For almost four years, the thought of pursuing a Coaching Certification had been lingering in my mind. During my Leadership Development Programs, I was often assigned a coach to interact with. But I’ll be honest — back then, coaching felt like a tick-mark activity. I could never understand how someone who didn’t know me personally could guide me meaningfully.
Maybe I wasn’t ready. Maybe I didn’t understand the essence of coaching yet.
My professional life had been nothing short of a whirlwind for several years — packed schedules, endless firefighting, and barely any time to pause. Taking up a certification was out of the question; I simply didn’t have the headspace.
And then, something shifted.
I transitioned into a role where the pace slowed down considerably. The frantic urgency disappeared. Suddenly, I had time — precious thinking time. And in that moment of stillness, one thought resurfaced clearly:
“This is the right time to enrol in a coaching certification.”
Was it a deep calling? Not really.
If I’m brutally honest — my initial motivation was simply to add another professional credential to my profile.
But life had other plans.
In July 2025, I began my ICF Coaching Certification with CTT — a four-month journey.
The first week was all about context-building: What is coaching? What do we think it is? What do we feel about it? Soon after, we were introduced to the AAA model, and one by one, we started learning and practicing various coaching competencies.
What truly worked for me was the conversational nature of the sessions. These weren’t one-way lectures. They were dialogues that encouraged perspective-building.
But the real transformation came from the peer-to-peer coaching sessions.
I thought I was here to learn how to coach others.
Instead, I discovered myself.
Here’s what coaching revealed to me:
- The power of silence — how sometimes saying nothing can create the deepest breakthroughs.
- The shift from hearing to active listening.
- The realization that coaching is never about the coach — it’s always about the coachee.
- The awareness of how often I was being overly self-critical, trapped in assumptions that existed only in my mind.
- The beautiful awareness that I could let go.
More than discovering the coach within me, I ended up discovering the human within me.
Cheers to the Power of Coaching — and to every conversation that leads us closer to ourselves.
ICF Certification with CTT
Author Name: Sonia Sharma
Reason – I enrolled myself in this program as i was really curios to know how coaching works and enable Coachees
What worked for me– Conversational Model which gives you opportunity to learn different perspective. Sessions are more engaging than just monologue sessions
What benefits i got- I discovered myself in a different way. It opened my mind on many things. It helped me freeing myself from getting too Self-critical by just making assumptions which may just exist in my mind only. It has helped me to improve my active listening skills
