The executive coaching market in Kenya is growing, and with that growth comes a widening range of practitioners with varying levels of training, experience, and credentialing. From the outside, observers cannot tell who has the qualifications to work at the level you need.
If you’re a senior executive or founder considering coaching, the decision of who you work with matters as much as the decision to pursue coaching in the first place. This post covers what to look for and what to ask.
Start With Credentials
Coaching is not a regulated profession. This makes credentials one of the clearest initial filters for quality.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the most widely recognised credentialing body globally. An ICF credential means the coach has completed a minimum number of training hours with an accredited programme, logged a required number of coaching hours with actual clients, and passed a competency assessment. It also means they’ve agreed to abide by a code of ethics that includes specific provisions around confidentiality.
Credentials alone don’t make someone a good coach. They do tell you that the person has invested in formal training and submitted to external assessment, and that they operate within an ethical framework that has consequences for violations. In a market where the barrier to entry is effectively zero, that baseline matters.
Other credentialing bodies exist, including the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and the Association for Coaching (AC). These are also legitimate. What you’re looking for is evidence that the coach has been trained and assessed, and is accountable to a professional standard beyond their own self-assessment.
Understand Their Methodology
Coaching is not a single approach. Different coaches work from different methodologies, and the methodology shapes what the experience feels like and what it produces. Solutions-focused coaches work from the premise that the client already holds the resources they need, and the coaching conversation helps them access those resources clearly. Co-active models are used, centered on the relationship between coach and client as the engine of change. Some take a strengths-based approach, building from what’s already working. Some work systemically, looking at the leader within their wider organizational and relational context.
What matters is that the coach can articulate their approach clearly and that it aligns with what you’re looking for. If a coach can’t explain how they work when you ask, that’s worth noting. A trained, experienced coach will have a clear framework for their practice and will be able to describe what a session looks like without being evasive or vague.
Ask specifically how they approach a coaching conversation. What kinds of questions do they ask, and what is their role in the room versus yours? Do they give advice, or do they help you reach your own conclusions? How do they structure an engagement over time? These questions give you insight into whether this person’s approach will serve you at the level you need.
Look for Experience With Senior Leaders
When you’re operating at a senior level, the decisions you’re processing are complex and consequential, often politically sensitive. The dynamics around you are layered and the stakes of getting it wrong are significant. Your coach needs to be comfortable holding that level of complexity without being overwhelmed by it or tempted to step out of the coaching role and into advisory mode.
Ask the coach about their experience with clients at your level. You won’t get names or details, nor should you, but a coach who has worked with senior executives will be able to speak about the kinds of challenges they’ve helped leaders navigate without breaking confidentiality. They’ll understand the dynamics of leading at senior levels and the specific pressures that come with it. They’ll be familiar with organizational coaching engagements, including how three-way agreements work when an employer is funding the coaching.
Assess the Confidentiality Framework
At senior levels, confidentiality is the foundation that makes coaching usable. If you’re not confident that what you say stays in the room, you won’t say the things that actually need to be said, and the coaching will remain on the surface.
Ask specifically about how the coach handles confidentiality. What is protected? What are the limits? How do they handle situations where someone from your organization contacts them about your engagement? If the coaching is employer-funded, what gets communicated to the sponsor and in what format?
I wrote in detail about what to ask about confidentiality before hiring a coach, and these questions are worth reading through before your first conversation with a prospective coach.
Have a Discovery Conversation
A discovery session is where you assess fit before committing to an engagement. Any reputable coach will offer this, and you should take it.
The discovery conversation is an opportunity for you to experience how the coach listens and asks questions, and whether you feel something shift in the conversation. You’re evaluating whether this person can hold the complexity of your role and create the kind of space where you’d be willing to think openly.
Pay attention to how you feel during the conversation. Do you feel heard? Are the questions the coach asks making you think differently about something you came in with?
Also pay attention to how the coach handles the practical elements. Do they explain how they work and what an engagement looks like? Do they address confidentiality and fees directly without you having to ask?
The discovery conversation should feel like someone is genuinely trying to understand whether they can help you. That’s the signal worth paying attention to.
Red Flags Worth Noting
A few things that should give you pause when evaluating a prospective coach.
They can’t explain their methodology. A trained coach should be able to articulate how they work. If the answer is vague or shifts depending on what they think you want to hear, the foundation may not be there.
They promise specific outcomes. Coaching creates the conditions for clarity and development. A coach who guarantees results is either misrepresenting what coaching does or operating from a consulting model while calling it coaching.
They share details about other clients. If a coach mentions other clients by name or shares identifiable details about someone else’s coaching, they compromise confidentiality.
They position themselves as the expert on your business. A coach who starts advising you on strategy or personnel decisions during a discovery conversation is showing you what the engagement will look like. If you need advice, engage a consultant.Coaching provides a space to think through your own decisions with rigour and depth.The distinction matters.
They lack external accountability. No credential, no membership in a professional body, and no evidence of ongoing professional development. Coaching is a practice that requires continuous refinement, and a coach who operates in total isolation from any professional community is harder to evaluate and harder to hold accountable.
Making the Decision
Choosing a coach is a significant decision, and it’s worth taking the time to get it right. The relationship you build with your coach will shape how you think through some of the most consequential decisions of your career. It deserves the same level of due diligence you’d apply to any important professional partnership.
Talk to more than one coach. Have discovery conversations with two or three and compare the experience. Notice where you felt the conversation going deeper and where it stayed on the surface. Trust that instinct alongside the practical criteria.
The right coach for you is someone whose credentials give you confidence and whose methodology resonates with how you want to work, someone whose presence in the room makes you want to think more honestly than you usually allow yourself to.
Book a discovery session and find out what the conversation feels like.