2003 Newspaper Archives
October 8, 2003

A game plan for work or life

Coaches: do you need one or should you be one?

by Elizabeth Noll

Marijo McBride had trouble saying no. She was always helping neighbors and friends with their projects and leaving little time for herself. She was also taking care of her diabetic father, who had just had a heart attack, and her mother, who was in her early 80s. When McBride, who was working full time, finally decided she wanted help, she didn’t turn to a doctor or a counselor. She hired a coach.
“I started because I was looking for someone to help me plan nutritious meals. I was looking at ways to streamline my life,” said McBride.
The coach McBride hired, Chere Bork, calls herself a health and wellness coach. She’s also a registered dietician and licensed nutritionist, with a Masters degree in nutrition and adult education. For McBride, Bork was the perfect package.
“By word of mouth I found Chere and she helped me create menus for my parents. We started with the nutrition piece and then expanded out to other issues, like how I want to live my life.” Four and a half years later, “My whole attitude has changed,” said McBride. “I was very passive, and Chere, through a number of activities, figured out those were boundary issues. I really felt I was being taken advantage of by other people. My dad died and it was of course very sad and I really needed some time to myself. Some neighbor called and said ‘Will you chair the drive for this organization?’…and with Chere’s help I was able to say no.”
McBride and Bork could be poster models for the field of coaching, a rapidly growing self-help industry. Coaches—also known as personal coaches or life coaches—say they help their clients figure out how to create happier, more balanced lives. They’re not therapists or counselors and typically they don’t give advice unless the client asks for it. What their clients pay for, according to coaches, is someone to ask the right questions.
Though the field is unregulated and certification is optional, coaching has produced a fan base in the tens of thousands. Coaches and clients alike—both of whom have likely shelled out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to help or be helped—swear it’s changed their lives.

Why be a coach?

In 1992 Thomas Leonard, a financial planner turned “life planner,” founded Coach University, the first training program for coaches. Two years later he started the International Coach Federation, a trade association that provides certification to qualified coaches. The ICF estimates that, worldwide, there are currently 12,000 to 15,000 coaches working full or part time. Tuition for Coach U’s basic training program, a two-year series of online classes, is $4,795.
Bork, who runs her full-time coaching business out of her Eden Prairie home, is a Coach U graduate. She decided to enter the program several years ago, after Leonard visited the Twin Cities.
“I heard him speak here in town and I just knew I had to do it,” she said. At that time she already had a background in nutrition and had trained to be a lifestyle counselor, but when she heard about coaching, she knew it was for her. She graduated from Coach U in December.
“I love what I do,” said Bork. “It’s my passion, it’s my gift. I really say I’m a goosebump coach. You know how you think ‘oh my goodness’ and you get goosebumps ‘cause you just can’t believe it? I get those every day.”
Bork has about 13 or 14 paying clients, plus a few she barters with. “I haven’t paid for my haircut for two years, let’s put it that way,” she laughed. She charges $250 for three half-hour sessions (which usually take place on the phone). The price includes lots of email attention.
In addition to individual coaching, Bork gives speeches on coaching at corporations such as Medtronic and 3M and at health fairs. All together, she works at least 40 hours a week, she said.
Her next goal is to become a certified coach in the next year or so. “I need 750 paid coaching hours before I can apply for coaching certification through the ICF,” said Bork. “And I need to have a certified mentor coach for six months.”
Certification is optional, but Bork said she feels it’s a way to add legitimacy to her business. If she were to give advice to someone looking for a coach, she said, she’d probably tell them to seek out a certified coach because there are a lot of people working as coaches who aren’t adequately trained.

Who makes the grade

Margaret Krigbaum, vice president of ICF, told the New York Times in July that only about 20 percent of their 6,000 members are certified. Because certification is relatively rare in the fledgling industry, would-be clients can’t rely on it as a measure of a particular coach’s worth. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do some comparison shopping.
“The ethics of coaching is very important for readers to know about,” said Esther Bloomfield Adams, a personal coach in Apple Valley. “That’s one of my hot buttons because people are calling themselves coaches without training. It puts a huge burden on the consumer. If they have a nice chat, how do they know what they’re getting? Could be just somebody who puts ‘coach’ on their business card.”
Adams, who attended Coaches Training Institute, is a certified professional co-active coach, or CPCC. She doesn’t recall exactly what she paid for her training and certification, which together took about two years, but she says it was less than the current price of about $7,000. She was president of the Minnesota Coaches Association in 2000, the year she became certified, and while in that position, she said she met many so-called coaches who had no training.
“In 1999-2000 I first started noticing that in Minnesota. People would say, ‘I put this on my card, now what do I do?’”
Adams estimated the number of untrained coaches at about one in 10. “It’s not huge, but if you think about it, it can have an impact. Hopefully over the next few years the consumers can be aware of this so that they can make an informed decision.” The ICF is trying to establish international standards for coaching, said Adams, and some states are also in the early stages of developing coaching credentials. “There are some rumblings out there,” she said.
In the meantime, Adams recommends that people do some serious investigating before settling on a coach. “I tell people ‘Do your research. Just like if you were going to college.’” Notice where the coach was educated, she said. “CTI and Coach U have been around the longest.”
Less tangible factors, like personality and rapport, are also important, said Adams. “I think coaching is the most amazing thing in the world to come along, but it really has to be at the right time for somebody and they need to hire the right person.” Adams offers a complimentary session, as do most coaches, for the purpose of finding out if she and the potential client click.
It was at just such a session that McBride decided she would hire Chere Bork. “Chere and I just kind of hit it off because of the nutrition [background] and our goals in life and her energy. She really does give me energy.”

Why buy a coach?

Lisa Hawkey, owner of a new Minneapolis redecorating business called From House to Home, agreed to be coached—but only as a favor to the coach, who’s still a student and who didn’t charge for the sessions. “I was a guinea pig. I’d never heard of coaching before this. It seemed kind of new age to me,” said Hawkey, who considers herself a challenging client. “I’m not such a good candidate for this because I’m not that interested in other people’s opinions.”
After six months of sessions, however, Hawkey admitted she’s learned more than she expected. “She’d encourage my ideas, point out errors in thought, point out where you’re self-defeating, patterns of speech that may be hindering you. If you say ‘Oh, I’m so shy, I can’t do that’—well, here’s evidence that you’re not that shy. You can do this. She points out personal foibles as well as strengths. It’s very direct and concrete. It’s not touchy feely squishy talk. It’s practical help, practical applications.”
Another reason Hawkey agreed to the sessions was because the coach had previous experience in the business world; many of their conversations focused on Hawkey’s new company. “I don’t think coaches come out of nowhere. This woman happened to have a business background. That’s something you might want to check out when you’re looking for a coach.”
The most useful part of the coaching, Hawkey said, is that she’s learned to think strategically about her life. “What really helped me is to project myself personally into the future—three years, five years, 20 years—and take the steps I need to take to be where I want to be at those points. I think what they do is force you to map out a future and eliminate obstacles to where you want to be.”
Despite that, Hawkey said she won’t continue with coaching once her tenure as a guinea pig is over. “I can’t afford to pay for this service,” she said. “I wouldn’t go out to hire a coach. I think I can get the help I need from friends and family. But some people don’t have family. Some people don’t have friends.”
Most coaches, however, vehemently deny that they are a substitute for friends.
“Coaching does not replace friends,” said Adams. “If I coach a friend of mine, we get clear about ‘I am not your friend, I am your coach for this hour.’ It’s very, very different. I did have a client that I fired because he was paying me to be a friend. He wasn’t doing his work and I said when you do your assignment, then call me back. And he never did. You don’t want to pay somebody to be your friend. I think clients and coaches both have to be very clear about that.”

Why coaching? Why now?

Nobody can really explain why coaching has become so popular, but coaches themselves are happy to speculate. Adams thinks people become interested in coaching when they start to realize their time on Earth is finite. “’I’m mortal,’” said Adams. “Most coaches and people who hire coaches are at least 30 years old. My theory is that people start to say ‘Hey, my life is flying by. I’m going to die someday. How do I get the most out of this while I’m here?’ “
Bork’s theory is similar. “People...want to make every day count. People really, really want more life balance. They’re really, really stressed. They want to feel they’re living their life on purpose.”
Marie Thielen, a Minneapolis certified personal coach, former teacher and licensed psychologist, also believes that people turn to coaches to make their lives better—almost like therapy for healthy people.
“There’s no pathology, no psychosis, we’re not dealing with helping them through an emotional crisis or depression or anxiety,” said Thielen. “People come for coaching to make something different in their lives. They’re ready to make some positive changes. Moving from a positive to a positive, coming to get more out of their life, live their life more fully—maybe a change in career direction, starting their own business, putting more balance in their life. For most people it’s helping them find their own creative edge so they can make these changes. A coach is the encourager. They already have the ideas and the skills, and they need someone to draw that out of them.”
If therapy is like helping somebody walk, said Thielen, coaching is like helping somebody dance. “People have a lightness in their step. Whereas with therapy you wake up and it’s like ‘Oh, I’m gonna need some help getting through this day.’”
Most of her clients stay with Thielen less than a year, which she thinks means she’s been successful.
“When they feel they’ve got something really positive [going], they might transition out of coaching. [You want clients to] learn the skills, so they can kind of coach themselves when they come upon another obstacle later in life.”
McBride, on the other hand, has no plans to stop working with Bork anytime soon. “It’s really nice to touch base with someone,” she said. “I’ve thought ‘Have I reached the end?’ and I don’t think I have. For myself, there’s always something new I’d like to address.”
As for the expense: “There have been times when I’ve thought about ‘Is this how I want to spend my money?’ and I thought, ‘I can give up other things.’”