Life Coaching Has Been Cancelled

I’ve just cancelled my subscription to the Life Coach Directory. I’m not sure if it was because it doesn’t yield me many leads, or whether I’ve been quietly relinquishing the identity of life coach recently, so I’ll assume it’s both. 

What’s going on? Here are some of my (personal and subjective) reasons for unsubscribing.

Life Coaching is an Industry

And like all industries, coaching orbits around money. That’s reasonable when you’re charging for a service to your clients, but the coaching industry often feels like a pyramid scheme. Coaches are told they need coaching certifications (that are not legally required, nor are they all equal) and they cost a lot of money, and you’ll need to prep, so you’ll need a coach of your own (and they cost a lot of money), and then you’ll need more certifications, because one’s never enough. You can’t join a governing body without being certified, and if you want to be an associate with a coaching company they’ll want specific certifications (and, hey, you might not have that one so…)

This is before you buy the books 🙂

Life coaching accreditation has been created by the industry it serves, and although there are sound basic tenets, principles and competencies involved, they’re what’s required to DO coaching. Practice and experience are what you need to BE coaching. Which leads me to…

Life Coaching Effectiveness

There’s a popular image of the life coach perpetuated throughout the industry. You’ll see it on training course websites, throughout LinkedIn, in coaching books, and of course, all you have to do is take a look at our websites! It’s amazing how many of us have studied Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu and mastered the art of Zen rock balancing.

The successful life coach is one who is enlightened, self-actualised, always self-aware, but humble and human about their own shortcomings. They’re vulnerable enough to share those shortcomings (“only if you want me to”) and they’ve worked hard on their life skills, made mistakes, but always learned from them. They are always curious about you, and your success is their success. 

Sounds great. Pretty difficult to live up to (or ‘with’ I should think!) 

The reality is that, regardless of training, many life coaches aren’t fully equipped for the task of approaching your greatest life challenges. I’m speaking for myself here – I don’t have life perfectly sorted, and there are many times I’ve thrown my self-awareness under a bus.

Clients often approach life coaching as companionship, as an echo chamber to their own aspirations, and often the coach presents as a cheerleader – “you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it.” – without ever stopping to give the client a reality check. Well, who wants a coach that disabuses you of your hopes and dreams? Especially at those prices!

I had a client who wanted to be an entrepreneur, and they had some good ideas, but what they actually wanted was financial stability, some not-unreasonable flexibility, and a team to work with. Basically, a job! But I coached their aspirations over six sessions until they said – “Bill, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a job!” I could have brought that to an earlier conclusion – I think we did investigate the job option in session two but that wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Maybe I should have helped them to hear it sooner.

In Conclusion

I come not to bury coaching but to praise it. I still love coaching.

But my most effective coaching comes from a place of expertise and experience – it’s when I reflect on situations that I’ve come across before, and combine my coaching with other skills.

Somewhere in their certification training, coaches are told they can’t train, or mentor, or consult – they can only ask open questions and ‘hold space’ for the client to have their moment of awareness. After that, you can sit back, smile knowingly, and wait for them to say “Wow, I saw what you just did there!”

In reality, effective coaches focus on their area of expertise and a) use their consulting skills to identify the requirement b) their coaching skills to probe further and help the client build a better understanding of that requirement c) give space for experimentation and feedback d) provide mentoring and training on tools and techniques that can help the client in their solutioning. 

It’s unlikely that just one of these techniques – consulting, coaching, mentoring, training – will help the client realise what they’re trying to achieve, but a combination of some or all of them probably will.

In conclusion, I’ve unsubscribed from the Life Coach Directory, but I’m sticking with the Business Coach Directory. I’m a corporate-trained consultant, coach and trainer specialising in Agile ways of working and Design Thinking, with a huge slab of management and executive coaching on the side. 

My coaching self-awareness tells me I’m a better Business Coach than I am a Life Coach, but we do need good life coaches, and there are many many excellent ones out there. 

Just don’t be shy of providing everything you have at your disposal. Life coaching is more than just asking ‘open questions’ and ‘giving space’, so please, break the image stereotype and make a real difference to someone’s life.