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Best-selling authors of self-help and business books. Big-name consultants. Multi-level-marketing salespeople. Personal-development gurus. Top-fee speakers. Pop psychologists. What do they all have in common? Abra Kadabra. They’re all “coaches” now. Never mind that few have trained through coaching schools or are offering a form of coaching that is recognized by the industry’s credentialing organizations. As John Lazar, co-executive editor of International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, observed: ”My take is that most of the people who have come from consulting and are now calling what they are doing ‘coaching’ are probably doing very little coaching. They are probably doing 80 to 90 percent of what they did before.” With so many people calling themselves coaches, does the public have any idea of what a coach is? ”In my eight years of training over 2,700 coaches, working with personal clients and companies (including Fortune 100) all over the world, I can say they have no clue,” says Terri Levine, founder of Comprehensive Coach U and The Coaching Institute. “They don’t know if we get trained and they have no idea about things like ‘MCC’ (Master Certified Coach), which is meaningless in my view to anyone but coaches. ”They hire me to help them and many think I’ll be similar to a consultant--with a different title.” That so many people have adopted the term coach—even though they are primarily doing consulting, teaching, mentoring, training or counseling— “muddies the water in terms of the public having a common understanding of what coaching is,” says Lazar. And what about reality TV’s depiction of coaches? What happens to the public perception when entertainment shows feature authoritarian and live-in “coaches” who more resemble positive-platitude-spouting drill sergeants? "At the very best it gives a distorted, simplistic perspective of what coaching is and can be,” says Lazar. ”I think it hurts the profession. I don’t see how it can help.” Sandy Vilas, CEO of CoachInc.com—parent company of Coach U and Corporate Coach U—sees a “need to educate the public about the distinction between a trained coach and a person calling themselves a coach.” Still, he isn’t terribly concerned about it. ”Anybody can call themselves a coach. That’s true. And a lot of people in the coaching community are up in arms, fearful of any Tom, Dick or Harry calling themselves a coach. Me, I don’t care. I just think it brings more focus to the profession. ”There’s a reason people are calling themselves a coach. …It means that coaches are respected.” John Agno, a former consultant who is now a certified business and executive coach and founder of the Coach to Coach Network (an international virtual community of more than 1,000 business and executive coaches) agrees. “As people like Dr. Phil promote in the media and educate people about coaching, coaching becomes more popular,” he says. That’s good for the profession, he says. ”For best-selling authors and speakers to call themselves coaches and offer coaching programs is probably one of the most hopeful developments for marketing coaching,” says Ramon Williamson. Williamson started his Personal Success Coach business for financial planners in 1986. A few years later he was among the first students of the now deceased Thomas Leonard, who formed the original Coach University. (For Williamson’s perspective on how coaches can capitalize on these changes in the industry, see the related front-page story, "You have 36 months to make your mark”.) The attention big-name authors and speakers are drawing to coaching, puts it much more in the public eye and creates many opportunities for market-savvy coaches, he says. But with so many diverse approaches being promoted as coaching, it becomes “confusing for the lay public to understand what a coach is and what they do and how to gauge a good one,” points out Lazar. Corporations—which are investing heavily in coaching for their senior employees—are wrestling with these issues, he says. They’re talking about “how to identify good coaching. How to manage that internally. How to assure that the reasons for doing coaching are tied to business needs. How to assure that the coach follows some reliable processes with measurable outcomes,” says Lazar. The corporate world has “begun a dialog to try to talk about what the critical issues are” with coaching, he says, to “identify, create and share best practices.” So, in the corporate arena, the marketplace may ultimately define what coaching is. Corporations consider coaching from a business standpoint. They insist on seeing a return on their investment. They have to ask themselves, “Do we spend the dollars on the boiler or do we get executive coaching for our top executives?” says Lazar. They need to invest wisely and so they are insisting on studies—and helping fund studies—to quantify what constitutes good coaching. What works? Coaching research is in its infancy. But it is underway. ”In the journey of a thousand miles, we are four or five steps down the road,” says Lazar. “But it is important to acknowledge that we are down the road.” The entire coaching industry is floundering and seeking direction since its founder and nurturer, the charismatic and brilliant Thomas Leonard died in February 2003, notes Williamson. There is no clear leader philosophically guiding the profession now and many scions seeking that position are striving to affix their stamp or spin on coaching. A shake-out is underway. "Coaching is facing a massive identity crisis,” says Williamson. ”It’s akin to the entire industry going to an EST seminar and being torn down and being reborn to the image of whoever is standing at the front of the room.” Makes the industry ripe for takeover by already-established self-help gurus and consultants. "In the next three years,” says Williamson, “the world of coaching will be dynamically and radically transformed. Next Issue: How do leaders of the coaching industry define coaching? How do they distinguish it from therapy, teaching, mentoring, training, consulting or other self-help and personal-development modalities? Are “advice-givers” coaches? What does the buying public want from a “coach?”
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Is coaching suffering an identity crisis?
