The above captioned article was recently published in The Wall Street Journal and has been the buzz of the coaching community. I felt that the article was very indicative of the overall confusion regarding the life coaching process, and warranted a full response. In essence, I felt it was a very good article that inaccurately, yet understandably, misdirected its criticism towards life coaching. The entire article and my responses are shown below.

Hello Jared,

I read with interest your article on life coaching, and feel compelled to provide you with additional information that will further enlighten you on the true life coaching process. The charges and complaints by the people in your examples are justified, realistic, funny, and sad. You made some astute observations, but unfortunately, you incorrectly targeted and blamed the life coaching process for the bad reactions of the people mentioned. That is understandable, because the people providing the services you described claimed to be coaches. The corporations hired and presented the people providing the services as coaches, and the attendees to these meetings were led to believe they were being coached.

I believe your article described and gave examples of other processes, mainly consulting, that were incorrectly labeled as life coaching. I want to try to provide some further insight into life coaching, so you can see that you are reporting many things about coaching that are not entirely accurate. This confusion about the life coaching process is one of the many problems facing the coaching profession. Unfortunately, the coaching industry has not done a good job of clearing up this confusion.

I will comment on each paragraph in blue.

Comment: This is an all too common occurrence in the corporate world, but does not have to happen. In fact, Tate and the other mandated attendees to the coaching meeting had numerous reasons to feel and react the way they did. But life coaching was not the cause of it. Here are three reasons why.

First: Tate (and the others) was MANDATED to attend the “coaching meeting.” Life coaching is a process that cannot be forced upon anyone. The person who uses a coach cannot be forced, sold or tricked into using a life coach. The clients must initiate life coaching on their own for coaching to work at all. Tate and his fellow employees had good reason to feel negatively about their forced coaching meeting. The corporation, in essence, tried to force something on the attendees of the meetings that was not coaching, even though everyone thought is was

Second: Life coaching is a very personal process. Life coaching requires the individual client to open up to the coach in a very private, secure, and comfortable (to the client) one to one setting. Life coaching is all about focusing totally on the client. Coaching in a meeting with others is not coaching. It is a meeting. It is a form of training, lecturing, consulting, or other process. The meeting was unfairly labeled as a life coaching encounter

Third: Life coaching is much better for the client if done over the phone and not in person. Life coaching is much more productive, and effective, takes much less time to accomplish the coachable goals and costs about 40% less when done over the phone versus face-to-face coaching. The vignette comments, the rattling of charm bracelets, and the physical appearance of the coaches in your examples attest to the distractions that face-to-face coaching causes. Tate had ample justification to be bothered by the physical presence of the person who claimed to be coaching, but was not.

Comment: Once again this was a mandated meeting, and the physical actions and mannerism of the person created unpleasant distractions and reactions. This was another meeting being falsely labeled as coaching. See comments above.

Comment: The person claiming to be a coach was not coaching at all. Instead this person was telling Mr. Volino how to do his job. This is NOT what coaches do. Consultants (experts) tell people what to do. Teachers, trainers and instructors tell others what to do. Mr. Volino had just cause to challenge the level of real-world experience (read expertise) of the person claiming to be a coach. The person was not coaching but telling (consulting) and must prove his or her expertise to tell Mr. Volino anything.

A real life coach asks questions to draw out the inner thoughts; passions, priorities, talents, beliefs and values, and self imposed obstacles from the clients. The life coach acts as a mirror to reveal the true motivations of the client, so the client becomes the World’s Leading Expert on himself or herself. The life coach reflects back to their clients what the coach feels and hears, just like a mirror. The life coach does not give advice or tell the client what to do.

Comment: Unfortunately this is very true. That does not mean they are conducting life coaching, as revealed by the supposed coaching meetings described above. Corporations use people who call themselves coaches to solve all sorts of problems and fix people. Corporations use people who call themselves coaches, to set employees straight to suit the agendas and goals of the corporation. Yet, the true life coaching process is conducted to assist clients to achieve the coachable goals of each client, not to solve problems, or to fix people. Coachable goals are future places people want to be that require them to grow and improve as a person to achieve them. People must set and have a strong personal inner desire to accomplish their own coachable goals. They cannot be imposed or mandated by others. Attaining a coachable goal is about achieving a future place that is not setting people straight.

Comment: Once again this is very true. Far too many people call themselves life coaches who are either not capable of coaching others, do not know how to coach, or conduct consulting and other activities and call it coaching. (You gave several examples of this yourself, and you called it coaching, because someone had labeled it coaching.) My guess is that there are between 20,000 and 35,000 people calling themselves coaches these days. Many do so, because the term life coach has a less negative ring to it than the term consultant, at least for now.

Comment: Once again very true. People who spout slogans, quotes, express cherry dispositions, and fake rah rah’s are not conducting coaching. Life coaching is very unique to each individual and very personal. It is not the showmanship you are describing.

Comment: Once again this appears to be another meeting where someone was purporting to be a life coach conducting a group-coaching meeting that was not coaching. See above comments.

Comment: True life coaches rarely give pep rallies. Instead corporations hire people to perform pep rallies along the company lines. Either the people conducting the rallies or the corporation or both call the rally giver a coach and call the rallies coaching sessions. I suspect this is done to improve the legitimacy of the rallies, if they are called coaching sessions. I have personally had far too many corporations contact us requesting coaching then tell me how the coaching was to be conducted to suit the corporate requirements. Most of the time the corporations demanded that we provide consulting (and call it coaching) to tell the employees what the corporation wanted the employees to be told, but by an outside expert (called a coach), so it appeared more legitimate.

Comment: True. But, life coaches will not attempt to change the people. Life coaches will assist their clients to change the conditions around them. The key is that the life coach will reveal the truth about the clients and then assist the clients to change the conditions around the clients to allow the clients to be and act themselves and be rewarded for it. Let’s take his example. Once the meticulous person and the slob recognize their conflicts, both would find or create the conditions where they will be sought and rewarded for being themselves. The meticulous person would create the conditions that encouraged him to be meticulous, and be rewarded for doing so, and the slob would create the conditions that encouraged him to be a slob, and be rewarded for doing so. Everybody wins. In this example, the key is that the meticulous person and the slob would change their conditions from being a round peg in a square hole and visa versa to being a round peg in a round hole and a square peg in a square hole.

Comment: Somewhat true, but not entirely. Sandy has a vested interest (and so do I) in proclaiming that the demand for coaching has skyrocketed. But his agenda is that he sells the concept of becoming a coach so prospective students will purchase his training to live the dream coaching life he sells. He must keep up the illusion that every student who purchases his training will have scores of coaching clients waiting to be coached. He and unfortunately almost all of the other approximately 180 for-profit coaching schools promote this line to entice people to buy coach training. Coach training costs range from hundreds of dollars to over $20,000, and the profits are extremely lucrative. Hence, the reason so many for-profit schools have popped up in only 5 to 8 years, and they continue to show up. You may review an updated list of coaching schools by visiting the Peer Resources  web page.   The coaching schools spend large sums of money to sell people on the concept of becoming a coach. It is no wonder that one of the single largest groups of coaching clients is made up of other coaches and coaching students.

Comment: I agree. Life coaching does not fix problems. People set coachable goals and achieve them through coaching. But like any goals, the accomplishment of goals leads to the creation of new goals, which may or may not be best accomplished through life coaching.

Comment: This is a loaded area that I am reluctant to enter because it is so fraught with politics and agendas. However, if I'm in for a penny, I'm in for a dollar. There are numerous other coaching associations that have grown up that also represent the coaching industry. The ICF has a financial motive to present itself as the certifier of coaches. Yet, the ICF is just one of approximately thirty groups that sell the approximately sixty certifications that are available. 

However, we have found that coaching certifications do not distinguish good coaches from not so good coaches. Having coaching certifications benefits three groups much more than anyone else.

First, coaches with certifications use them as marketing tools to imply or even claim coaching capabilities superior to non-certified coaches. These superior claims are not necessarily valid.

Second, the groups that sell certifications promote certifications as the only way to distinguish quality coaching to increase their number of applicants and the fees that the applications generate.

Third, many certification groups (led by the ICF) also require coaches to log hours of coaching with previously christened certified coaches, which creates a mandatory and artificial demand for previously certified coaches. You can gain an in-depth understanding of the coach credentialing game by reading the in-depth report by Rey Carr at: "A Guide to Credentialing" 

Comment: Absolutely! The true life coaching process is a very effective and valuable human improvement process that works, and works extremely well, when used correctly for what it was designed to do. People achieve remarkable and wonderful accomplishments through life coaching. The key is that life coaching must be used for what it was designed to do and must be used under the right conditions. You do not try to snow ski in Miami in May. Snow skiing is a wonderful sport, when done under the right conditions. Skiing in Miami in May are not the right conditions. There are four key conditions that anyone who wants to use the life coaching process will want to have met, before they engage a life coach. If all four of these key conditions are met to suit the client, then the client will almost certainly achieve wonders, but if one or more of the conditions are not met, then the chances of success drop dramatically. You can discover these four key conditions at: http://www.findyourcoach.com/life-coachkeys.htm (I thought it easier to refer you to my web page than try to describe the conditions here)

Comment: Absolutely, and more. I believe her statement would be even more revealing and accurate if she had added the following: and receive a reflection of their true selves through their life coach. In essence clients get to finally become The Worlds Leading Expert on Themselves. The deep power of the life coaching process comes from clients unraveling the mysteries of themselves. They then gain so much more clarity about what they want, who they are, where they are going and where to set their own boundaries.

Comment: Correct again. Not everyone is cut out to be an effective life coach. In fact, our experience has shown that between 10% to 20% of the coaches we have encountered actually are cut out to be effective life coaches. (Boy, am I going to get it from the coaching schools for this statement.) The for-profit coaching schools sell the myth that anyone can become a life coach. According to these schools, all anyone needs is the particular training offered by the school making the claims, and presto students are transformed into qualified and capable coaches. When these students purchase the certifications the schools invaribly sell, they are led to believe that they are fully qualified life coaches, ready to sell their life coaching services.

I agree with that statement that Jason Weber makes that: “I couldn’t buy what I was selling.” I can’t buy selling life coaching either. Why? Because the life coaching process cannot be sold, nor should Jason or anyone attempt to sell coaching. However, I do feel that the life coaching process is an exemplary process for people to choose as a means to improve their lives in a number of very valuable and significant ways. Do therapist’s sell therapy? Doubtful. However, consultants do sell consulting. Consulting services are a sellable product. Yet, coaching schools sell their products of coach training, by selling the concept of becoming a life coach. Either Jason was trying to sell life coaching, which cannot be sold, or he was trying to sell consulting which he did not believe in.

It appears that Jason and far too many other people confuse coaching with consulting. I believe the biggest misconception of your article was that you also have labeled consulting as coaching. It appears that most of the examples you gave as life coaching processes were in reality consulting or even training processes, disguised as coaching. However, I cannot fault you for your confusion, because the services your examples complained about were presented to them, and to you, as coaching.

I must state, that I feel that the consulting process is a very valuable and useful process also. I am not claiming that life coaching is any better than consulting, or visa versa. I am stating that both processes are poles apart, with different purposes and different methods. You may read a detailed comparison of the two processes by visiting this Coach Connection web page.  We in the coaching industry must do a better job explaining what the true life coaching process really is. This way the general public will reap the wonderful benefits from life coaching, because they know what to expect, and they will use a life coach for the right reasons, and under the right conditions. Everybody wins!