The Life Coach: Time To Beef Up A Chequered Profession?

I see both opportunity and pitfall in the profession of coaching, particularly as it applies to the "Life Coach" variety. On one hand, a life coach has the potential to guide a client in a very specific, forward moving, pragmatic approach. There is focus, there is a clearly defined issue, goal timetable, and an emphasis on taking action.

But in the same way that psychotherapy - in its most mediocre practice - can become an ongoing analytical fishing expedition between one's past, one's behavior, one's "issues", and an elusive discovery that will make a happy life coalesce from it all, life coaching can lack the finesse, depth, and education that a therapist brings to the game. For example, a life coach may help a client leave his old job and get a better one. But the underlying issue may remain. The client may have more constitutional issues around self-esteem, self-efficacy, or even self-sabotage that he carries from position to position. And, as a result, the same work-place themes and dissatisfaction reemerge; time and time again. It might be likened to the difference between managing an issue and changing one's circumstances - even if for the very better - without really healing what is core. A life coach who integrates NLP into their practice may use its world-famous five minute "phobia cure" successfully on a patient. But if another patient's phobia co-exists with PTSD, should that life coach even start fiddling in that area?

Both therapy and coaching have their rightful place. What concerns me is when they are thought of interchangeably by the client/patient/consumer. What concerns me is when a life coach who has paid three thousand dollars for a nine month program believes that he is a more effective version of the "spendy and laconic" therapist. And pitches himself that way, either through promotional material or in how they present their work in person. The reverse also applies. One look through the therapist referral website, PsychologyToday.com, shows that therapists without that nine month program can list "Coaching" as a therapeutic modality with the simple check of a box when setting up their profile. 

Part of the difficulty is that there has yet to be a single, globally respected (or, in the United States, even nationally respected) governing/licensing/overseeing body. What are the widely accepted - and expected! - best practices? What ongoing education should be mandated? Is it kosher for me to channel my "spirit guides" as part of a session? Can I sleep with a client one night and then guide them in leaving their marriage the next? What are the parameters? If a boundary is crossed, where does the client go? How am I held accountable to certain professional standards? 

The emerging specialty of life coaching is exciting...but also dangerous in a wild, wild west kind of way. When there's no sheriff - or town mayor! - to keep someone in check, it's a free for all; filled with a new breed of professionals who want to serve others with cutting-edge technologies on one end of town. And, on the other, fakers who graduated from a certificate-mill who shouldn't be let anywhere near sharp objects.

It's in that spirit that I feel Life Coaching would be well-served as a college major that fused the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, communications, and perhaps even spirituality. If a four-year degree were required, there could be a) greater standardization, b) training of greater quality and quantity, while c) not requiring a course of study as long or as intense as that needed to practice therapy in most U.S. states; a key incentive behind training to be a life coach in the first place. 

It would still be longer than the nine month program I alluded to. And a lot, lot longer than the "Become a life coach in a weekend!" ad that is even more common.