ICF Master
Certified
Coach
ICF MCC · 20+ Years · 10,000+ Client Hours
The highest credential in professional coaching, with twenty years of practice behind it.
Private, confidential coaching, online, wherever you are.
What a Master Certified Coach Is
A Master Certified Coach (MCC) holds the highest of the three credentials awarded by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the world's largest professional body for coaches. I am Shorouk Al Abdallah, an ICF Master Certified Coach, and for more than twenty years and over 10,000 client hours I have worked one to one with people at the turning points of their lives: executives, founders, women in leadership, and the people who hold a family or an organisation together.
To earn the MCC, a coach completes at least 200 hours of coach-specific training and 2,500 hours of coaching with clients, works with a mentor coach, and has real sessions assessed against ICF's core competencies and code of ethics. The credential is renewed every three years, so it is something you keep earning, not something you achieve once.
"A credential tells you how far a coach has trained.
Twenty years tell you what they have seen."
Hours and assessments matter. But what you feel in the room with a master coach is simpler than that: you are heard more completely than you are used to, including in what you have not yet said.
ACC, PCC and MCC: The ICF Credentials
ICF awards three credentials. Each asks for more training, more hours with clients and a higher standard of practice than the one before.
Associate Certified Coach
ACC
At least 60 hours of coach training and 100 hours of coaching. The first professional credential.
Professional Certified Coach
PCC
At least 125 hours of coach training and 500 hours of coaching, with real sessions assessed. An experienced, practising coach.
Master Certified Coach
MCC
At least 200 hours of coach training and 2,500 hours of coaching, assessed at the highest standard. Open only to coaches who have held the PCC.
Why Work With a Master Coach
- Presence over technique. At this level, coaching is less about tools and more about attention: hearing what is said, and what sits underneath it.
- Your agenda, not a method. The work follows what you bring each time, rather than walking you through a script.
- Honesty without deference. A master coach will challenge you when you are settling, whatever your title.
- Ethics you can rely on. Clear agreements, confidentiality, and knowing where coaching ends. Coaching is not a substitute for medical or psychological treatment, and a responsible coach says so.
- Range. Thousands of hours with very different people mean that what feels unique to you is rarely unfamiliar to me.
What a credential cannot tell you is whether a coach is right for you. That is what the first conversation is for, and why mine is free.
What Professional Coaching Is
ICF defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." In my experience the personal and the professional are rarely separate. The pressure you carry at work seldom stays at work, and what is unresolved at home tends to follow you into the room where decisions are made.
So as a professional coach I work with the whole person. My training spans Co-Active coaching with the Co-Active Training Institute, Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) with CRR Global, and certification as a PBT® Coach in Post Betrayal Transformation®, alongside an MSc Applied Psychology from Middlesex University. Science and spirituality sit side by side in the work: evidence about how people change, and room for meaning and intuition as well.
If you lead at the top of an organisation, read about executive coaching and CEO coaching, or more about my background.
Which Container Fits You
The Alchemy Container
If your life carries a weight few people see.
A private one-to-one advisory relationship, by application, for leaders, founders, public figures, heirs and decision-makers.
Explore The Alchemy Container →
The Game Field
If you have talked about it for years and it still has not moved.
A private three-day immersive, four hours a day, built around one person. Experiential work that makes hidden patterns visible, so they can change.
Explore The Game Field →
Return to 37
If you have been running hot or cold for too long.
A three-month live cohort: a short video each week and a ninety-minute live circle, to return to your emotional baseline after years in fight or freeze.
Explore Return to 37 →
Life Balance Star
If you are not sure where to begin.
A free self-assessment. Rate fifteen areas of your life from 0 to 10 and see where you stand, drawn as a star.
Take the Assessment →Certified Coach
Middlesex University
Voices of Transformation
In Their Own Words
Questions About ICF Credentials
What is an ICF Master Certified Coach?
A Master Certified Coach (MCC) holds the highest of the three credentials awarded by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). It requires at least 200 hours of coach-specific training, 2,500 hours of coaching experience, mentor coaching and an assessment of real sessions at the highest standard of ICF's core competencies. It is renewed every three years.
What is the difference between a PCC and an MCC coach?
Both are ICF credentials. A Professional Certified Coach (PCC) has at least 125 hours of training and 500 hours of coaching. A Master Certified Coach (MCC) has at least 200 hours of training and 2,500 hours of coaching, is assessed at a higher standard, and must have held the PCC first.
What is a professional coach?
A professional coach helps you think, decide and act more clearly, through a structured and confidential relationship. ICF credentials such as the ACC, PCC and MCC show that a coach has met set standards of training, experience and ethics. Coaching is not a substitute for medical or psychological treatment.
Is working with an ICF-credentialed coach worth it?
A credential shows that a coach has met, and keeps meeting, ICF's standards of training, experience and ethics. It cannot tell you whether a coach is right for you. That depends on how they work and how the first conversation feels, which is why my first call is free.
How do we start, and do you work online?
Write to me or book a call through the contact page. I read every enquiry myself and reply within 48 hours, and the first call is free. I work over Zoom with clients worldwide, in English and Arabic, and one-to-one coaching runs for a minimum of three months, or twelve sessions.
Begin With a
Free First Call
Write to me or book a call. Every enquiry is read personally and answered within 48 hours, and the first conversation is free.
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