ICF Accredited Mentor Coaching

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On my own journey toward becoming a Master Certified Coach, I participated in six different mentor coaching programs with six different mentors. Each experience contributed to my development, and collectively, they shaped a question that stayed with me: 

What happens when we explore not only how a coach demonstrates the competencies, but also their relationship with those competencies?

I became increasingly curious about what lies beneath our coaching behaviors. What happens within us when we're uncertain, when silence feels uncomfortable, or when we find ourselves reaching for the next question? What internal patterns might be influencing our ability to remain present, trust our clients, and embody the competencies we understand intellectually?

Those questions became foundational to the mentor coaching experience I wanted to create for others.

Today, my mentoring invites coaches to explore both the professional and personal dimensions of their development. We examine the competencies, listen deeply to coaching conversations, and make room for the inner work that helps us move from demonstrating coaching skills toward embodying a coaching way of being.

When I listen to a coaching recording, I'm listening for more than whether the competencies are present.

I'm listening for the depth of capacity you've developed. For the natural flow of the conversation. For what is being said and what remains unspoken.

I'm listening for the sacredness of silence and the space being held within the coaching relationship.

And I'm curious about who you are being in those moments. Where are you trusting yourself and your client? Where might you be working harder than the conversation requires? What might become possible if you allowed a little more space?

My role isn't to teach you to coach like me. It's to help you discover and embody the coach you are becoming.

I offer individual mentor coaching and small-group experiences for coaches pursuing their ACC and PCC credentials, with groups limited to ten participants.

My mentor coaching programs provide 17 hours of learning and development, extending beyond the ICF's ten-hour mentoring requirement. That additional time creates room to explore the competencies more deeply, reflect on actual coaching conversations, and examine the inner work that supports their embodiment.

My commitment to developing as a mentor coach has also led me to advanced training with Fran Fisher, MCC, through her Advanced Certified Mentor Coach program. I hold the ACMC designation, along with the Mentor Coaching Specialist designations for ACC (MCSACC) and PCC (MCSPCC).

I bring that education, along with my experience as an MCC, coach educator, and teacher of Somatic Coaching & Neuroscience, into a mentoring relationship grounded in curiosity, presence, and respect for each coach's individual development.

Above all, I want mentor coaching to be an experience that helps you move beyond knowing how to coach toward a deeper trust in your capacity to be present with another human being.

For coaches developing toward the ACC or PCC level.

Individual mentor coaching creates space to slow down and look closely at your coaching—your choices, your patterns, your strengths, and the places where something more may be possible.

Working one-to-one with Karen L. Bruns, MCC, your mentor coaching journey is shaped around where you are in your development and the credential level toward which you are working. Rather than following a predetermined group curriculum, the two of you can spend time where your coaching most needs attention.

Together, you will listen to and reflect on your coaching recordings, explore the ICF Core Competencies and the expectations of your credential level, and notice not only what you are doing as a coach, but who you are becoming in the work.

The intention is to help you understand the competencies deeply enough that you no longer have to hold them so tightly in your head. Over time, the structure can become something you trust rather than something you perform.

• Deep Review of Your Coaching
  Listen closely to your recordings and explore what is happening within the conversation—not simply whether a particular behavior appeared.
• Credential-Level Development
  Explore the distinctions and expectations appropriate to the ACC or PCC level and what they look and sound like in a real coaching conversation.
• Your Strengths as a Coach
  Notice what is already working and what is uniquely yours, so development does not become an exercise in fixing everything that is different.
• Places to Stretch
  Discover patterns, habits, missed invitations, or moments where greater presence, partnership, or curiosity may open something new.
• Your Own Coaching Voice
  Develop greater trust in yourself so the competencies become embodied within your coaching rather than something you are trying to demonstrate from the outside.

• 14 hours of individual mentor coaching
• 3 hours review and feedback on three of your coaching recordings
• A mentor coaching relationship completed over a minimum of three months

Karen’s role is not to mold you into her kind of coach. Mentor coaching is a partnership in which your coaching becomes visible enough to explore with curiosity, honesty, and care. Together, we can celebrate what is already strong, become curious about what may be getting in the way, and create room for your own best coaching to emerge.

Individual mentor coaching may be a good fit if you are preparing for an ICF ACC or PCC credential, renewing your ACC credential, or simply wanting dedicated space to deepen your coaching craft.

ICF requires 10 hours of mentor coaching for credentialing, completed over at least three months. Individual mentor coaching allows all of those hours to be devoted specifically to you, your coaching, and your development. Our program gives you 17 hours.

Mentor Coaching for Coaches Developing Toward ACC or PCC

Coaching development becomes especially rich when we have the opportunity to look closely at our own coaching while also learning alongside other coaches.

Guided by Karen L. Bruns, MCC, group mentor coaching creates a space to explore the ICF Core Competencies through real coaching conversations—not as a checklist to perform, but as capacities that become increasingly natural, integrated, and uniquely your own.

Throughout the journey, you will listen to and reflect on coaching recordings, practice coaching in and outside of class, offer and receive feedback, and explore the expectations of the credential level toward which you are developing.

And because this work happens in community, every coaching conversation becomes an opportunity to learn.

You may hear something in another coach’s recording that helps you recognize a pattern in your own. You may watch someone make a completely different coaching choice than you would have made—and discover that it works beautifully. You may begin to notice where you are still holding tightly to the structure of coaching and where you are becoming increasingly free to trust the conversation.

The intention is not to produce coaches who all sound alike.

It is to help each coach deepen their understanding of the competencies while developing greater confidence in their own coaching voice.

• Your Coaching Through a Credential-Level Lens
  Look closely at your coaching in relation to the expectations of the ACC or PCC level and become more able to recognize what those distinctions sound and feel like in practice.
• Learning Through Real Coaching Conversations
  Listen to recordings, observe coaching, and explore what is happening within the conversation—not simply whether a particular competency or behavior appeared.
• Your Strengths as a Coach
  Notice what is already working so your development includes strengthening what is authentically yours rather than focusing only on what needs improvement.
• Places to Stretch and Grow
  Become curious about habits, missed invitations, moments of hesitation, or places where greater partnership, presence, or trust might open something new.
• Learning From Other Coaches
  Develop your coaching ear by witnessing different styles, choices, questions, pauses, and ways of partnering. What you discover in another coach’s work often illuminates something in your own.
• Greater Freedom Within the Competencies
  Move beyond trying to remember the coaching arc or demonstrate the competencies correctly and toward a way of coaching in which they increasingly live within the conversation.

• 14 hours of group mentor coaching
• 3 hours review and feedback on three of your coaching recordings
• A mentor coaching journey completed over a minimum of three months
• Groups are limited to no more than ten (10) participants

Karen’s role is not to fix you, mold you, or hand you the “right” questions to ask. It is to stand alongside you as your coaching becomes visible enough to explore with curiosity, honesty, and care.

Together, we celebrate what is already strong, become curious about what may be getting in the way, and create room for your own best coaching to emerge.

Growth happens in partnership, not prescription.

Group Mentor Coaching may be a good fit if you are preparing for an ICF ACC or PCC credential, renewing your ACC credential, or simply want to deepen your coaching craft in the company of other coaches who are doing the same.

You do not have to arrive already coaching at the level toward which you are working. That is what the journey is for.

Already enrolled in Monarch’s ICF Level 1 or Level 2 Coach Education program?
Group Mentor Coaching is included as part of your program, and yes, you can upgrade to Individual Mentor Coaching.