ICF PCC Markers: What They Are and How They're Scored

The ICF PCC Markers are the 37 observable coaching behaviors that ICF trains its credentialing assessors to listen for when they score your recorded coaching session for the PCC Performance Evaluation. They are grouped under six of the eight ICF Core Competencies: Competency 1 is described separately, through alignment with the ICF Code of Ethics and the role of coach, and Competency 2 has no markers of its own. Below is exactly how they are organized, in ICF’s own published wording.

What Are the ICF PCC Markers?

ICF describes the PCC Markers as the indicators an assessor is trained to listen for to determine which ICF Core Competencies are in evidence in a recorded coaching conversation, and to what extent. They exist to make the PCC Performance Evaluation, the step where a real coaching recording of yours is assessed, fair, consistent, and repeatable across every assessor who reviews it.

The Markers are not a coaching checklist. ICF’s own published guidance states plainly that they should not be used as a checklist in a formulaic manner for passing the performance evaluation. They describe what PCC-level coaching sounds like to someone trained to listen for it, not a script to read from while your client is talking.

Why Competency 1 Has No Numbered Markers

Competency 1, Demonstrates Ethical Practice, does not have a marker list below. In ICF’s published PCC Markers document, this competency gets a single sentence instead: successful PCC candidates will demonstrate coaching that is aligned with the ICF Code of Ethics and will remain consistent in the role of coach.

The current PCC Minimum Skills Requirements spells that out further with its own Behaviors Consistent and Behaviors Inconsistent lists for Competency 1. On the consistent side: a strong understanding of and alignment with the ICF Code of Ethics, and consistently staying in the role of coach. On the inconsistent side: a coach whose focus is primarily on giving advice or telling the client what to do, or whose conversation is based mainly on the emotional past.

How the PCC Markers Map to the ICF Core Competencies

The Markers sit inside the same eight-competency, four-domain structure as the rest of the ICF Core Competency model.

The 37 ICF PCC Markers, by Competency

Here is the full list, in ICF’s own wording, from the current PCC Minimum Skills Requirements. ICF presents these as unnumbered bullets under “Behaviors Consistent With ICF Coaching Standards.” The numbers you see below are the original numbering ICF gave each behavior when it first published them as the PCC Markers, and they are still the clearest way to name a specific one when you are talking it through with a mentor coach.

Competency 3: Establishes and Maintains Agreements (4 markers)

ICF defines this competency as partnering with the client to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans, and goals, at both the engagement level and the session level. At the PCC level, the markers below are all about the session: what this specific conversation is for, and why it matters to the client right now.

• 3.1: Coach partners with the client to identify or reconfirm what the client wants to accomplish in this session.
• 3.2: Coach partners with the client to define or reconfirm measure(s) of success for what the client wants to accomplish in this session.
• 3.3: Coach inquires about or explores what is important or meaningful to the client about what they want to accomplish in this session.
• 3.4: Coach partners with the client to define what the client believes they need to address to achieve what they want to accomplish in this session.

In practice: this is usually the shortest part of a strong session, and the easiest to rush. A rushed agreement tends to resurface ten minutes later, once it turns out the client’s real topic was never actually named.

Competency 4: Cultivates Trust and Safety (4 markers)

ICF defines this competency as partnering with the client to create a safe, supportive environment where they can share freely, and maintaining a relationship of mutual respect and trust throughout the session.

• 4.1: Coach acknowledges and respects the client’s unique talents, insights, and work in the coaching process.
• 4.2: Coach shows support, empathy, or concern for the client.
• 4.3: Coach acknowledges and supports the client’s expression of feelings, perceptions, concerns, beliefs, or suggestions.
• 4.4: Coach partners with the client by inviting the client to respond in any way to the coach’s contributions and accepts the client’s response.

In practice: this competency is judged less by what you say and more by what you do with what the client says next. Acknowledging an insight in the moment it lands, rather than moving straight to the next question, is where trust gets built or quietly missed.

Competency 5: Maintains Presence (5 markers)

ICF defines this competency as being fully conscious and present with the client, in a style that stays open, flexible, grounded, and confident. In a recording, that usually shows up as a coach who is willing to let the plan for the session bend around what the client actually brings.

• 5.1: Coach acts in response to the whole person of the client (the who).
• 5.2: Coach acts in response to what the client wants to accomplish throughout this session (the what).
• 5.3: Coach partners with the client by supporting the client to choose what happens in this session.
• 5.4: Coach demonstrates curiosity to learn more about the client.
• 5.5: Coach allows for silence, pause, or reflection.

In practice: presence is the competency most coaches assume they have, and the one assessors most often find missing. Watch for the moment you already know what you are going to ask before the client finishes their sentence. That is usually where presence quietly drops.

Competency 6: Listens Actively (7 markers)

ICF defines this competency as focusing on what the client is and is not saying, to fully understand what is being communicated and to support the client’s own self-expression. That last part is easy to miss under pressure, when it is tempting to listen only for what you need to ask next.

• 6.1: Coach’s questions and observations are customized by using what the coach has learned about who the client is or the client’s situation.
• 6.2: Coach inquires about or explores the words the client uses.
• 6.3: Coach inquires about or explores the client’s emotions.
• 6.4: Coach explores the client’s energy shifts, nonverbal cues, or other behaviors.
• 6.5: Coach inquires about or explores how the client currently perceives themself or their world.
• 6.6: Coach allows the client to complete speaking without interrupting unless there is a stated coaching purpose to do so.
• 6.7: Coach succinctly reflects or summarizes what the client communicated to ensure the client’s clarity and understanding.

In practice: the marker most coaches underuse here is reflecting the client’s own words back, rather than summarizing in your own language. A client hears something different in their own phrase repeated to them than in your paraphrase of it.

Competency 7: Evokes Awareness (8 markers)

ICF defines this competency as facilitating client insight and learning through tools like powerful questioning, silence, metaphor, or analogy. The word doing the work in that definition is “facilitates”: the insight has to be the client’s, not one you hand them.

• 7.1: Coach asks questions about the client, such as their current way of thinking, feeling, values, needs, wants, beliefs, or behavior.
• 7.2: Coach asks questions to help the client explore beyond the client’s current thinking or feeling to new or expanded ways of thinking or feeling about themself (the who).
• 7.3: Coach asks questions to help the client explore beyond the client’s current thinking or feeling to new or expanded ways of thinking or feeling about their situation (the what).
• 7.4: Coach asks questions to help the client explore beyond current thinking, feeling, or behaving toward the outcome the client desires.
• 7.5: Coach shares, with no attachment, observations, intuitions, comments, thoughts, or feelings, and invites the client’s exploration through verbal or tonal invitation.
• 7.6: Coach asks clear, direct, primarily open-ended questions, one at a time, at a pace that allows for thinking, feeling, or reflection by the client.
• 7.7: Coach uses language that is generally clear and concise.
• 7.8: Coach allows the client to do most of the talking.

In practice: the distinction assessors are listening for is between a question that helps the client think and a question that leads them to your answer. If you already know what you want the client to realize before you ask it, the question is usually steering rather than evoking.

Competency 8: Facilitates Client Growth (9 markers)

ICF defines this competency as partnering with the client to transform learning and insight into action, and promoting the client’s autonomy in that process. Autonomy is the operative word: the coach’s job is to support the design, not supply it.

• 8.1: Coach invites or allows the client to explore progress toward what the client wanted to accomplish in this session.
• 8.2: Coach invites the client to state or explore the client’s learning in this session about themself (the who).
• 8.3: Coach invites the client to state or explore the client’s learning in this session about their situation (the what).
• 8.4: Coach invites the client to consider how they will use new learning from this coaching session.
• 8.5: Coach partners with the client to design post-session thinking, reflection, or action.
• 8.6: Coach partners with the client to consider how to move forward, including resources, support, or potential barriers.
• 8.7: Coach partners with the client to design the best methods of accountability for themself.
• 8.8: Coach celebrates the client’s progress and learning.
• 8.9: Coach partners with the client on how they want to complete this session.

In practice: the tell here is homework. If the coach is the one deciding what the client will do next, this competency is not being demonstrated, no matter how sensible the suggestion is. The action has to be the client’s design, not the coach’s assignment.

What Falls Short at the PCC Level

The Minimum Skills Requirements does not only describe what strong PCC-level coaching looks like. Each competency also carries its own list of Behaviors Inconsistent With ICF Coaching Standards, the concrete slips that count against a recording. A few, in ICF’s own words:

• Competency 1, Ethics. “The coach primarily gives advice or tells the client what to do throughout the session.”
• Competency 3, Agreements. “The coach does not verbally confirm what the client wants to accomplish as a session outcome.”
• Competency 5, Presence. “The coach interferes with the client’s process by directing, interrupting, or filling silence.”
• Competency 6, Listening. “The coach makes assumptions about the client’s words and concepts, without inquiring into the client’s definition or meaning.”
• Competency 7, Evoking Awareness. “The coach asks questions that lead the client toward the coach’s perspective, rather than the client’s own way of thinking, feeling, or sensing.”
• Competency 8, Facilitating Growth. “The coach directs the client to carry out specific actions prescribed by the coach, rather than allowing the client to design their own actions.”

These are worth studying as closely as the markers themselves. Knowing what a slip sounds like sharpens your ear for what a strong session actually feels like.

Where the PCC Markers Fit in Your Credentialing Path

The Markers apply specifically to the Performance Evaluation, the part of PCC credentialing where recordings of your actual coaching are reviewed. That is a separate step from the Credentialing Exam (previously called the Coach Knowledge Assessment), the timed, computer-based test. Passing one does not automatically satisfy the other.

How the Performance Evaluation reaches you depends on your path. ICF currently offers two routes to PCC:

• Level 2 Path. If you complete a full ICF-accredited Level 2 program, the performance evaluation is built into the program and you submit nothing extra to ICF.
• Portfolio Path. You submit two recorded coaching sessions, with transcripts, alongside your application.

If you are on the Portfolio Path, one change is worth planning around: ICF is replacing the Performance Evaluation with an enhanced mentor coaching requirement, effective April 1, 2027. Starting January 1, 2027, new mentor coaching hours must be completed with a mentor coach holding the Mentor Coach Specialization (MCS), and candidates submit a Competency Review Form in place of recordings. If you are on the Level 2 Path you do not need to do anything differently, and the Performance Evaluation stays in place for MCC candidates on every path.

None of that makes the Markers less worth learning. They still describe what PCC-level coaching looks like, they are still the standard a mentor coach will hold your coaching against, and the judgment behind them is exactly what the written exam tests. It is worth checking your own pathway on ICF’s credentialing pages, and if you would like the fuller picture of eligibility and format, our ICF Credentialing Exam guide is a good place to start.

How the PCC Markers Show Up in the ICF Credentialing Exam

The Markers are scored in your recorded Performance Evaluation, but the judgment behind them is also what the written ICF Credentialing Exam rewards. That exam leans heavily on situational-judgment questions, coaching scenarios that ask, in effect, “what does a competent coach do next?” The credentialed answer is almost always the option that enacts one or multiple PCC Markers, and the worst answers are usually the ones that break the ICF Code of Ethics or drift out of the coach role into advising, leading, or fixing.

A few examples of how a marker becomes an exam answer:

• A client opens with a vague goal and the “best” response is to partner with them to define what success looks like this session. That is Marker 3.2 in scenario form.
• The coach has a strong hunch and the correct choice is to share it with no attachment and invite the client’s reaction, rather than asserting it. That is Marker 7.5.
• The session is wrapping up and the right move is to let the client design their own accountability, not to assign homework. That is Marker 8.7.

So learning the Markers does double duty: it prepares the recording an assessor will score, and it gives you a decision rubric for the exam’s scenarios. Read each marker not as a line to recite but as “in this moment, the competent coach does X,” and you are simultaneously studying for both halves of your credential. That is exactly how our ICF PCC/MCC Complete Exam Prep & Practice simulator frames its scenarios, so the judgment you build maps straight onto both the exam and your evaluation.

Are the ICF PCC Markers Being Updated?

The behaviors have not changed. How ICF packages them has, and that distinction is where most of the worry comes from.

What ICF calls this material today is the PCC Minimum Skills Requirements (rev. 1.26.2026), and that is the document ICF’s own Criteria for Assessing PCC page points candidates to for how your evaluation is measured. The 37 behaviors below started out in 2020 as the PCC Markers, a document ICF revised once more in 2021 and still hosts at its original address, but its current assessment page does not mention that older PDF at all. If you go looking for “the markers” today, the Minimum Skills Requirements is where ICF sends you.

Do not read that 2026 revision stamp as a sign your prep is out of date. ICF addressed that directly when it announced the change in October 2025: the PCC requirements themselves did not change, only the format did, updated to match the ACC and MCC documents for consistency. What changed is how the same 37 behaviors are presented, in three ways that affect how you study.

• The marker numbers are gone. As noted above, they now appear as unnumbered bullets under “Behaviors Consistent With ICF Coaching Standards” instead.
• Each competency from 3 to 8 opens with Key Skills. These are the foundational abilities ICF expects across all credential levels, listed before the PCC-level behaviors.
• Every competency except 2 now carries a list of Behaviors Inconsistent With ICF Coaching Standards, 34 of them in total. For exam preparation these are arguably more useful than the markers themselves, because they name what failure sounds like: giving advice, telling the client what to do, coaching the story rather than the client.

That includes Competency 1, covered above: what was a single sentence in the original Markers document now has its own Consistent and Inconsistent lists too.

As for the competency model underneath, ICF released the 2025 ICF Core Competencies in September 2025. The eight competencies and four domains are unchanged; the update adds five new sub-competencies, revises 11 existing ones, refines a competency definition, and adds a glossary of terms. The Markers were written against the 2019 model, and ICF has not published a substantive rewrite of them against the 2025 one.

Separately, ICF is updating the written exam. The new PCC-MCC Exam becomes available on November 10, 2026: 80 items, 44 situational judgment questions and 36 knowledge-based ones, in 150 minutes with an optional 10-minute break, aligned to ICF’s most recent Core Competencies and Code of Ethics updates. It does not replace the current exam overnight. Between November 10, 2026 and March 31, 2027 you may sit either version, and both award the same credential. After March 31, 2027, only the new exam is offered. That change affects the written exam, not the behaviors your coaching is assessed against.

How to Study the PCC Markers Without Turning Them Into a Checklist

Knowing the 37 markers is only useful if it changes how you coach, not how you perform for a recording. A few ways to make that translation stick:

1. Record and listen back to your own practice sessions. After a few real conversations, go marker by marker: did you invite the client to define what success looks like (3.2)? Did you notice and name an energy shift (6.4)? You are training your ear, not your script. For a sense of what that self-study actually feels like, read one coach’s first-person account of preparing for the PCC exam.
2. Study the Markers alongside the competency itself, not instead of it. Each competency’s full definition and behavioral indicators give you the context a marker is drawn from, so revisit the full Core Competency write-ups linked above as you go. Read the Minimum Skills Requirements too, for the Behaviors Inconsistent With ICF Coaching Standards. Knowing what a weak moment sounds like trains your ear as much as knowing the markers does.
3. Practice noticing more than one marker at once. Because a single question can serve several markers, the skill worth building is staying present and curious, not counting boxes while you coach.
4. Pressure-test your judgment with realistic practice. The PCC Credentialing Exam’s situational judgment questions draw on the same underlying skills the Markers describe: recognizing what a competent, ethical coach does in a given moment. Our ICF PCC/MCC Complete Exam Prep & Practice program pairs competency deep-dives with a realistic scenario simulator so you build that judgment before it counts.

FAQs About the ICF PCC Markers

What are the ICF PCC Markers?

The ICF PCC Markers are the official set of behavioral indicators ICF trains its credentialing assessors to listen for when scoring a candidate’s recorded coaching session against the ICF Core Competencies at the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) level. They support the Performance Evaluation portion of the PCC credentialing process. ICF is explicit that the Markers are an assessor tool, not a checklist for coaching, so treating them as a script for your own sessions works against you rather than for you.

How many ICF PCC Markers are there?

There are 37 PCC Markers in total, spread across six of the eight ICF Core Competencies: 4 markers under Establishes and Maintains Agreements, 4 under Cultivates Trust and Safety, 5 under Maintains Presence, 7 under Listens Actively, 8 under Evokes Awareness, and 9 under Facilitates Client Growth.

Which ICF Core Competencies do the PCC Markers cover?

The Markers cover Competencies 3 through 8: Establishes and Maintains Agreements, Cultivates Trust and Safety, Maintains Presence, Listens Actively, Evokes Awareness, and Facilitates Client Growth. Competency 1, Demonstrates Ethical Practice, has no numbered markers; ICF describes it instead through alignment with the ICF Code of Ethics and consistent alignment with the role of coach. Competency 2, Embodies a Coaching Mindset, has no markers of its own either. ICF states its behaviors are assessed through 11 markers that live under other competencies, and that the rest of the competency is evaluated in the ICF Credentialing Exam.

How do ICF assessors decide whether a marker was “observed”?

ICF publishes what a strong recording looks like, through the Behaviors Consistent With ICF Coaching Standards under each competency, and what falls short, through the paired Behaviors Inconsistent lists. Beyond that, ICF has not published the mechanics of how an individual assessor reaches a decision on any single marker. It does state plainly that the Minimum Skills Requirements are not meant to be used as a checklist or a formula for passing the evaluation.

Have the ICF PCC Markers changed, or are they still based on the 2019 Core Competencies?

The behaviors have not changed, but what ICF calls them has. They were written against the 2019 ICF Core Competency model and started out in 2020 as the PCC Markers, revised once more in 2021. ICF now presents the same 37 behaviors as the PCC Minimum Skills Requirements (rev. 1.26.2026), which its Criteria for Assessing PCC page points candidates to, and its current assessment page no longer mentions the older Markers PDF. ICF stated in October 2025 that the PCC requirements themselves did not change and only the format was updated to match the ACC and MCC documents. The newer document drops the marker numbers, adds Key Skills sections, and adds lists of Behaviors Inconsistent With ICF Coaching Standards.

Where can I find the official ICF PCC Markers PDF?

ICF’s current document is the PCC Minimum Skills Requirements, published here: PCC Minimum Skills Requirements (PDF), and it is what ICF’s own Criteria for Assessing PCC page points candidates to. It carries the same 37 behaviors this article walks through, presented as unnumbered bullets rather than the numbered markers you may have seen referenced elsewhere.