What to Expect from ICF Mentor Coaching Sessions
You’ve signed up. You’ve found your mentor coach. Your first session is coming up.
And now you’re nervous.
Maybe you haven’t coached in a while and you feel rusty. Maybe you’ve been coaching regularly but you’re not sure your style actually aligns with what the ICF is looking for. Maybe you’re just someone who doesn’t love the idea of being observed, even by someone who’s there to help.
All of that is normal. And all of it will probably dissolve about fifteen minutes into your first session.
Here’s what to actually expect.
Before Your First Session
A good mentor coach will want to know some things about you before you sit down together. This might happen in an intake call, an email exchange, or a form you fill out.
Expect questions like: What credential are you working toward? How long have you been coaching? What feels like your growth edge right now? Is there a specific competency you want to focus on?
This isn’t small talk. It’s how your mentor coach calibrates the experience to where you actually are, not where a generic program assumes you should be.
What working with me looks like : There is an intake form, that allows you time to reflect, and gives me a lot of the information I need. It included things like where your certification is from, what you coach on often, where you feel you’re stuck, how you like to receive feedback, etc.
What a Session Actually Looks Like
There is no single template for a mentor coaching session. Different mentor coaches structure things differently. But here’s a general sense of what to expect with me.
Some sessions will involve me listening to a recorded coaching session you’ve brought in. We’ll listen together, pause, and discuss what’s happening in the coaching. Where are the competencies showing up? Where is there room to go deeper?
Other sessions will be more conversational. You and I might discuss a coaching situation you’re navigating, explore a competency you’re struggling with, or reflect on patterns you’re noticing in your work.
Some sessions might involve a live coaching demonstration where you coach me (or the reverse), followed by a debrief.
A mentor coaching session is not a performance. It’s a collaborative exploration of your coaching, with someone who’s been where you are.
The key word is collaborative. You are not sitting for an exam. You are in a working relationship with another coach who is invested in your development.
How Feedback Works
This is the part most coaches are anxious about. Let me demystify it.
Feedback in mentor coaching is not a list of everything you did wrong. It’s a conversation about what’s working, what’s not landing the way you intended, and what could shift.
A good mentor coach will name your strengths clearly and specifically.I don’t offer feedback like, “you did great!” but “in that moment, the way you reflected back what the client said and then sat in the silence, that’s a strong demonstration of active listening. Your client shifted right after that.”
And I’ll name the growth areas with the same specificity. Not “you need to work on your questioning” but “that question at the 12-minute mark was leading. You were guiding the client toward an answer you already had. What if you had asked something more open there?”
Good feedback is specific enough that you know exactly what to keep doing and exactly what to try differently.
If you finish a session and you’re not sure what the feedback was, something isn’t working. Clarity is the baseline.
What to Bring to the Table
Mentor coaching works best when you show up as a real coach, not a perfect one.
That means bringing your real coaching, not a session where you were at your best and everything went smoothly. Bring the session where you weren’t sure what to do next. Bring the one where you accidentally slipped into consulting. Bring the one that felt clunky.
That’s where the growth lives.
If you’re working from recordings, choose sessions that represent your actual coaching, not your highlight reel. If you’re working from live conversation, be honest about where you feel stuck or uncertain.
The more real you are, the more useful the feedback will be.
What If You Feel Rusty
A lot of coaches come to mentor coaching feeling like they’ve lost their edge. Maybe they took time off. Maybe they’ve been coaching informally and aren’t sure it counts. Maybe they just haven’t thought about competencies in a while.
This is more common than you think. And a good mentor coach will not judge you for it.
Feeling rusty is actually a good sign. It means you care about doing this well. It means you’re aware that there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be. That awareness is the starting point for the work.
Feeling rusty doesn’t mean you’ve lost your skills. It means you haven’t had the space to reconnect with them.
How Many Sessions and How Often
ICF requires 10 hours of mentor coaching over a minimum of three months. Most coaches spread this out over three to five months, meeting every two to three weeks. I’ve had other mentees start off weekly for the first half to build momentum, and then spread out the second half to every other week.
This pacing matters. It gives you time to take feedback, practice it in real coaching sessions, and bring new material back to your next mentor coaching session. Cramming doesn’t work here.
By the end of your engagement, you should feel noticeably more grounded in the competencies, more aware of your patterns as a coach, and more confident in your ability to demonstrate the level of coaching that your credential requires.
Ready to Get Started?
If you’re looking for mentor coaching that’s personalized, honest, and built around where you actually are as a coach, I’d love to work with you. I offer individual mentor coaching for ACC and PCC coaches.
Book a consult and let’s figure out what your mentor coaching process should look like.