There is a question I ask myself more often than any client has ever asked me: am I still competent, or am I just still credentialed?
Those are not the same thing. Most of our industry has quietly agreed to pretend they are.
I want to walk you through an autopsy. Not of a person, not of a scandal, but of an assumption. The assumption that a badge, once earned, continues to certify something true about the person wearing it. I don’t believe that anymore. And once you stop believing it, you start seeing coaching domain authority very differently.
The Exam I Would Fail Today
Thirty plus years ago, I sat my GCE Cambridge O-Level examinations in Singapore. I studied. I sweated. I passed. On paper, that piece of paper still says something about me.
If you sat me down today and handed me that same maths paper, I would fail. Spectacularly. Not because I was never capable. I was, thirty plus years ago, on that day, under those conditions but because I have not touched those formulas since. The knowledge didn’t stay. It expired quietly, the way most unused things do.
Nobody is alarmed by this. Nobody expects a near 50-year-old woman to still ace her O-Level algebra. I intuitively understand that a credential is a photograph of a moment, not a livestream of a person.
So why do we treat coaching credentials or other credentials – ICF, EMCC, and their many cousins as though they were livestreams? Why does an ICF MCC earned five, ten, fifteen years ago get quoted today as though it is still actively broadcasting the holder’s present-moment competence?
The exam analogy isn’t a cute story. It’s a diagnostic tool. Ask yourself: what is the “maths formula” of your practice that you have quietly stopped rehearsing since the day you got the badge?
The Business Model Nobody Names Out Loud
Let’s do something coaches are trained to do for our clients and rarely do for our own industry: name the unspoken thing.
Professional bodies are businesses. Not evil ones; necessary ones, often well-intentioned ones but businesses nonetheless. And businesses need a recurring revenue engine. Members. Renewals. New tiers. New pathways. New acronyms to chase once the last acronym has been achieved and has, inevitably, stopped feeling special.
This is not a conspiracy. It is simply structural. An industry that is still young needs credibility scaffolding, and scaffolding costs money to build and maintain. So it diversifies. ACC becomes PCC becomes MCC. Practitioner becomes Senior Practitioner becomes Supervisor. Each rung requires a fee, a submission, sometimes little more than a CCE log: continuing coach education, counted in hours, rarely audited for depth.
I sat on the board of a counselling association here in Singapore for a period. I chose not to renew. Not out of protest but out of honesty. I asked myself the only question that mattered: is this badge still doing the work of proving something true about my practice, or is it now just doing the work of proving I paid the invoice?
Badge-hoarding is not professional development. It is professional decoration. And decoration, however tasteful, does not hold weight in a room where someone’s wellbeing is on the line.
I want to be precise here, because precision is the whole point of this piece: I am not anti-credential. I am an ICF PCC, an EMCC ESIA Supervisor, an EMCC Senior Practitioner, an ICF Mentor Coach. I hold these badges. What I refuse to do is hide behind them, or let them do the talking that only consistent, present-moment practice has the right to do.
When the Badge Becomes the Alibi
And the autopsy gets uncomfortable, because this is where I found the wound.
Earlier this year, I called out a public claim – an award, a credential, worn as though it were earned when it wasn’t. The backlash taught me something about our profession that no supervision hour ever did: we have built a culture where seniority is treated as a reason not to ask a direct question. We call it respect. It is often just fear wearing a nicer outfit.
The badge, in these moments, stops being evidence of competence and starts functioning as an alibi – a shield that makes challenge feel impolite, almost heretical. How dare you question an ICF MCC. But a credential was never designed to be immune to scrutiny. It was designed to be a floor, not a force field.
What is the difference between a coaching giant and a coaching elder?
A coaching giant is an individual whose platform or seniority makes their behavior feel undiscussable, often enabled by a culture of polite silence. A coaching elder is a wise, courageous guide who operates on human equality and offers a gentle tap on the shoulder to invite self-reflection rather than asserting authority.
I think of this as ethical safety – the willingness to let your standing be questioned precisely because you trust what’s underneath it. Coaches who are only their badge cannot afford ethical safety. Coaches who have done the interior work can afford nothing less.
The Alternative: Domain Authority as Self-Cultivation
So if the badge isn’t the credential that matters most, what is?
I’d offer this: the coaching credential that matters most is the quiet, undocumented, unbadged consistency of who you are when nobody is scoring you.
I once had one of the most mind-blowing coaching conversations of my life and my counterpart held an ACC, the so-called “entry level” credential. When I later asked, gently, whether she intended to pursue PCC, she said something that has stayed with me since: she was aware she was ready, but it wasn’t her priority right now. No urgency. No hunger for the next badge. Just quiet, sustained competence, offered without needing a stage.
That is domain authority. Not a beauty pageant title. Not “award-winning top coach” self-declared into a LinkedIn headline. Domain authority is what remains true about your work when you strip every label away and simply ask: who are you, consistently, across contexts, when no one is watching and no certificate is on the line?
I think of the practitioner’s role the way I think of a mirror or a piece of light: your job is not to be dazzling. Your job is to be clean. A clean piece of mirror doesn’t announce itself: it simply reflects accurately, without distortion, without ego smudging the glass. A clean source of light doesn’t need to out-shine the room, it just needs to not flicker when it matters most.
That is somatic depth. That is human consistency. That is what static badges cannot manufacture and recurring renewal fees cannot buy.
The Question Underneath the Question
If you’re a coach reading this, here is my closing provocation, and I do not offer it lightly: are your thoughts aligned with your behaviour, and with how you envision yourself to be?
Not your bio. Not your LinkedIn banner. Not the string of letters after your name. You.
If the honest answer makes you uncomfortable, good. Discomfort is where the real audit begins: the one no professional body will ever conduct for you, because it isn’t measured in CCE hours. It’s measured in the room, in the silence, in the moments you choose to see something and either name it or let it pass.
If you’re ready to step off the credential treadmill and build something that doesn’t depend on the next badge to feel legitimate – a practice with real, defensible domain authority, let’s look at it together.
Book a Business Audit with Jaye
Watch the Podcast Video With Claire Pedrick.
Read the article I wrote that led to the podcast.
