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Combining principles of sporting tuition with tenets taken from therapy, coaching promises to take the

guesswork and failure out of adult life. But is it really empowering self-activation or a kind of postmodern

parenting that stifles independence? WORDS BY: DAVID GODING / ARTWORKS: REBECCA LONG

LIFE COACH?DO YOU NEED A

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It makes perfect sense to seek the advice of an expert when in need – you seek out the advice of your accountant to minimise your tax, your physio to treat a

pain in the neck, or your personal trainer to whip your butt into gear. It’s understandable then, that an increasing number of people are turning to a life coach in order to point their life in the right direction. After all, aside from breathing and waking up to your alarm on the fourth snooze, many of us aren’t particularly good at the whole living thing. And the more we try to fit in our lives (more is good, right?), the more difficult it seems to become.

“Simply put, it’s about getting a person from where they are to where they want to be as interestingly and as easily as possible,” says Sharon Pearson, CEO of The Coaching Institute.

“There’s never any one script you use as a coach. It’s really about being that person who is willing to challenge based on where the client is at, not where you would like them to be at.”

Dabbling in an area somewhere between counselling and mentoring sounds wishy-washy, possibly even dangerous, but there are strict rules to adhere to if you are to become a good coach.

“Life coaching is a service that is designed to help you live your best life,” says experienced life coach Zoe Alexander. “It’s not therapy, it’s not good advice from someone who has been there and done that. It is about you. Life coaching gives you an opportunity to sit down and assess where you are, what has meaning for you and where you want to be. Sessions then help you make progress to get to where you want to be – living a happier and more fulfilling life.”

But the big picture isn’t all roses. With such an explosion in new coaches, there’s little wonder that experience and expertise varies considerably between coaches. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it does

provide us with variety and choice. It’s just that we need to do a little homework in order to decide whose hands we’re going to put our lives in – so to speak – and what we can expect to get out of it. We’re here to help.

POSTMODERN PARENTINGTwenty years ago, once you turned 18 and got your qualification, you were pretty well on your own. Your parents might intervene or help with major life decisions, but most life guidance fell to the informal school of hard knocks. In the last 10 to 15 years, however, life coaching has gone from being a fringe therapy with as much credibility as cancer-curing crystal healing to becoming one of Australia’s biggest mainstream growth industries, to the point where it’s hard to keep track of the skyrocketing stats. We do know that in the International Coach Federation (founded in 1992), one of the first and leading organisations for coaches (but far from the only one), there is now more than 1,300 members in Australia and New Zealand, whereas 15 years ago there was around 150.

So where did it all come from, and why do we suddenly need our lives to be coached?

“The term coaching has been utilised in the corporate setting for decades, where it is perceived as a ‘perk’ for higher-level management,” says psychologist Dr Suzy Green. “However, life coaching did not make a real presence until the early 1990s.”

“It arose out of the US and the human potential movement. It also has emerged from sports coaching and sports psychology.”

Combining all this with elements of pop psychology and the self-help boom, and you’ve got the rather large palette available to the life coach. The art to being a good, even great, coach, however, is knowing what part of the spectrum to use and for what, and what to leave on the shelf.

“Life coaching has filled the need of a ‘mental’ personal trainer,” says Abby Lewtas, a life coach who works on harnessing the power of the ‘frustrated adventurer’ in us.

“Coaches offer a wide range of targeted solutions. They’re someone who can help you change your mindset so you can achieve your desired goals and feelings without having to rely on your friends and family.”

And if you don’t have one, you may soon find yourself left behind if predictions are anything to go by.

“I believe life coaching will soon reach critical mass, where it will be commonplace for most people to have a coach or know someone that receives coaching,” says Lorraine Hamilton, a life coach educator and founder of Coach School. “Life coaching has come a long way and there is no sign of it slowing down. As it takes on its shape, it’s influenced by cultural and economic factors. Being able to adapt is crucial.”

HELP MENUA life coach will usually have an area of particular expertise, interest or experience, so it’s best to seek out the specialist for your needs. You probably wouldn’t, for instance, seek out a coach who specialises in career guidance with your relationship, or vice versa.

“Every coach is different,” says Lisa Phillips from Amazing Coaching. “Executive coaches are more likely to assist people with work-related and career challenges, whereas my expertise is in confidence and self-esteem. I tend to deal with more personal issues rather than leadership issues.”

Alternatively, you may want to seek out a wellness coach, a happiness coach, a travel coach, or the self-help coach – that’s you. Yes, self-coaching is a thing, and there are plenty of books and courses out there to help facilitate your self-coaching ambitions.

So how much will you pay for a life coach? Well, just as coaches vary, so does the price. A life coach charges anywhere from $80 to $500 per hour, business coaches often more than that. They may work with you for as little as six sessions or as long as several years, depending on what you are looking for.

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Many coaches offer video or phone coaching for a smaller fee, or you may prefer the option of a group setting, which can provide added insight from other like-minded individuals, also at a reduced fee.

Then there’s mentoring, which is not, strictly speaking, coaching, although there’s no denying it can feel a little coachy.

“Mentoring is about a wise senior passing on information to a grateful junior, and often involves telling the person what they should do,” says Dr Green. “Coaching does not require that you have experience or knowledge of the occupation or situation the person is in. The expertise of the coach is to facilitate the coach’s own knowledge, skills and wisdom – and/or to determine what the gaps are and identify a plan of action to fill them.”

A good life coach can help in myriad ways.

“It’s about goal setting, and incorporating motivation, tips, tricks, and accountability on the road to achieving them,” says Sara Jane, life coach, from A1U.

“People often need more than active listening from a counsellor when they want to take things to the next level. It provides them with a palette of tools and exercises to choose from, for the body, mind, spirit and career.”

The fine art of a good coach involves helping you to find the answers, not in spoon-feeding the solution.

“Life coaching is about asking questions – great questions, leading questions, quantum questions that lead a client to rethink a problem or build a new neural path to a solution,” says Rik Schnabel, a trainer of life coaches.

“Life coaches rarely give advice directly, but through well-defined questions they help the client to come to new realisations and soon they become clear about what they need to do. Therefore, a great coach understands how humans think and knows the trigger points to bring about achievement.”

What coaching can be used for is entirely up to you.

“For entrepreneurs, this can be tapping into the greatness within and finding their ‘why’,” says Alexander. “For others, it can be when you’ve reached the point where your career is no longer fulfilling and you want to explore where to go next with the opportunities that are around you. Then there are those who come after something has gone really wrong; perhaps a diagnosis or a break-up and they feel lost and unsure of where to go next.”

“My clients do share some themes in common: they want to feel happier, more connected to the world around them. They want to feel that their life has meaning, it matters, that they are heading in the right direction and that it’s all worth it.”

COACHABILITY AUDITIt’s not just about finding a good coach, it’s about being a good client too. Coaching appears to be far more effective with some people than others, for a variety of reasons. So, just who makes the perfect candidate?

“Coaching is suited to action- orientated people who want to take responsibility and create a meaningful, happier life and who don’t expect someone else to provide it,” says Alexander. “They understand that they have done things to the best of their abilities but they know they can do even better. So, they’re brave and they go and seek help.”

“It’s not for people who want to dwell on the past. Counselling and psychotherapy is more suitable for that. It’s not suitable for people who want to blame or not take responsibility for their life and what’s happened or not happened. It’s not suitable for those who also expect others to make them happy – be it their partner, children, family, money, etc. It is suitable for those who wake up to the fact that, despite having all that ‘should’ make them happy, they are not.”

By nature, humans adhere to routines, they work for us, give us security and provide comfort. It can be extremely difficult then, to consider change, let alone embrace it.

“If you do not develop a change mindset then it really is a bit of a challenge to benefit from the process of coaching,” says Shane Warren, life coach and counsellor. “This is not to discount that people do often have change resistance, but you need to be willing to adapt, modify and change

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Do you need a life coach?

coaching; if these issues are not resolved they will interfere with the coaching process.”

Rather than dealing with trauma, dysfunction and the paradigm of pathology, a life coach is action based, looks to educate and develop, and explore life transitions, goals and possibilities. In short, therapy is about fixing, coaching is about co-creating.

“Life coaching is forward focused and action orientated,” says Alexander. “Therapy is more suitable for someone when deeper psychological healing is needed. Some of my clients will occasionally see both myself and a psychiatrist or psychologist or counsellor. Eventually, they switch to seeing one of us at a time.”

Hamilton has experienced the perils of inappropriate coaching.

“I remember hiring a coach to help me lose weight a few years ago and being horrified at the shaming and telling me what to do,” says Hamilton. “I was expecting a safe, supportive

things within your life to achieve the goals of the coaching process.”

THERAPY VERSUS COACHINGIt is important to distinguish what coaching isn’t and when it may be futile or even cause iatrogenic harm. The nebulous definition of coaching, which sits in a zone between self-help books and therapy, welcomes a broad range of credentials and approaches. Unlike psychologists, who need to have completed a certain number of years of undergraduate and postgraduate university learning as well as practical experience with clients, coaches are a mixed bag.

“Therapy is about resolving clinical issues or significant unresolved issues from the past that are impacting on the present or future,” says Dr Green. “It is often these issues that prevent us from living a flourishing life, so we need to encourage people to seek therapy – and in many cases I would suggest prior to commencing

and challenging environment for me to explore my own limiting mindset around the issue so I could come to my own empowered realisations, but that’s not what I got.”

When an unprepared client meets an under-trained coach, the potential for serious trouble is real.

“At this stage I’m not aware of any lawsuits against life coaches but that surprises me as there is a potential danger in coaching someone with a clinical disorder such as depression,” says Dr Green. “If the person is coached and doesn’t make progress on their goals, it may reinforce their feelings of hopelessness and potentially worsen their mood.

“I recently had a client who was offered 24-hour ‘on-call coaching’ at a fee of over 25 thousand,” says Phillips. “This worried me, as an experienced coach would aim for a client to become self-responsible and empowered rather than rely on them 24 hours a day. I also struggle with coaches selling often unrealistic outcomes such as ‘never have a negative thought again’, or ‘I can make you a new person in six months’. Every person is different, so a coach should tailor the coaching sessions to the unique needs of the client rather than offering a one-size-fits-all approach.”

But for every disappointment/disaster/charlatan there are multiple warm and fuzzy stories.

“One that sticks in my mind is a client who came to me because he had multiple sclerosis and had developed a needle phobia, which was the only delivery method for the medicine to slow the progress of his condition,” recalls Hamilton. “Just two sessions of life coaching was enough for me to reframe his experience in a way that completely flipped his fear on its head, resulting in him being able to administer his injection himself in minutes instead of medical professionals spending up to half a day at a time with him to try to coax him to take his medication.”

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Currently the life coach industry is not regulated, and debate rages about how standards can be improved and implemented, or if the unregulated nature is indirectly of benefit to the client.

“I often liken the coaching industry to the building industry – there are master craftsmen, skilled amateurs and, of course, the cowboys out to make a fast buck,” says Hamilton. “The problem with lack of regulation is that clients are not protected from unskilled practitioners, many of whom do not even practise with insurance. Without the prerequisite skills to deal with uncovering blocks and obstacles that clients face, coaches run the risk of doing more harm than good.”

While demand for life coaches is on the increase, making an instant living from coaching isn’t anywhere near as easy as it’s often made out to be.

“The market is flooded with non-accredited courses which use sales techniques, such as promising six-figure salaries on completion of their course,” says Phillips. “The reality is that I am contacted regularly for advice from newly qualified coaches who haven’t been able to secure a client, never mind make a six-figure salary. I also find people becoming coaches

CHOOSING A COACHafter only attending a two-week course, which does worry me.”

“If you’re looking for a coach, always do your research first and check out their recommendations and credentials. It’s important to make sure a coach is continuing their own professional development as well. Coaching methodologies are constantly changing and a good coach needs to be keeping their own credentials and experience up to date.”

But is it possible that the unregulated nature of the coaching industry is a good thing?

“Less regulation allows coaches to play to their strengths,” says Alexander. “Although they help you with ‘life’, they may be particularly good at relationships, life after divorce, career or positive parenting. Models that life coaches work with can vary. And life coaching is a new industry, and like any industry that is not highly regulated, standards will vary.”

Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to commission a coach who is, at the very least, a qualified member of one of the three major coaching organisations: the International Coach Federation, the Association for Coaching, and the Association of Coaching.

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