Every so often someone asks me to explain “the Become model”, and something in me resists.
I understand why the question comes up. Anyone researching an ICF coaching certification is doing sensible due diligence. You want to know what you’re signing up for, and a neat diagram is reassuring. But as an integrative practitioner, part of me rebels when coaching is presented as though it can be fully captured by a tidy shape and a linear sequence. Coaching isn’t linear. Clients don’t arrive in stages.
So what follows isn’t a method to follow step by step. It’s a set of foundations: the dimensions we believe are essential to good coaching, whatever tools, models or techniques you go on to use. They are what shapes our ICF accredited coach training at both Level 1 and Level 2, and, more to the point, what shapes how our graduates practise long after the training ends.
The client at the centre
That might sound obvious. We mean it in a very intentional way.
Our job as coaches isn’t to impose our own solutions. It’s to meet the client where they are, and to co-create a space where their own insights and shifts can emerge. Every ICF competency you’ll be assessed against, from establishing agreements to evoking awareness, ultimately rests on that stance. Everything else arranges itself around it.
Around that core, we work across five dimensions.
1. Integrative
We don’t believe in one right way to coach.
An integrative approach to coaching means drawing from multiple schools of thought and models, depending on the client and the context. We value flexibility over rigidity, because every client is different. Some need structure; others need spaciousness. Some work somatically, others cognitively. Some are neurotypical, some are neurodivergent.
Our role is to adapt. It also means being willing to sit with complexity rather than rushing to find a clear goal or an obvious way forward.
This is one of the more practical differences between coach training programmes. A training built around a single proprietary model will teach you that model well. An integrative coaching qualification asks something harder of you: to understand several approaches well enough to know which one this client, in this session, actually needs.
2. Contextual
This is about seeing clients not in isolation, but as part of a larger system: family, culture, society.
We explore someone’s lived experience, their social identity, and the systems they operate in, because all of it shapes how they think, feel and act. So we invite clients to consider not only “what do you want to do?” but “how do the systems I’m in, and what I bring to them, shape what’s actually possible for me?”
It brings meaning, and it genuinely personalises the coaching conversation. It also guards against one of the quieter risks in our profession: coaching someone to adapt to conditions that perhaps shouldn’t be adapted to.
3. Relational
At the core of any effective coaching is the relationship.
It’s through the relationship between coach and client that trust, psychological safety and real transformation begin. On the programme we place a great deal of emphasis on attunement: listening beyond the words, being present, sensing what’s happening in the space between you.
Clients become more vulnerable in relationships that feel safe and spacious, and that vulnerability is very often the doorway to insight. Presence, empathy and congruence aren’t soft extras. They’re what makes coaching transformative, and they’re what unlocks motivation, self-understanding and value-driven action.
This is also the part of coach training that can’t be learned from a book, which is why our Level 1 and Level 2 programmes are so heavily experiential. You practise, you’re observed, you’re mentored, and you do the uncomfortable work of noticing what you bring into the room.
4. Transformational
Coaching isn’t only about setting goals, ticking boxes and closing out the session.
Transformational coaching is about deeper shifts: helping clients connect with their values, notice their patterns, and step into new ways of being. It means exploring the why underneath the goal, and how that connects to other parts of their life.
The goal matters. What the goal is in service of usually matters more. In our experience this is also the difference clients feel most clearly, and the thing that turns a coaching engagement into a referral.
5. Informed and Evidence-Based
While we centre the human relationship, we’re equally committed to being grounded in research, ethics and reflective practice.
Our faculty come from different backgrounds and areas of expertise, spanning coaching psychology, organisational development, psychotherapy and inclusion research, and we bring that rigour into the work. We encourage our coaches to stay curious, evaluate their practice honestly, and integrate relevant theory and evidence.
Evidence-based coaching isn’t about turning the coaching hour into a seminar. It’s about knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, being able to account for it ethically, and continuing to grow. It’s also what the ICF Code of Ethics assumes of a credentialled coach.
How this shows up on Become’s ICF Level 1 and Level 2 training
The five foundations aren’t a module you complete in week three. They run through the whole of both qualifications.
Become’s Level 1 ICF Diploma in Integrative Coaching is 75+ hours of coach training and takes you to the point where you can apply for ACC accreditation with the International Coaching Federation. It’s where the relational foundation does most of its work: building presence, contracting well, and learning to coach the person rather than the problem. It also includes over 13 hours of coach mentoring.
Become’s Levels 1&2 ICF & AC Advanced Diploma in Integrative Coaching combines both levels across a minimum of 143 hours, with the option to extend to 172, delivered over a flexible 9 to 18 months. It leads towards either ACC or PCC with the ICF and Professional Coach status with the Association for Coaching, and includes 20+ hours of mentoring alongside supervision and performance evaluation. This is where the integrative, contextual and evidence-based foundations really open up, because by then you have enough practice behind you for the theory to land somewhere.
Both are ICF accredited, both are experiential rather than lecture-led, and both are built on the same five foundations.
Common questions about ICF coaching certification
What’s the difference between ICF Level 1 and Level 2? Level 1 is the ICF’s accreditation route towards the ACC credential and requires at least 60 hours of coach-specific education. Level 2 requires at least 125 hours and prepares you for the PCC credential, with more mentoring, deeper competency work. Both include assessments at the end that support your ACC or PCC application.
Do I need an ICF accredited qualification to work as a coach? Coaching is unregulated, so strictly speaking, no. However, in practice, organisational buyers, coaching platforms and increasingly private clients ask for it. An ICF credential is the clearest signal available that your training was assessed against a recognised standard.
What does “integrative coaching” actually mean? It means drawing from multiple evidence-based approaches rather than working from a single proprietary model, and choosing between them based on the client in front of you rather than the method you were trained in.
Can I start at Level 2? The Advanced Diploma combines Levels 1 and 2, so you don’t need a separate Level 1 qualification first. If you already hold one, talk to us about recognition of prior learning.
Is the training delivered in person or online? We run most of our training online. Sessions are experiential with flexible timeframes designed to fit around working life, and we’re based in London with a community that reaches well beyond it.
If you’re considering training with us
If the five foundations describe the kind of coach you want to become, there are three easy next steps.
- You can join our free Coaching Fundamentals webinar, an hour of CPD coach training that introduces transformational coaching and ICF accreditation.
- You can read more about the identity shift that coach training asks of you in “Coaching is not something you do. It’s something you become.”
- Or you can simply book a call and have a proper conversation about which level fits where you are.
