Beverlee Rasmussen If you are considering becoming an ICF credentialed coach, you will quickly come across ACC and PCC.
ACC stands for Associate Certified Coach.
PCC stands for Professional Certified Coach.
Both credentials are issued by the International Coaching Federation and require coach education, coaching experience, mentor coaching and demonstrated coaching skill.
The biggest difference comes down to the amount of education and coaching experience required. An ACC applicant needs at least 60 hours of coach-specific education and 100 hours of coaching experience. A PCC applicant needs at least 125 hours of coach-specific education and 500 hours of coaching experience.
Coaching is a skill developed through training, practice, feedback, reflection and hundreds of real conversations. At Small Business Coach Training, we believe those hours are an opportunity to practice good coaching from the very beginning.
Why spend your first few hundred hours developing habits you will eventually have to unlearn?
ACC and PCC Requirements
As of 2026, ICF requires ACC applicants to complete:
- 60 hours of coach-specific education
- 100 hours of coaching experience
- At least 75 paid coaching hours
- Experience with at least 8 clients
- 10 hours of mentor coaching over at least three months
- The required coaching performance evaluation
- The ICF credentialing examination
PCC applicants complete:
- 125 hours of coach-specific education
- 500 hours of coaching experience
- At least 450 paid coaching hours
- Experience with at least 25 clients
- 10 hours of mentor coaching over at least three months
- The required PCC performance evaluation
- The ICF credentialing examination
The credential requirements tell you where you are in your development as a coach. Your ACC might be the first major credential. The PCC reflects represents a much larger investment in education, practice and demonstrated coaching skill.
What Happens During Those 400 Hours?
This is the part of ACC versus PCC that interests me most. There are 400 coaching hours between the experience requirements for ACC and PCC.
Think about how many conversations happen during 400 hours of coaching. With practice, things that once felt difficult, like sitting with silence, asking a question without already having an answer in mind, noticing patterns or staying with a client’s thinking instead of jumping to a solution, start to become more natural. That kind of growth comes from practice, feedback and having a clear understanding of what good coaching looks like.
We Teach Toward PCC-Level Coaching From the Beginning
At Small Business Coach Training, we introduce our students to PCC-level coaching expectations from the beginning of their training which includes our Coaching Skills Bootcamp.
Someone coming into the Bootcamp may have never formally coached anyone before. They still begin practicing with other students on how to create a coaching agreement, listen deeply, stay curious, ask clean questions, allow silence, create awareness and support the client in deciding what happens next. Feedback from this practice alone will have students noticing their own coaching habits.
Many people coming into business coaching already know how to solve problems with expertise they use within their own professional fields so when someone tells them about a problem, their brain is already working on an answer. Coaching asks something different of them that involves listening and questioning in a way that lets the other person think. Our Coaching Skills Bootcamp begins developing those habits right away.
Learning to Stay With the Client
One of the biggest shifts in learning to coach is becoming comfortable with the client doing the thinking. Imagine a business owner says:
“My employee never takes responsibility.”
An experienced business professional can probably think of five things the owner could do before the sentence is finished yet a coach would becomes curious and ask questions that breakdown the understanding of the client and eventually lead them to answer their own questions.
The coach listens for what matters, follows the client’s thinking and helps create new awareness. These skills take time to develop. Resisting the urge to jump ahead, asking one question instead of three, and staying with an important insight all require deliberate practice.
ACC Is an Important Milestone
For many coaches, ACC is the first professional credential they will earn. and reaching 100 coaching hours is an accomplishment. This means completing formal education that involved receiving feedback from a mentor coach on real time coaching real people
Those next 400 hours give you the opportunity to deepen what you are already learning. As coaches accumulate experience, their listening becomes stronger, their questions become simpler, and they begin trusting both the client and the coaching process more fully. By the time you reach the coaching hours required for PCC, you have had hundreds of opportunities to practice.
Mentor Coaching Helps Build Those Skills
Mentor coaching is one of the most valuable parts of coach development. It helps with seeing things you could not hear while you were coaching. Maybe you asked three questions at once or heard an important word and moved straight past it, the feedback you receive will make habits like these visible to you.
At Small Business Coach Training, our mentor coaching is grounded in PCC-level coaching expectations. We want coaches developing the habits that will serve them throughout their coaching careers.
There is much value in waiting until you are approaching 500 coaching hours to discover that a habit you have practiced hundreds of times is now getting in the way.
What PCC-Level Coaching Looks Like
ICF describes PCC-level coaching as increasingly client-centred, with deeper partnership and shared responsibility between coach and client.
In a strong PCC-level coaching conversation, the coach remains fully present, the agreement is clear, and the questions arise naturally from what the client is saying. The coach notices shifts in language, emotion, and energy while giving the client enough space to think, reflect, and decide what they want to do next.
Small Business Coaching Adds Business Context
ACC and PCC credentials apply across many kinds of coaching. At Small Business Coach Training, our specialization is small business. Our coaches learn the ICF Core Competencies alongside the Systems Business Coach® ontology, systems thinking, appreciative inquiry, the Effective Business Coaching Method and practical knowledge of how small businesses work.
A small business owner may bring a conversation about cash flow, employees, marketing, workload, systems, leadership or growth.
The coach understands enough about business to stay curious about what may be happening and also know how to maintain a coach approach. This will leave the owner to not only initiate all the thinking but also be able to make the final decisions and actions moving forward.
Our Certified Systems Business Coach® program develops this capability across 52 small business core competencies in leadership, operations, finance, team and marketing.
Choosing an ACC or PCC Training Path
If your immediate goal is ACC, start there. Start by completing your training, building coaching experience, tracking your hours, working with clients, using mentor coaching, reviewing your sessions, and continuing to seek feedback.
You can also choose a training pathway that continues through PCC. Small Business Coach Training offers ICF accredited Level 1 and Level 2 education, which allows coaches to build their education as their experience hours grow. You do not have to wait until hour 500 to become interested in PCC-quality coaching.
And Then There Is MCC
For some coaches, PCC will be exactly where they want to be. Others will continue toward MCC, the ICF Master Certified Coach credential.
MCC requires at least 200 hours of coach-specific education and 2,500 hours of coaching experience, including at least 2,250 paid hours with at least 35 clients. Applicants must also have held a PCC credential. By then, the competencies become deeply integrated into the way a coach listens, responds and partners with a client.
There is still something important to remember at every level. An MCC, a PCC and even an experienced coach began as a beginner. The habits you practice in those early hours matter.
Learn to Coach Well From the Start
Your ACC gives you an important professional milestone at 100 hour and your PCC comes after considerably more education and at least 500 hours of coaching. MCC comes much later, after thousands of hours of practice. All these stage gives you more time to develop your craft.
At Small Business Coach Training, our approach is simple. We want you learning strong coaching habits from your first class and practicing them through every hour that follows.
Ask better questions.
Listen closely.
Create clear agreements.
Stay curious.
Give people time to think.
Notice what matters.
Trust your client.
Then practise it again.
That is how you become a better coach.
