European Mentoring and Coaching Council formed to promote standards of good practice

EMCC aims to be a unifying and inclusive body covering a broad spectrum and so invitations to join the new Council have been issued to existing organisations from the voluntary and community, professional training and development, counselling at work, life coaching and academic psychology sectors. Several such groups have already been established to ensure wide representation namely: academics, trainers of coaches and mentors, in house practitioners, practising coaches and mentors, executive coaches and continental European coaches

EMCC has published a Vision and Aims statement (attached) and among the concerns of EMCC will be the development of credible methods for assessing the capability of providers in this increasingly crowded field. A new set of standards for mentoring schemes will be launched at the EMCC conference in October and a framework for comparing qualifications is under development. A standing Special Interest Group working party is reviewing standards, ethics and codes of conduct, with a view to bringing some clarity to a very confused picture. Other working parties will stimulate research and lobby government and other key influencers to recognise and support good practice in coaching and mentoring.

The new entity will bring together key players in the field of coaching and mentoring in both the UK and Europe. The co-chairpersons will be Professor David Megginson, Co-founder of EMCC from Sheffield Hallam University and Sir John Whitmore, author and leading coaching for performance guru.

The co-founder of EMCC, David Clutterbuck, will join forces with Julie Hay of AD International, Eric Parsloe of the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring, Robin Linnecar and Donald Mcleod of Whitehead Mann The Change Partnership and the Executive Coaching Forum (ECF), Myles Downey of the Work Foundation School of Coaching and representatives from 6 European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Norway).

Leading practitioners from the UK Gestalt psychology, developmental transactional analysis, NLP, and the business sports coaching constituencies together with organisations including BT, Ernst and Young, the Institute for Employment Studies and the Coaching and Mentoring Network will be members of the new Executive Board.

Professor David Clutterbuck comments:

"The new EMCC intends to attract corporate and individual membership. The original EMCC has always had to struggle for funds as Government support has been focussed on community and voluntary projects. Nonetheless, since its launch in 1992, EMCC has presented one of the best series of annual conferences in the HR field, established the only substantial library on mentoring outside North America, stimulated the compilation of mentor competencies and initiated a variety of research projects.

At the same time, there has been an explosive growth in the type and number of professional coaches working with managers and employees, and an increasing emphasis on coaching skills as a key skill of managers. Although mentoring and coaching are often distinct roles, with different objectives, they require many of the same skills. Used in parallel, coaching and mentoring provide a powerful platform for building a developmental or learning culture.

I believe EMCC will be welcomed across Europe by both providers and in-house HR professionals as a timely and much-needed response to integrate a fragmented sector of the people development market"