The ICF Core Competencies explained, with what each one looks like in a session

It's a Tuesday evening in a flat in Mirdif, and Lina is listening to herself coach.

The recording is from a practice session last week. In another tab she has the ICF Core Competencies open, and she's ticking them off as the session plays. Agreement set at the start: tick. Open questions: tick. She reflected the client's words back almost exactly: tick. It's a good session, on paper.

Then, at minute twenty-three, the client says, quietly, "I think I've been angry at my mother for about twenty years."

There's a pause on the recording. It lasts under two seconds. And then Lina hears her own voice, bright and quick, asking what the client would like to achieve by the end of the session.

She plays it again. The question is fine. It's open, well phrased, client-centred. She could tick a competency for it. And she knows, sitting in her kitchen with the laptop, that in that moment she left the room.

What are the ICF Core Competencies?

The ICF Core Competencies are ICF's description of what good coaching looks like. The current version, the 2025 ICF Core Competencies released in September 2025, sets out eight competencies in four domains: Foundation; Co-Creating the Relationship; Communicating Effectively; and Cultivating Learning and Growth. Each competency has a short definition and a list of observable behaviours.

Everything quoted below comes from the 2025 Core Competencies document on coachingfederation.org, checked on 4 October 2026. ICF updates its standards from time to time, so check the source before you rely on any detail.

If you'd rather go through your own coaching against the list with someone, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers a free conversation on Zoom. You can book it through our apply page. Or read on: all eight are below, with what each looks like in a session.

What are the eight competencies, and what do they look like in a session?

Here they are by domain, with ICF's own wording where it helps and a moment from a session where each one shows.

Domain A: Foundation

1. Demonstrates Ethical Practice. ICF's definition: "Understands and consistently applies coaching ethics and standards of coaching". In a session, it's the moment a client mentions thoughts of not wanting to be here, and you stop coaching and talk about proper support. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.
2. "Embodies a Coaching Mindset." This one is about you, not the client. ICF describes it as ongoing personal and professional learning and development as a coach, working "with coaching supervisors or mentor coaches as needed", and staying "open, curious, flexible and client-centered". In a session, it's whether you arrive curious or arrive needing the client to like you.

Domain B: Co-Creating the Relationship

3. Establishes and Maintains Agreements. ICF's definition: "Partners with the client and relevant stakeholders to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans and goals." In a session, it's agreeing what today is for, and noticing when the real topic has quietly changed.
4. Cultivates Trust and Safety. ICF's definition: "Partners with the client to create a safe, supportive environment that allows the client to share freely." In a session, it's the moment a client tells you something they've never said out loud, because the room felt safe enough.
5. Maintains Presence. ICF describes it as being "fully conscious and present with the client, employing a style that is open, flexible, grounded and confident". In a session, it's Lina's minute twenty-three, and whether you can stay. We've written a whole guide to coaching presence.

Domain C: Communicating Effectively

6. Listens Actively. ICF's definition: "Focuses on what the client is and is not saying to fully understand what is being communicated in the context of the client systems and to support client self-expression". In a session, it's hearing that "I'm fine with it" came out flat, and asking about the flatness. The skill has layers, which we explore in levels of listening in coaching.
7. Evokes Awareness. ICF's definition: "Facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor or analogy". Notice that silence is on that list. In a session, it's the question that makes the client stop and say "I've never thought about it like that."

Domain D: Cultivating Learning and Growth

8. Facilitates Client Growth. ICF's definition: "Partners with the client to transform learning and insight into action." In a session, it's the last ten minutes, when insight becomes something the client will actually do on Thursday.

Why do the competencies describe coaching from the outside?

Because a standard has to be observable. An assessor can hear whether you set an agreement, asked an open question or allowed a silence. They can't hear what was happening inside you while you did it.

But look closely at the 2025 list and you'll find the inside written all over it. Under competency 2: "Develops and maintains the ability to manage one's emotions" and "Seeks help from outside sources when necessary". Under competency 5: "Manages one's emotions to stay present with the client" and "Is comfortable working in a space of not knowing".

None of those are techniques. They're descriptions of a coach whose own nervous system isn't under threat. ICF can name them. No list can install them.

That's what happened to Lina. She knew silence was allowed. She'd read competency 7. But when the client spoke about her mother, something in Lina's own history moved first, and her attention went from the client to managing her own discomfort. The question she asked was a way out of the room, for her.

In our experience, this is the gap a technique-led training leaves open. A technique is only as good as the nervous system running it. You can know all eight competencies by heart and still lose four of them in the two seconds after a client says something that touches your own unresolved material.

Why does the inside decide the outside?

Because the competencies that break first under pressure are the ones that rely on you being steady.

In our experience, when a client's emotion touches something in you, presence goes first. Then listening narrows to the words you can cope with. Then trust thins, because clients feel the shift even when they can't name it. Ethics, agreements and action plans tend to survive. The relational middle of the list doesn't.

That's why we built RSCI around what we call the Inner Work First Principle: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. You do your own work first, inside the cohort, under supervision. By the time a client says "I've been angry at my mother for twenty years", you've already been held through your own version of that sentence, so it doesn't push you out of the room.

It's also why mentor coaching matters so much on the road to a credential, a subject we cover in ICF mentor coaching explained. Someone outside your sessions can see what you can't.

If you recognise Lina's two seconds in your own recordings, a free conversation with Sara is a good place to start. She'll tell you plainly whether we're the right fit. You can book it here.

How can I practise the competencies before my next session?

Try a two-column review on one recorded session. With your client's permission to record, it takes about forty minutes, and it shows you more than a week of reading.

1. Choose one recording of twenty minutes or more. A practice client is fine. Don't pick your best session. Pick an ordinary one.
2. Make two columns on a page: "What I did" and "What was happening in me". The first is the competency view. The second is the one no assessor can hear.
3. Play it through once without stopping. Just listen. Mark the timestamps where your voice changes speed, pitch or energy.
4. Go back to each mark and fill both columns. On the left, name the competency in play: an agreement, a reflection, a question, a silence. On the right, write one plain line: "I was bored." "I wanted her to like me." "That reminded me of my father."
5. Circle the moment you left the room. There's usually one. It's often right after the client says the most important thing in the session.
6. Write one sentence about what pulled you. Not what you should have said. What in you moved first.

Do this monthly and keep the pages. Over time, the right-hand column becomes a map of your own work, and it'll tell you more about the competencies you're still building than the left-hand column ever will.

What should a training give you beyond the competency list?

Knowing the eight competencies is the starting point. Before you choose a training, look for three things the list can't give you on its own.

1. Your own inner work, done first. Inside the training and under supervision, so the moments that pull you out of the room are found and resolved in you before they reach your clients.
2. Live practice where someone sees the inside as well as the outside. Feedback on what you said is useful. Feedback on where your attention went, and why, is what builds presence.
3. ICF education handled accurately. Here's how that works at RSCI. 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 programme price includes the mentor coaching, assessment and credential preparation components. You can read more on our accreditation page.

That's how RSCI is built. The coach-specific education runs online and at your own pace, and the live practitioner training happens in Dubai. Our razor puts the whole job in three verbs. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.

Our Master Coach team are practitioners who graduated through Robert's training and now hold client work directly.

The list also can't tell you how deep this work can go. Divya Kaur reported that she helped her mother out of two years of depression with a single tool, before she had even completed the full course. No competency checklist has a line for a moment like that. It's her report about her own mother, and being fully present for something that heavy is what Competency 5 points toward without ever describing. Please don't read it as a promise about your clients, or as a claim that coaching treats depression: anyone living with depression needs a doctor or mental health professional, and coaching, where it has a place, sits beside that care.

If you'd rather learn the competencies with your own inner work done first, the place to start is a free conversation with Sara. Book it through our apply page. You can also read how the method works, and how we train it, on The Method.

Robert Simic, training the next generation.

P.S. Somewhere in your recordings there's a minute twenty-three. Tonight you could play it back and find it. If you'd like to talk about what you hear, book your free conversation with Sara.