The quarterly review runs for two hours on the thirtieth floor of a tower in Abu Dhabi, and the chief executive sets the pace from the first slide.
He talks fast and decides faster. Around the table, his directors keep up: short answers, quick numbers, the occasional joke to show they're with him. Ottoline, who leads the finance team, keeps up too. Her notes are shorthand by the second page.
Then he asks the general counsel whether the new supplier contract is safe to sign this week. She doesn't answer at once. She studies the contract summary for what feels like a long time, then says, "Not this week. Ask me why." The room waits. The chief executive sets the clicker on the table and asks why. For ten minutes the meeting runs at her speed, and it's the only part of the morning anyone remembers afterwards.
That evening Ottoline, who has decided to train as a coach, opens two programme pages with "executive" in the title. Both promise to prepare her for senior clients. Neither says where she'd learn what the general counsel did.
Ottoline and everyone at that table are composites. The ten minutes are a fair sample of what this kind of training is for.
What is executive coaching training?
Executive coaching training is coach training aimed at work with senior leaders, often with their organisation as the sponsor. "Executive" names the clients, not a separate credential. Under the label, a sound programme still teaches the core of coaching, gives you live practice with feedback, and leads toward a recognised credential, with the specialism built on top.
That's the short version. The longer one matters if you're comparing programmes, because the label sits in the title and the substance is further down the page. Leadership coaching training is usually described in much the same terms, so most of what follows applies to it as well.
If you're choosing between programmes with senior clients in mind, an RS Method Master Practitioner can talk the choice over during a free call. Our apply page allows "Approximately 20 to 40 minutes" for it, and it's a conversation about fit. Arrange a call with us. Or read on.
Is "executive coach" a credential, or a description?
A description, and a useful one. It tells a client and a sponsor who you work with. The credential is a separate thing with its own names.
Our ICF certification page names the two credentials most coaches work toward: "ACC, Associate Certified Coach" and "PCC, Professional Certified Coach". (As our ICF certification page read when checked on 2 November 2026.) The names describe a level of experience and skill. A coach holding either might work with chief executives, with teachers, or with both.
So "executive" can do different jobs on a page. In a programme title, it tells you who the course has in mind. In "diploma in executive coaching" or "certified executive coach", it's usually the provider's own name for what you'll hold at the end, and that's worth whatever the course asked of you. ICF-accredited education is something else again. We've untangled the word "certified" in a separate guide, what "certified" can mean, so this one stays with "executive".
One question settles a lot: who decides the letters after your name? Not the training provider. A provider delivers the education, and the credential comes from ICF later, once a coach has met everything ICF asks for.
What should an executive coaching programme still contain?
The same core as any serious coach training, and a few things a senior client will test sooner. Look for these, whatever the title says.
The core skills, taught as coaching. Agreeing what the work is for, listening, asking, staying with a silence, and ending a session well. Senior clients don't need a different coaching. They need the same coaching, done steadily under more pressure.
Live practice that someone watches. Sessions with real people, observed by a trainer who tells you what happened, more than once. A module can teach you what a good question is. Only practice with feedback shows you what you do when a senior person answers it too fast.
Mentor coaching. Our ICF certification page lists "Ten hours of mentor coaching with a qualified mentor" as part of the route to a credential. Ask whether a programme includes it or leaves it to you.
The sponsor, handled openly. A senior client is often paid for by their organisation. That makes three parties, and a programme should teach you to agree with all of them, before the first session, what leaves the room and what never does.
A credential route at a level you can name. If a page mentions ICF-accredited education, it should say which level, and which organisation delivers it.
What you won't find on most programme pages, ours included, is a module called "keeping your own pace in front of rank". That's what the general counsel had.
What does a senior room ask that a syllabus can't teach?
Steadiness at someone else's speed.
Senior people often talk fast, decide fast and fill silences for a living. Many have spent years among people who keep up with them. A coach who keeps up becomes one more of those people, however good the questions. What a senior client rarely meets is someone who stays at their own pace while the client races, and lets a question sit long enough to be answered properly. We looked at a related pull, the urge to polish a leader's delivery, in our guide to coaching how leaders speak.
Ottoline saw both kinds of pace in one morning, and she saw which one was hers. In front of rank her questions get shorter, her breath sits high in her chest, and a silence feels like falling behind. Where she picked that up matters less than the fact that it still runs, every time someone senior speeds up. Coaching a chief executive with it running, she'd be one more director keeping up.
For a pattern like hers, the work goes to the rule underneath the speed, the one that says a step behind is a step out. Her pace is then simply hers, and a silence can last as long as the question needs. That's what the work aims at, and nobody can promise it to her in advance.
That's why the trainee comes first at RSCI: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. Heading toward senior rooms, a coach needs that order more than any module title.
Whose speed sets yours is a fair question to raise with an RS Method Master Practitioner on the free call, along with which of our two programmes would suit the work you have in mind. Request your slot.
What can a coach do to hold their own pace?
Try a pace rehearsal before your next conversation with someone senior. It takes about twenty-five minutes, alone, with a timer.
A note first. This is a rehearsal for your own coaching, and it isn't therapy or medical care. It changes nothing about any treatment, medication or support you have, and anyone in recovery keeps their programme and their people.
- Write the client's opening in their words. Three fast sentences, the way they'd actually say them.
- Read it aloud at their speed. Then sit back and notice your breath and shoulders before you say anything.
- Write your first question, and cut it to ten words or fewer. Short questions leave the client room.
- Start the timer, ask the question aloud, and wait fifteen seconds. In an empty room it will feel long, and it's meant to.
- Notice the moment you wanted to add a second question. Write the second question down, then cross it out.
- Ask yourself whose pace you were matching. A role or a person from your own working life, if one comes. Just note it.
- Choose one slow thing to do in the real session. A breath before your first question, or one silence you'll leave alone.
If step 4 was the hardest, you've found something worth taking to a supervisor or a mentor coach.
Where does RSCI fit if senior clients are where you're headed?
RSCI's two programmes aren't labelled executive. They train the coaching under the label, in an order that suits senior work. Here are three things to check, and where we stand on each.
- Practice that gets corrected. Each programme has supervised practice built in, and RS Method Complete includes "5 days of intensive live training and application, in Dubai". Our training page says RSCI suits people who want "to be confident with humans, not only competent on an exam."
- Credential steps included. With RS Method Coach, the ICF education is Level 1, which points toward the ACC. With RS Method Complete it's Level 2, pointing toward the ACC or the PCC. Our ICF certification page adds: "Both prices include the mentor coaching, assessment and credential preparation components."
- Your own pace, worked on first. Our method page names the standard: "We call it the Inner Work First Principle, and it is the standard of every cohort."
RS Method Coach comes to AED 18,000, with ICF education included, and RS Method Complete to AED 35,000, with ICF education included. The ICF-accredited education inside our programmes is designed, delivered and certified by the Institute of Coaching and Mentoring (IICM), an ICF-accredited organisation. The ACC and PCC credentials are awarded only by the ICF.
The client's rank changes nothing about the work asked of the coach. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.
Talya Whitaker, an RS Method client, in a single sentence: "There are no words for how this has changed my life, changed every cell of my being."
Our route to an ICF credential page lays out what ICF requires and how Level 1 and Level 2 fit it.
Robert Simic, training the next generation.
P.S. The general counsel never raised her voice, and the room came to her pace. The ICF side of becoming that kind of coach is on our ICF certification page.