Robbins-Madanes Training (Strategic Intervention)

Robbins-Madanes Training (RMT) traces its roots to a 2002 collaboration between Tony Robbins (the American peak-performance speaker and business strategist) and Cloe Madanes, an Argentine-American psychotherapist who was a direct student of Milton Erickson and a pioneer of strategic family therapy. Together they set out to codify a cross-disciplinary coaching method they called Strategic Intervention (SI), drawing on Robbins's decades of work in human needs psychology and Madanes's clinical lineage in family systems and Ericksonian strategic therapy.

The training center began enrolling students formally around 2009, operating from Carlsbad, California. As of 2024 it has trained more than 15,000 coaches from across the world, entirely through online and cohort-based formats. Cloe Madanes remains directly involved as a faculty contributor and director, and Richard Bandler, co-creator of NLP, appears as a primary faculty member, signaling the training's deep roots in the NLP tradition Robbins himself came up through.

A Robbins-Madanes certification is a proprietary credential issued by the training center, not a credential issued by a professional accrediting body such as the ICF or EMCC. It signals that the holder has completed a structured curriculum in Strategic Intervention techniques. That is useful context for prospective clients evaluating a coach who carries the designation.

Training Programs

RMT's Strategic Intervention Coach Training runs as three sequential certification tracks, each delivered online through self-paced video modules combined with live virtual practice labs and group coaching sessions. Completing all three earns an RMT Mastery Certificate.

Core 100 Training (C100)

The entry-level program, crediting 100 training hours. Students work through 15 modules covering foundational Strategic Intervention concepts: human needs assessment, listening and discovery skills, Ericksonian reframing techniques, mega-strategies, and basic personal transformation frameworks. Graduates receive an RMT Certificate of Completion for 100 hours of coaching training. Completion of Core 100 also qualifies students to apply Core 100 credit toward the Board Certified Coach (BCC) credential issued by the Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE), provided they meet the BCC's additional education and experience requirements.

Core 200 Training (C200)

This advanced track builds on Core 100 and extends into relationship coaching, deeper intervention strategies, and complex behavioral patterns. No prior formal coaching training is required, but Core 100 is the natural prerequisite and content assumes familiarity with C100 frameworks.

Total Breakthrough Training (TBT)

The master-level program, focused on deep emotional and behavioral transformation methods. Completing TBT alongside Core 100 and Core 200 earns the full Robbins-Madanes Trained Mastery Certificate. RMT positions this credential as the program's capstone designation for practitioners who intend to work with clients on significant personal or relational challenges.

Executive Coaching Track

A parallel track, Executive Coaching 100 and Executive Coaching 200, applies Strategic Intervention frameworks to organizational and leadership contexts, covering performance coaching, team dynamics, and professional development for executives.

Strategic Intervention: Methodology and Intellectual Roots

Strategic Intervention is explicitly cross-disciplinary. RMT draws from four main traditions:

Human Needs Psychology is Robbins's own framework, organized around the premise that all human behavior, functional or dysfunctional, is an attempt to meet one or more of six core needs: certainty, variety, significance, connection/love, growth, and contribution. Diagnosing which needs a client is trying to meet (and how) is the starting point for any SI intervention.

Ericksonian and Strategic Therapy comes through Madanes's direct training with Milton Erickson and her subsequent work at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, the Gregory Bateson group that originated systemic and interactional approaches to human behavior in the late 1950s. Erickson's insight that most clients already possess the internal resources they need, and that the coach's role is to help them access those resources rather than deliver a diagnosis, runs through the entire SI methodology.

Family Systems Thinking reflects Madanes's own clinical contributions: the idea that individuals are embedded in relational and social systems, and that lasting change often requires shifting the system, not just the individual. Her books on strategic family therapy are widely taught in graduate programs and form part of the theoretical backbone of the curriculum.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) enters through Robbins's own formation and is reinforced by the presence of Richard Bandler on faculty. NLP techniques are woven throughout the modules: anchoring, reframing, language pattern work.

Accreditation Status

RMT is not an ICF-accredited coach training program. The ICF's ACTP/Level 2 accreditation requires programs to meet specific curriculum standards centered on the ICF Core Competencies and ICF Code of Ethics; RMT has not sought this designation. RMT describes its curriculum as structured to align with ICF standards, and graduates who independently accumulate the required coaching hours and pass the ICF credentialing exam may apply for ICF credentials on their own, but the program itself carries no ICF stamp of approval.

What RMT does offer is a pathway to the Board Certified Coach (BCC) credential issued by the Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE), a separate body from the ICF. The BCC involves a psychometrically validated exam and requires demonstrated training hours, experience, and peer references. The Core 100 and Core 200 programs together credit 120 hours toward BCC eligibility.

The therapy-adjacent framing of Strategic Intervention, rooted in Madanes's clinical background and Ericksonian methods, means the training occupies a distinct niche: closer to the psychological end of the coaching-to-therapy spectrum than most ICF-aligned programs, but without the clinical licensure that formal therapy training carries. Prospective students should assess that distinction carefully.

What This Means for You

A coach with Robbins-Madanes Training certification has completed a structured curriculum in Strategic Intervention, a technique-rich approach that emphasizes understanding the human needs and relational patterns beneath a client's presenting problem. The method's therapy-adjacent roots can make RMT-trained coaches particularly effective at working with deeply entrenched behavioral patterns, relationship challenges, and personal transformation goals. However, because the program is not ICF-accredited, the credential does not carry the same standardized competency verification as an ICF-credentialed coach. When hiring an RMT-trained coach, it is worth asking which program tracks they completed, how many supervised client hours they have accumulated, and whether they hold any additional credential such as the BCC or an ICF designation earned independently.