection to the action. And replace judgemental questions, such as "Don't you think you overreacted?", with curious questions, such as "What made this situation difficult for you?"

How to Develop Your Competencies

Competencies develop through deliberate practice, and I suggest a quarterly development cycle of four steps:

Choose one competency that needs developing, based on your assessment card or your supervisor's notes.

Define a specific behaviour to practise, such as: "I leave three seconds of silence after every question."

Gather feedback from your clients or from a professional observer, within what confidentiality allows.

Review the impact after three months, then choose the next competency.

If, for example, you choose the contracting competency, you observe how you start your sessions, how you return to the agreement when the conversation branches off, and how you respond when your client asks you to decide for them. Professional development becomes real when it is reflected in the finest details of the dialogue.

A Shared Language That Builds Trust

When your client knows their coach works with published competencies, they are reassured that what happens in the session follows a methodology. When the assessor reads your session by the same competencies you read it by, assessment becomes a professional conversation about facts. And when you review your own session by these competencies, you become its supervisor before anyone else sees it.

I close with what I believe: the eight competencies are the distance between knowing coaching and practising it professionally. Every competency you master adds safety and clarity to your session, and adds new evidence of your competence to your path.

If you want to build these competencies in a structured way, the CPQLTD "Managing Work Sessions" programme links each of its six models to the competencies it targets, and assesses your performance in them with a unified card.

Dr. Nasser Al-Furaih

Consultant and Creator of Professional Qualification Programmes, Founder of CPQLTD

From the CPQLTD philosophy: professionalism is a methodology that shows in the traits of your conduct, and is completed through documented practice.