How to Prepare for Mentor Coaching: What to Bring, Record and Ask

Advice for a workplace mentoring program tells a mentee to bring goals, questions and a short agenda to the first meeting with a mentor. That advice fits a mentorship program at work. Mentor coaching for an International Coaching Federation (ICF) credential asks for something more specific: recordings of your coaching, which a mentor coach reviews against the ICF Core Competencies at your level.

I sit on the other side of those recordings. I mentor coaches working toward the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentials, including coaches renewing an ACC and coaches on the portfolio path. Your preparation decides how much each of your hours gives you. Below is what I ask of the coaches I mentor: when to start, what my agreement asks, which recordings to send, how to come ready, what to do between sessions, which forms to keep and what to ask a mentor coach after January 1, 2027.

When to Start Mentor Coaching

Start group mentor coaching as soon as your coach training ends, and start individual mentor coaching once you are coaching real clients. Group sessions show you early what to improve. Individual sessions pay off when your recordings carry the challenges that real clients bring, which practice in class cannot give you.

Group Mentoring Right After Your Training Program

I think group mentor coaching is important to start immediately, right after your training. Finish the training first so you get the benefit of all that education, and then go straight into group mentoring. Before you go out into the world and get the rest of your hours, you will know what you need to improve on, and you will have time to work on it.

That order protects the experience you build next. In the time between however many hours you have now and however many you need, and before you start sending recordings for individual mentor coaching, you’ll be doing it right, not continuing to practice what’s wrong. That’s what I recommend, and it gets the whole engagement off on the right foot.

ICF sets hour rules for each part of mentor coaching. They are in our guide to group mentor coaching and individual sessions, so I won’t repeat them here. If you are renewing an ACC, the renewal rules are in our guide to mentor coaching for an ACC renewal.

Individual Sessions Once You Coach Real Clients

For individual mentor coaching, you need enough practice with real clients that you are experiencing the challenges of real clients. If you are only coaching other coaches or other students, in my view you are wasting your time.

Consider a coach who has only practiced with classmates. They might meet the competencies in their mentor coaching review. Then they get real clients and think, “This doesn’t work the way it worked in class.” It doesn’t, because they were practicing with somebody who was trained to be a client. Class builds your knowledge of the competencies. You need to work with real clients and meet real challenges while you have a mentor to help you figure out what those challenges are.

If you don’t have real clients yet, wait until you do. Who are you coaching right now, and would a mentor coach hear real challenges in those sessions?

What My Mentor Coaching Agreement Asks of You

Every mentor coaching engagement I take on starts with an agreement, and the logistics are part of it. As mentor and mentee, we agree how often we meet and over what time period: no less than three months. We agree on what I need from you for each recording. That gives us the same understanding, and then we just follow what we already agreed on.

I don’t want three recordings at one time, and I’m not going to accept that. We do one recording, and you get feedback. Then you spend a few weeks, or whatever it takes, practicing and working with clients. When you feel you’ve fully integrated that, you give me another recording, and we do the same thing again. It keeps the mentor relationship clear: we both know what happens next.

For each recording, I ask for a session no shorter than 20 minutes and no longer than 60. The sweet spot is 40 to 45. I also need a clear transcript with timestamps, and a consent form. Those are my terms for what a mentee needs to send with each recording. ICF has said mentor coaching has no minimum or maximum session length, only that it is a full coaching session, and that the length is settled in the mentor coaching agreement.

I ask for 40 to 45 minutes because of what a short session does to a coach. When you have that little time, you spend a lot of it deciding what you’re not going to do. I’m not going to go deep into the coaching agreement, or into the client’s personal thing, because I don’t have time. A mentor coach can only give feedback on what the recording shows.

What should you look for in a mentor coach’s agreement? Our Mentor Coaching Foundations course asks new mentor coaches in training to draft one. In feedback on submissions to the English course (161 students, May to October 2026), the strongest agreements treated a recording as carrying duties to the coach and to the coach’s own client. They separated the time that counts toward the ten hours from preparation time, and they stated plainly that mentor coaching develops skill while ICF makes the credential decision.

The common gap was a uniform series of meetings. Of the first attempts sent back for revision on that assignment, 61% gave no session format: the sessions were scheduled, and nothing said how intake, regular and closing sessions would run. An agreement that names an intake, a feedback cycle built on recordings, and a closing review tells you what each session is for. Before you sign, also ask a mentor coach what happens if the evidence is not there by the end.

Which Recordings to Bring to a Mentoring Session

Bring a recording that lets your mentor coach see the competency, so I can give you feedback on whether it meets the competency. I think any session could be a useful recording. There are two I would skip: the session where the client did all the talking, and the first session with a new client.

Picture a session where the client was like a runaway train. You allowed them to talk and talk and talk the whole time, and you asked three questions. Even if that’s what the client needed, there’s no display of competency by you, because you only asked three questions. So don’t waste your mentoring on that.

Bring that session to the mentoring session as a question instead. You might say, “I’m having trouble with the coaching agreement. I want to focus on this, and this is what happened.” Or, “I’m having trouble interrupting. I had a client who talked the whole time, and I didn’t interrupt them when I should have.” Great. Let’s talk about that when we get to that marker. A problem you don’t know the answer to is one of the good questions to bring.

I would also say don’t bring the first session with your client. Bring the third, fourth, fifth or sixth session. The first session isn’t as much of the normal coaching. You are still setting goals and agreeing on what you will do together in the engagement, so it is a different type of conversation. By the third session the client has learned what coaching is. They know you, and you have built a bit of a relationship. That is your normal type of session, and that is what you want to bring.

If you are working toward PCC, read what a recording needs to show at PCC before you choose. Which of your recent sessions would let a mentor coach see the competency?

Before Each Meeting With Your Mentor Coach: Re-Listen and Come Prepared

Re-listen to the recording you sent shortly before each meeting with your mentor coach, so you know which session you turned in and you remember it. We are going to have a conversation about it. Come prepared with your own read of the session, and the discussion starts from your observations.

It’s not my job to remind you what you did.

What to Bring to Every Mentor Meeting

Come ready to talk about three things from the recording:

• What you thought were your strengths.
• What you would want to do differently.
• Where you think you need to grow, based on what this recording displayed.

Those are your pre-feedback observations. Bring them to the first meeting with a mentor coach, and do the same before your next meeting and every one after it. Then come open to feedback on the parts you did not notice.

ICF’s Mentor Qualification Handbook lists reflection from the mentor coaching client on their demonstrated coaching skills and areas for further growth, alongside verbal and written feedback from the mentor coach about your strengths and development areas. Your observations are that reflection. Re-listening is also how you respect your mentor’s time and your own hours, because we spend the session on what you want to learn from the recording.

Between Sessions: What the Most Successful Mentees Do

What do my most successful mentees do between mentor coaching sessions? They coach a lot, and they focus on one thing they’re going to integrate into their coaching, taken from the feedback on their last recording. They keep practicing that one thing with their clients until it becomes part of how they coach naturally.

They coach, and they coach, and they coach.

Before a coaching session, one of them might think, “I want to make sure I bring curiosity.” Another might think, “I want to make sure I’m helping the client learn, and I’m going to integrate ways of helping the client learn throughout the session.” They are practicing the feedback until they figure out what feels natural and what works, so the skill becomes part of how they coach.

That practice is your side of a successful mentoring relationship, and it happens in your own client sessions. What is the one thing you want to develop in your coaching before your next recording?

Keep Your Session Observation Forms and Competency Review Form

Keep every Session Observation Form and every Competency Review Form your mentor coach gives you. ICF has said the coach being mentored is the sole holder of the forms, and if you lose your copies, it is not your mentor coach’s responsibility to produce them.

ICF’s Accreditation Alignment and Compliance Guide sets the minimum at three completed Session Observation Forms and one completed Competency Review Form. ICF has said the three Session Observation Forms come from three different recorded or live sessions, that there is no maximum, and that you receive a copy of every form completed, including any beyond the three.

Your mentor coach keeps a log of who they mentored and which Competency Review Form they issued, and ICF has said it emails mentor coaches to confirm they delivered the mentor coaching. On the portfolio path, ICF has said you submit only the Competency Review Form. A subset of applicants is asked by email to upload their Session Observation Forms, and ICF recommends uploading them up front. Store the forms with the rest of your credential information.

Questions to Ask Your Mentor Coach After January 1, 2027

From January 1, 2027, ICF has said all new mentor coaching must be with a mentor coach who holds the Mentor Coach Specialization at your level or above, including mentor coaching for renewals. Before you hire anyone, ask in your first conversation:

• Do you have your MCS, at the level I am working toward?
• Will you provide Session Observation Forms for three recorded sessions?
• Will you provide a Competency Review Form at the end?

A mentor may not know yet. Not all mentors know ICF is changing the requirements, and some may be out there mentoring with no clue that they need an MCS. They’re not trying to do anything wrong. They just have no clue until someone asks, “Do you have an MCS?” and they say, “What’s an MCS?” So make sure your mentor coach knows ICF changed this and holds the MCS. Know your mentor coach’s level before you sign anything.

ICF has also given two more dates. Listings for mentor coaches without the MCS roll off ICF’s mentor coach registry after December 31, 2026. From April 1, 2027, ICF takes no new ACC or PCC portfolio applications that involve the performance evaluation. If you already have hours, ICF has said hours from a mentor coach without the MCS still count. Before you apply, you need three Session Observation Forms and one Competency Review Form from an MCS holder, which means a minimum of three more hours.

Those are the questions that changed. The full list of questions to ask a mentor coach, including confidentiality and what happens if the evidence is not there by the end, is in my article on the ICF portfolio path. Before you choose, read what separates a strong mentor coach from an eligible one.

Your next steps: choose your timing, pick your first recording and ask your questions before you sign. Alex Kudinov and I hold the MCS at all three levels, and every mentor coach on our team holds it at the level they mentor. If you want to work with us, start with our mentor coaching for ICF credentials. If you plan to mentor coaches yourself one day, see how Tandem trains its mentor coaches.

Questions About Preparing for Mentor Coaching