The KIT Certification Requirements

Preamble

Certification as a KIT Coach is not a qualification you accumulate. It is a commitment you demonstrate.

The requirements below are designed to answer one question: has this person done the inner and outer work that makes it safe and ethical for them to accompany others through change?

No amount of training hours, accumulated credits, or examination scores can answer that question. What can answer it is evidence — of practice, of self-knowledge, of ethical seriousness, and of the courage to be seen doing the work.

All seven requirements are obligatory. An application that does not meet all seven will not be assessed.

The Seven Requirements

1. Minimum Five Years of Active Practice

The applicant must demonstrate at least five years of active, professional coaching practice. This means coaching as a primary or significant professional activity — not occasional conversations, not mentoring as part of a management role.

Practice is self-reported on honour. The KIT Coaching Network operates from a position of trust. Falsifying this requirement is grounds for permanent exclusion from the network.

Why five years? Research on expert professional practice consistently identifies five to seven years as the threshold at which practitioners begin to develop genuine pattern recognition — the ability to sense what is happening in a coaching encounter beyond what is explicitly said (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986; Ericsson et al., 1993). Below this threshold, technical skill is available. Above it, something closer to wisdom becomes possible.

2. Active Supervision — Supervisor Attestation

The applicant must be in active supervision at the time of application and must have maintained regular supervision throughout their practice.

A supervisor attestation form is sent digitally to the applicant's named supervisor. The supervisor confirms:

• That they have provided regular supervision to the applicant
• That the applicant brings genuine clinical and ethical material to supervision — not only administrative concerns
• That they are not aware of any unresolved ethical concerns regarding the applicant's practice
• That the client — the person being coached — has been informed of who the supervisor is

The choice of supervisor is the applicant's own. KIT does not maintain an approved list. A supervisor with a background in psychotherapy, organisational psychology, or another coaching tradition is equally valid. What matters is that the supervision is real.

Why supervisor attestation rather than self-report? Because the blind spots supervision is designed to address are, by definition, invisible to the person who has them. The supervisor's perspective is the closest available proxy for an outside view of the applicant's ethical practice.

3. Three Transcribed Coaching Conversations

The applicant submits transcripts of three complete coaching conversations, with all identifying information about the client removed.

The transcripts must:

• Represent three different clients
• Include at least one conversation the applicant found difficult or uncertain
• Be accompanied by a brief reflective note (one page per transcript) describing what the applicant notices about their own practice in reading the transcript now

The applicant's supervisor confirms, in the attestation form, that the transcripts are representative of the applicant's actual work — not exceptional performances prepared for the application.

Why transcripts? A coach can describe their practice in any way they choose. A transcript shows what actually happened. It is the most direct available evidence of whether the three KIT dimensions — working with the client's thinking, integration into everyday life, and transformation — are present in the applicant's work.

Why one difficult conversation? Because the quality of a coach's practice is most visible not in their best moments but in how they navigate uncertainty, confusion, or relational difficulty. Carroll (2014) describes this as "the ethical moment" — the point at which the coach must decide, often without time to think, how to respond to something they did not anticipate.

4. One Filmed Coaching Conversation

The applicant submits a film of one complete coaching conversation. The client's back is to the camera throughout. The client's face is never visible.

Before filming, the client gives written informed consent. The consent form is submitted with the application. The consent form confirms that the client:

• Understands the film will be viewed by a certification committee
• Has agreed to have their back filmed
• Has been offered the option to withdraw consent after viewing the film

The film is uploaded securely and is accessible only to the certification committee. It is deleted after the assessment is complete.

Why film? Because a transcript captures words. A film captures presence — tone, pace, silence, the coach's body language, the quality of attention in the room. These are the dimensions of coaching that most directly determine whether a client feels safe, seen, and accompanied. They cannot be faked in a five-minute encounter with a stranger.

Why the client's back? To protect client anonymity absolutely while preserving the reality of the encounter. A filmed role-play with a colleague tells the committee nothing about how the applicant works with real clients in real distress.

5. A Filmed Personal Statement

The applicant records a personal statement of no more than five minutes, directly to camera, with no slides or prepared script.

The statement addresses three questions:

1. Why do you want to be part of the KIT Coaching Network?
2. What has coaching cost you personally — what have you had to face in yourself in order to do this work?
3. What do you not yet know about yourself as a coach?

The third question is the most important. An applicant who answers it with certainty has not understood it.

Why film rather than writing? Because in writing, we edit. In five minutes of unscripted film, we reveal. The committee is not assessing performance. They are assessing presence, honesty, and the capacity for self-reflection under mild pressure. These are qualities that cannot be constructed — only demonstrated.

6. Forty Hours of Personal Therapy

The applicant documents a minimum of forty hours of personal therapy or psychotherapy with a qualified practitioner. This is not coaching. It is therapy — a process in which the applicant has been the client.

Forty hours represents approximately one year of fortnightly sessions. It is enough to have experienced what it means to be accompanied through genuine personal difficulty. It is enough to have felt the difference between a practitioner who is present and one who is not. It is not enough to have resolved everything — nor is that the point.

The documentation is a self-report, supported by a letter from the therapist confirming the approximate duration of the work.

Why personal therapy? Because a coach who has never sat in the client's chair does not know what they are asking of the people they work with. Yalom (2002) writes that "the most important instrument the therapist brings to the work is their own person." The same is true of the coach. An uninspected self is a dangerous instrument.

This is the requirement that most distinguishes KIT certification from other credentialing frameworks. We make no apology for it.

7. A Reflective Document

The applicant writes a reflective document of no more than three pages addressing the following three questions:

Question 1: Describe a coaching conversation in which all three KIT dimensions were present — the client's actual thinking, integration into everyday life, and a moment of genuine transformation. What made it a KIT process?

Question 2: Describe a coaching conversation that was difficult — one where you were uncertain, uncomfortable, or aware that something was happening that you could not fully account for. What did you bring to supervision? What did you learn?

Question 3: Where is your boundary between coaching and therapy, and how do you know when you are approaching it? Describe a specific moment in your practice when you became aware of this boundary.

The reflective document is the committee's primary tool for assessing the applicant's ethical maturity. It is impossible to answer these questions well without having genuinely reflected on practice over time.

Meriting Factors

The following are not required but weigh positively in the assessment:

• Written contributions to the coaching field — articles, essays, reflections published or unpublished. The quality of thought matters more than the platform.
• Contribution to the coaching community — supervision of other coaches, teaching, research, or participation in professional discourse.
• Additional transcribed conversations — beyond the required three.
• Practice beyond five years — depth of experience beyond the minimum threshold.

The Assessment Process

Applications are reviewed by a certification committee of at least two senior KIT coaches. At least one committee member has no prior relationship with the applicant.

The committee reviews:

• The supervisor attestation
• The three transcripts and reflective notes
• The filmed conversation
• The filmed personal statement
• The reflective document
• The therapy documentation

The committee does not score applications. They reach a considered judgment, recorded in writing, on one of three outcomes:

Certified — the applicant is admitted to the KIT Coaching Network as a certified KIT Coach.

Certified with recommendations — the applicant is admitted, and the committee provides specific written feedback on areas for continued development.

Not certified — the applicant is not admitted at this time. The committee provides a written explanation and, where appropriate, guidance on what would strengthen a future application. An applicant may reapply after twelve months.

All applicants receive written feedback regardless of outcome.

After Certification

Once certified, a KIT Coach maintains their active status through one annual requirement:

Registering their current supervisor.

Each year, certified KIT Coaches confirm who their supervisor is. That is all. No reports. No accumulated hours. No refresher courses. No renewal examination.

The annual supervisor registration serves two purposes. It confirms that the coach remains in active supervision — the ethical anchor of KIT practice. And it keeps the public registry accurate, so that clients and organisations can trust that every listed coach is currently supervised.

A coach who does not register their supervisor by the annual deadline moves to inactive status in the registry. Reactivation requires registering a current supervisor and confirming that supervision has continued.

That is the entire ongoing requirement. We mean it.