The International Coach Federation (ICF) has awarded this week the distinction of Master Certified Coach (MCC) to Patxi Rocha, experienced coach of Escuela Europea de Coaching. An achievement that underlines his extensive career, which includes more than 2,500 hours of coaching and confirms his commitment to quality and depth in the practice of coaching.
Patxi Rocha joins a select group, becoming the sixth coach within the Escuela Europea de Coaching in Spain, and one of eight worldwide in EEC, to be accredited as a MCC.
This remarkable achievement not only reflects his exceptional dedication and skill in the field of coaching, but also highlights the EEC's commitment to excellence and the professional development of its coaches, promoting standards of quality and ethics in the practice of coaching globally.
How do you feel today? What does being a MCC mean to you?
It means satisfaction and gratitude. Gratitude because it is only thanks to my clients and the companies I have had the good fortune to work with over the years that I have been able to achieve this MCC degree. The client teaches you everything about yourself. It is the logical consequence of a journey, I would say a stop along the way, because the worst evil of a coach is complacency.
I would say it's like when in the world of sport, a team, an athlete wins a competition but the most important thing is that the next day you have to go and train to always be the most finely tuned resource for your clients.
What would you highlight about the road to becoming a MCC?
I would emphasize the commitment to ensure that this profession has common quality standards. I believe that it is everyone's job, as opposed to the parachutists who do more harm than good with the label of coaches, to have quality criteria and a code of ethics helps to keep intrusion and malpractice out of this field.
What has been the most difficult thing in your coaching career? The most beautiful, the best?
Rather than difficult, I would speak of the discipline of maintaining the serene tension necessary to be helpful or a catalyst for my clients, but I would not speak of difficulty. The most beautiful thing, the best thing is to be a resource to help teams and individuals through your intervention to be more efficient or happier.
This almost immediate report of these experiences is the most gratifying thing, knowing - because they tell you so - that your accompaniment has helped to bring about vital or organizational changes.
What do you know now as a MCC that you didn't know before? What does MCC allow you to do?
I would say that the MCC certification process allows us to banish vices or autopilots that we all generate as coaches. Applying for MCC certification forces you to put the client at the centre of the process, to put your ego aside, to be curious and irreproachable in your handling of information.
Without forgetting that coaching is action and that surely the success of coaching has to do with it being a reflection for action, being a MCC is like upgrading your operating system to the latest version, not resting on your laurels and being committed to continually examining your coaching praxis.
Why coaching today?
I would say that the perception of our psychological care and emotional well-being has changed. We had already developed this preventive idea about physical health: we have an annual medical check-up, we go to the ophthalmologist, the gynaecologist, the dentist in a preventive way, before we are ill. We eat healthily, we exercise.
Today, we are also incorporating this concern for our emotional and psychological well-being, because we understand that acquiring emotional habits and relational skills can allow us to work in organizations in a healthier way and in our personal lives to be happier.
And coaching, with its approach and methodology, fits perfectly with this concern because it gives all the protagonism to the client so that he can reflect, look at himself, change his view of his reality, and what is most important, he takes action in a much more effective way.
What would you like to leave as your legacy?
The word legacy sounds a bit transcendent to me... The feedback or report we get from clients and teams on how our intervention or accompaniment has helped them to align values and desires to their actions is more than enough.. It is powerful to meet a client years later who tells you that what they worked with you has helped them to be happier, to change, to improve.
