 The new status symbol:
“Who’s your life coach?”
—By Julia Dodge Published: August, 2008 Joy Broughton left corporate America in 1991after being fired for, once again, speaking out against the political games she encountered up the corporate ladder climb. It was time for a transition in her life. “My spirit got pretty beat. I started doing informational interviews with therapists and consultants. This was 18 years ago… nobody knew what a coach was. It was somebody on a playing field with a whistle around their neck,” she says. Her first encounter with a life coach was not what she anticipated. “I met this woman in Marin County who called herself a personal coach. I had coffee with her one day in Mill Valley and she pissed me off because she told me the truth about myself.” Broughton continues, “I left her in a huff, drove off and went back home to Walnut Creek, where I was living at the time. I walked in the house, went straight to the phone and called her. I told her ‘I don’t like what you said to me, but you’re absolutely right. When do we start working together?’” Broughton went on to work with her for five months. “She really helped me get straight on who I was and what I wanted to do,” she says. “By the third session I told her ‘You are helping me to profoundly change my life. Teach me to do what you’re doing.’ And she did. For the next several months she helped me on building my own coaching practice. It fell into my lap and it felt right.” Every woman, at some point in their life, is standing at the crossroads trying to decide which path to take. Life coaching, defined by Deborah Garvin Franquist as “a broad term that describes a range of services which assist people to have their lives work for them,” is an option for healthy individuals who may just need a co-navigator for awhile, just until the storm clears. Put me in, Coach The International Coaching Federation (IFC) currently has more than 13,000 members worldwide, of which women account for more than 60 percent. In California women represent nearly 70% of ICF members, with 738 female members out of 1,076 total. Why are women turning to life coaching as their profession? “Life coaching has been developed and marketed as a field you can actually do,” says Franquist, a life and career coach in San Francisco. “The title ‘coach’ has become common, and people are beginning to look for coaches. There’s also increasing complexities of modern life—people don’t have communities of people they trust. It’s really hard to navigate modern life by yourself.” Often mistaken for therapy or counseling, life coaches agree that the climb to wellness is more about looking at the present and being proactive about the future rather than digging into and analyzing the past. “Life coaching is really about helping people pursue and make real their goals and dreams by helping them shift their perspectives, question beliefs, creates some accountability and devise action plans to help people move forward,” says Joanne L. Sperans, owner of Volo Coaching. “There are people in your life that will say ‘I support you 100 percent on whatever you want to do,’ but what they don’t say is ‘As long as it doesn’t interfere with my life.’ While they really want to be supportive, they can’t do that completely. That’s pretty much what coaching’s about—having someone cheer you on no matter what.” Sperans stumbled upon life coaching five years ago after a series of tragic events — her company went out of business, her father became ill, she was diagnosed with breast cancer — and she found that, while embracing the art of helping people through life transitions, she was simultaneously turning her life around as well. “I went through what many of my clients go through: the feeling of knowing there’s something more, and knowing there’s something more that I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. Certification not required Unlike therapists and counselors, no formal education or license is required to be a coach of any kind, however, some coaches choose to be certified. Amy Spaxman, president of International Association of Coaching (IAC), believes coaches can benefit from completing the Coaching Certification process. She believes certification supports professionalism in the field by modeling a system of coaching effectiveness, provides credibility to a coaches ethical standards, and also increases a coach’s self confidence. | ||
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