Earn a nationally recognised ILM coaching qualification - fast tracked!

Our vision was always to find a way to enable anyone who completes our Financial Coach Practitioner Certificate training to earn a nationally recognised qualification that builds on the high quality of training we deliver.  

Love Your Coaching, run by Charlie Warshawski, offer a range of Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) coaching qualifications. After many months of consultation, Charlie has created a bespoke fast-tracked programme, especially designed for Wise Monkey alumni, leading to an ILM level 5 certification in effective coaching and mentoring.

Coaching is a core skill that's deeply embedded into our training and is at the heart of our work as financial coaches. And this exciting and congruent development, which will provide external validation to both our alumni, and their clients, that their coaching skills are of a high standard. 

This will work brilliantly to help consolidate and build confidence on the pure coaching side of our work for everyone who has completed our Wise Monkey training.

Both sets of training focus on core coaching skills, providing lots if opportunities for practice and observation. In each course you’ll learn and practise structures for organising your coaching sessions.

While both courses are focussed on helping you to become a high quality, skilled coach, the ILM training helps you improve your coaching skills.

It builds on the skills that you have learned as a financial coach, but it focuses solely on non-directive coaching, without any focus on finance. You will learn how to hold coaching sessions that are on personal or professional topics, with no financial element. And enhance your pure coaching skills when delivering a session which has a blend of coaching and mentoring, 

You will have lots of real-life practice coaching sessions during the training. And tutorials and written feedback on observed coaching sessions, to help you improve your skills. 

By the time the assessment is complete, you will have reached a high coaching standard, to be proud of.

As you will have learned during the Wise Monkey training, financial coaching offers a rich blend of coaching, mentoring, sharing resources and guidance. It’s not formal or regulated advice but using your financial knowledge to explore both the practical and emotional aspects of your client’s financial life.

In this way, financial coaching has a lot of similarities with other “topic based” coaching, such as career coaching or health coaching. In each of these, the coach will have background knowledge and experience of the subject area and will tailor their coaching to support their client in specific ways.

By contrast, standard coaching does not have at its core one particular topic or area of focus. For this approach, the coachee can bring any topic that they want to the coaching. There may be an overarching area, i.e. work, personal or life. The coach will work on the topic that the coachee brings, in a non-directive way. No guidance, suggestions, advice.

Learning to be a non-directive coach is slightly different from being a financial coach. In some ways it’s easier, as we aren’t switching hats between coach, mentor, guide. And in some ways, it’s harder, as we haven’t got the option to fall back on our background knowledge to guide the coachee.

Earning a nationally recognised coaching qualification has many benefits, including:

1. Credibility: It provides coaches with a formal endorsement of their skills and knowledge, enhancing their professional credibility.
2. Quality Assurance: The training and qualification ensures that coaches deliver a high standard of service, specifically focussing on their coaching skills.
3. Professional Development: The process of obtaining a recognised qualification  involves continuous education and skill development, meeting established standards of competence and good practice.
4. Opportunities: It opens doors to more career opportunities, as many organisations and institutions require coaches to obtain recognised qualifications to be approved for their lists (e.g. the NHS)
5. Lifelong Qualification: It's a qualification for life and doesn’t need renewing.
6. Flexible Framework: The awarding body provides a rigorous framework that allows us to develop a bespoke training suited specifically for financial coaches, adhering to best practices and including relevant, up-to-date content. 

This course is designed to be accessible for coaches who have been through the Wise Monkey programme at least 12 months ago.

The other criteria is that you have been coaching since you completed your Wise Monkey training. We don’t specify a number of hours of coaching practice – just so long as you have done some coaching since your Wise Monkey training.

During the training sessions you will be able to have practice coaching sessions with fellow coaches and will both coach and be coached. We’ll provide training to be able to do this, and resources so that you feel prepared. And you can bring any coaching topic to work on.

After the training webinars are complete, you will have to complete 18 hours of coaching, with 3 coaching clients. We recommend that you have pro-bono coachees so that you don’t feel the pressure of offering paid coaching during this training programme. We will provide specific guidance as to the ideal coachee profile.

A core part of our work together is providing feedback on your coaching. We observe coaching session in the training room and provide both verbal and written feedback, in a clear and sensitive way.

And as you get towards your 18 hours, we will then observe a session and assess it to ensure that it meet the L5 pass criteria. Full information will be provided, and we’ll make sure you’re ready to reach this standard.

As this is a professional qualification, equivalent to a degree, some assessment is required.

All ILM qualifications require written assignments. These assignments have a small element of theory, but are mostly practical.

They allow coaches to reflect on your practice, to write about important coaching principles, and to record your growth as a coach

Yes. Part of the qualification will be to have 3 x one-to-one tutorial sessions in the following months, and to use each session to discuss and receive feedback on your coaching. And we don’t limit the number of tutorials you have, so you can meet with one of the tutors as often as you want.

Simonne and Charlie, the owners of the two organisations, have been collaborating on the idea of creating a higher professional standard for Wise Monkey trained coaches since 2020. We both have a passion for coaching and for training coaches, in our respective fields. We have worked together for hundreds of hours in various forms and have an understanding of each other’s coaching styles and of the type of content that each of us teaches.

So you can be reassured that our collaboration means that the ILM L5 course is tailored to the knowledge and needs of Wise Monkey alumni coaches.