Thousands of Ways to Earn 40 ICF CCEs!

Hi, my name is Anne Kelly. I am the ICF Credentialing Confusion Buster. And today I want to talk with you about earning Continuing Coach Education hours, the variety – wide variety of resources to obtain those, what you need to do to stay on track, to renew your credential, and some very important tips. So here we go.

I’ve dropped this link in the chat. I am on the Professional Development page of the ICF. So coachingfederation.org > Credentialing, go to “Renew your credential”, and then Professional Development, and we will be on the same page.

So just a little overview of the 40 hours of Continuing Education that every ICF coach needs every three years. Of the 40, you can begin logging in your CCE hours as soon as you earn them on the ICF website, and you can even submit your application up to 10 months early. There’s a wide variety of resources for Continuing Coach Education training, both Core Competency and Resource Development. Let’s take a look at some of those.

There are two types of Continuing Coach Education credits, and this is important. Of the 40 hours that each coach must earn every three years, at least 24 of those must be Core Competency hours. All 40 can be Core Competency. That’s fine. But at least 24 need to be related to the Core Competencies. Another 16 hours of training, Professional Development, called Resource Development, helps you do your job, better helps you serve your client. So it’s training that assists in those areas. Combined 40 hours of training, again, you can do 40 hours of Core Competency if you want. You can only do up to 16 hours of Resource Development.

So let’s look at where to find training. This page is golden. We’re going to run through pretty quick. Please go back at your own time and spend some time here. First place to start, absolutely the complementary ICF Ethics course, every coach every three years has to have three hours of ethics specific training. You can take that training on the ICF website, and it will also have the advantage of being based on the very latest ICF Code Of Ethics that was just released in 2025. Communities of Practice are a great place to earn both Core Competency and Resource Development.

Here are some of the options for Communities of Practice –

• Career Coaching
• Coaching Science
• Coaching Supervision
• Ethics
• Executive and Leadership Coaching
• Health and Wellness
• Internal Coaching
• Life Vision and Enhancement
• Team and Group Coaching

If you have the opportunity to engage with a Community of Practice, those are great resources.

Also your local chapter. When you renew your membership in the ICF every year, you designate a chapter that you belong to, if you care to do that. So your local chapter, or other ICF chapters offer tremendous programs. You can attend those. There are also regional and global conferences. ICF Converge is coming up in October 2025 to earn additional credits.

I’m going to go to this ICF-accredited CCE program. This is a very big category. There are over 1800 ICF accredited CCE programs. So there really is no shortage. You can find a specific program related to topics you want to explore.

On that note, I want to show you how to check this is important as well. Is the program I’m thinking of applying for, and paying and doing and getting the certificate – is that certificate going to be honored by the ICF? Here’s how you can find that out.

We’re on the Education Search Service page. You’ll type in the name. You don’t have to fill anything in, go down and type in the name of the organization. The reason being that the ICF accredits the organization, not the training – and we can have a discussion about that, I think it’s a great practice. So here under accredited organization, my organization is A New Leaf Coaching, you would not type in the CCEase program. You type in my organization and hit “Search”, and if that program is accredited by the ICF, you will see a screen like this. If it’s not accredited by the ICF, you will not see a page like this, so contact the provider and ask about that. But here’s a link to the program. So my program tells you exactly how many hours, 19 Core Comp, one Resource Development, Continuing Coach Education. So do verify that the training that you want to take, and you are paying for will help you meet the goals that you most want to meet.

So let’s go back to these great resources you. Here we are.

ICF-accredited CCE programs. If you’d like to attend a formal training program – I did this in 2005, I was brand new. I just wanted everything packaged for me. I didn’t want a Do-It-Yourself. I attended an ACTP/Level Two program. If you’d like the idea of a package, you can consider earning your credits from a Level One, Level Two, Level Three, or the now accredited Team Coaching Program.

I want to focus in on the last two items here, Coaching Education Programs Not Accredited by The ICF. So what if you took some great training through a place where you volunteer? Your school, anything. You took a program, and you thought, “A lot of this is applicable to my coaching – part of this is applicable to my coaching,” that training can be submitted to the ICF with documentation, and you ask that that be considered as part of your 40 hours. And again, let’s say it’s a two-day program, you found for the hours on listening to relate directly to coaching. You could ask that that four hours be allowed for your Continuing Education hours, the whole 20 if they all relate to coaching, so it can be part or all, and the acceptable documentation is listed here, and then the final e-learning and self-paced Online Courses, this is how we’re learning so much nowadays, if you are completing online training, you can submit that as well and request credit for those.

So I hope this has given you an indication of the wide variety of places to obtain training, to check whether that training is accredited by the ICF. You know how to do that. And also, I just want to mention, for those of you that are ACCs, I just spoke to a coach this morning who is doing their renewal, earning their 40 hours, and they are renewing for the first time, and did not know that, “Yeah, you need those 10 hours of mentoring every time you renew as an ACC.” So if you are an ACC renewing your credential, please do build in that mentoring to that requirement, and allow at least three months for that.

If you have any questions, I’d love to connect with you. Talk about ICF credentialing. I can talk about my programs, general programs, and see if we might work well together. Please schedule a chat with me soon. I’d love to help you clarify some confusion around ICF Credentialing!

Coach Anne