Eli
I take your comments on board.
I see a great deal of synergy between the areas of coaching and LSP. The 4 principles from one of your links (and which I believe are part of the open source guide) have, for me, a direct correlation to some coaching models. As such I see it as having great potential for helping individuals and teams, in an agile environment, grow and change.
As far as quality goes, I have a few remarks. Firstly, we have the same issue in the ‘agile’ world where novices are prone to the Dunning Kruger effect and give themselves lofty titles that don’t correlate to ability.
Secondly we have our own certification bodies and frankly I’ve seen many poor practitioners with certification and many good ones without. Paying someone for a badge doesn’t qualify one as an expert. I’ve worked in a few organisations where I’ve had to repair the damage from previous certified ‘experts’.
I think quality lies with the individual, the quest for knowledge and improvement and having high standards.
For the conference, the aim is to introduce people to a potentially great tool that can help them work with clients.
From that if they seek proper education and development in the practice I can only suggest it’s s bonus to both sectors. The snake oil salesmen will always exist, and it is only by sharing and encouraging the right principles in sessions such as that which I’m seeking that we can spread the right message.
Ultimately, those who see a session and then go out and try it may make a few mistakes, may not get it entirely right but I believe that those mistakes will only encourage them to learn more and apply the principles better.
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