Does Your Life Need Help?
You might be ready for a personal coach" by Doreen Pfost from Madison Magazine, October 2001
Joe's business-products company had grown so much and so quickly, he couldn't keep up with the work on his desk. His old system of handling paper flow had been fine when he was starting out, but it broke down under a swelling workload. Joe turned to an executive coach for help.
"We literally made a flowchart of my desk,"he says, His coach guided him through the process of breaking down and analyzing his work and, step by step, organizing his desk and his job.
Bethany, just out of college, was beginning a new career in draphic design, but she caught herself dreaming of seomthing different: what she really wanted was to be a professional artist, and to paint murals. "It took some confidence builders to get me started, " she recalls. It also took planning, and a serious approach to the business side ofher art. With the support of a personal coach, Bethany created her dream job, and has benn painting murals professionally since the beginning of this year.
When Liz's kieds were samll, she gave up her career to stay home with them. At the time, it was the thing to do, because her husbands' work required him to travel. But fter a few years, she began to feel a loss of direction. "Sometimes you get so busy doing things, it's hard to step back and say, 'OK, where am I really going?'" says Liz. Her coach helped her step out of the daily routine and envision her goals. "In the pastyear and a half, coaching has imprved the quality of my life by 100 percent," she says. Communication at home has imporved; Liz applied and was accepted to graduate school at UW-Whitewater; and she even ran her first marathon several months ago.
Joe,Bethany and Liz are among the fasted growing number of people in the Madison area, and throughout the U.S., who have discovered the benefits of executive and personal coaching. If it sounds like these coaches are miracle workiers, well, some of their clients might say that's not far from the truth. Buth the coachies themselves would explain away miracles and would be quick to give credit to the clients fortheir own success.
A personal coach - also called executive or life coach - is in some ways like the type of coach that's more familiar to us: one for athletes. A trach coach, for example, guides and encourages the natural abilities of a runner, imposes disciplined training to strengthen those abilities, and teaches her to tap into the inner reserves that will carry her over the finish line. Personal coaches use a similar approach to help clints achieve in thier personal and professional lives.
Coaching is a fairly recent phenomenon in the Midwest, although on the coasts it's been poplura for years. (They say that in California, the question is not "Do you have a coach?" but "Who is your caoch?") The Madison area has about a dozen practicing members of the International Coaching Federation, the self-regulatory body of profesional coaches. They come from many backgrounds: Bethany's coach, Hava Kohl-Riggs, and Liz's coach, Sharon Vander Zyl, were both psychotherapists. Joe's coach, Kira Henschel, has many years' experience in business consulting and engineering, but also studied techniques for teaching self-awareness. Most hav ecompleted one of several ICF-apporved training programs that teachskills specific to coaching.
Who hires a coach? All sorts of people: homemakers, artists, CEOs and retirees. Many are at a transition point in their lives; taking a job with new responsibilities; changing careers; contemplating divorce (or marriage); preparing for, or adjusting to, retirement. Kohl-Riggs says a large percentage of her clients are people considering a major career change. Often, though, thier job is only part of the story. "What's really important to them is usually not the security of money," she says, "but satisfaction in their work," And in life generally.
Coach David O'Donnell says, "Some people have clear, specific goals:'I want a new career' or "I want to lose weight.' others have a more nebulous goal like 'I wnt to be fulfiled,' or 'I want to be happy."
A person might seek a coach for help with just one issue - career, relationships, health - but most coaches encourage their clients to seek balance in their lives, and therefore address several issues at once. "We look at the whoel person'slife," says Vander Zyl, "no matter what the impetus that brought them to coaching." For this reason, the lines sometimes blur between peopl shocall themselves executive coaches, personal coaches or life coaches.
Is coaching really the answer?
Bethany, the artist, sums up the skepticism that the uninitiated may feel about coaching. "You might think it's fr people who don't know what they wantto do with their lives," she says. "But it's the opposite. Smart pepole ask for help."
Coaches make it clear, thought, that they give a very specific kind of help. Their services are not a substitute for psychotherapy: depressed or emotionally troubled individuals are referred to treatment. Coaching clients, rather tend to be successful, well-adjusted people who are hoping to accomplish even more in their lives. "In coaching," says Vander Zyl, "we build on the whole, creative, health person." Unlike psychotherapy, which plumbs the past to get at the source of a problem, coaching focuses on the present and the future.
The other kind of help that coaches emphatically do not offer is advice. "It's more a matter of mirroring the client's own set of circumstances," says coach Linda VenderBerg. "Instead of telling a client,'I think you should do this,' I might say, 'You sound very excited when you talk about moving to California.'"
So a coach's job is to listen and ask the right questions, to help a client find the answers that already liek within, to identify the true priorities, and applaud progress towards goals. Can't your bet friend do this? Your husband or wife? Or you mom? Probably not. For better or worse, your friend ormother might have their own bias about how you should live. But O'Donnell says that as a professional coach, "I hold the client's agenda, and keep my own stuff out of it."
Futhermore, a oved one might not hold your feet to the fire and prod you along your chosen course. You pay a coach to do just that.
How it works
In general, coaching is conducted in weekly or thrice-monthly sessions of a half-hour to 45-minutes each. Most coaches work over the phoen, and that seems to be a selling point for busy clients, but some prefer personal contact. O'Donnell sometimes meets clients at a neighborhood coffee shop. Henschel often sees cleints at her office or, in cases life Joe's, goes to where they work.
In any case, coaching sessions typically include a review of the client's accomplishments in the previous week (coaches often call these "wins"), and a discussion of new goals, or challenges the client wnats to overcome.
A conversation between a coach and say, a magaine writer, might go like this:
Coach: How are you feeling about the work you're doing lately?
MW: I love it, byt I do feel frustrated that I'm not making much progress on my novel.
Coach: It sounds like the novel is important to your. When do you make time to work on it?
MW: I tried getting up at four o'clock every morning to write.
Coach: And how did that go?
MW: I got pretty tired. . .
Coach: Do you feel that it's important to write every morning?
MW: Well, even if I only wrote two mornings a week, I'd make more progress than I do now.
Coach: That sounds like a good idea. Are you willing to commit to writing two mornings this week?
MW: Ummmm... commit?
Coach: Sure. Send me an e-mail after you write both mornings, and we'll talk about next week.
MW: (pause) OK. I can do that.
The crucial work here is "commit." YOu can tell you best friend what you intend to do, and forget about it. But you coach expects you to get it done and report back. The monthly fee of $200 to $400 or more might strengthen your commitment, but Henschel says there's a deeper reason clients perform for their coaches: "None of us wants to disappoint somebody else." Coaches and clients amek it palin that they genuinely like each other, and enjoy the satisfaction of sharing accomplishments and fulfilling commitments.
In that regard, coaching isnot so different from the types of relationships that were formed more easily in a less busy age. People used to take more time for lengthy conversations with a pastor, a grandmother or a wise neighbor: the type of conversation that reveals as must as oneself as about the other.
Vander Zyl and other coaches believe they can help fill that gap in our lives. "Most people know what they need to do," she says, "But to have a partner in it is really helpful."
