A Coach for 'Team You'

Many Who Want a Winning Record in the Game of Life Are Skipping the Shrink and Hiring a Life Coach Instead

By Cecilia Capuzzi Simon
Special to The Washington Post

"When I tell people I'm using a life coach, they roll their eyes and pass it off as New Age baloney," she says. "But coaching is filling a need for people like myself who are really ready to transform their lives."

With its focus on self-help and maximizing potential, coaching does have a New Age aroma. Terrie Lupberger, CEO of Newfield Network, an Olney-based program that trains coaches, says coaching's rise is due in part to a "crisis of meaning" in American society. "We have more information in our culture today than we can fathom," she says. "Yet people are not happier than they were 10 or 15 years ago."

Coaching, says Patrick Williams, who once practiced as a clinical psychologist and later founded the Institute for Life Coach Training, a coach training program for therapists, is about "futuring" people.

This sort of talk makes many in the mental health field think of coaching as a "sell job," as New York psychoanalyst and Hunter College professor Joyce Slochower says. Psychologists who abandon their traditional role and declare themselves coaches are often scorned by colleagues: Are they leaving unprofitable practices and looking for easy riches? Are they refusing to put up any longer with the annoyances of managed care? Are they bad therapists? David Fresco, assistant professor of psychology at Kent State University, warns that the field remains unregulated and lacking in standards, meaning coaches "have the capacity to make hoards of money without professional oversight." Many coaches have no formal training, either in coaching or psychology.

Nevertheless, the coaching profession is exploding, and psychologists -- if at first reluctantly -- are coming on board. Psychotherapy Networker magazine says it could be the "wave of the future."

Some 20,000 full-time coaches practice worldwide, about three-quarters of them in the United States, according to the International Coach Federation (ICF), coaching's credentialing organization. More than 6,000 are members of ICF, up from 1,500 three years ago. Forty percent of ICF members are psychotherapists who have become full-time coaches or added coaching to their practices. Several training programs are designed to help therapists make the transition. (There are even coaches for therapists who want to become coaches.) Universities, including Georgetown and George Mason, offer coaching courses. And the American Psychological Association (APA) sponsors coaching workshops for continuing education credit. Read more...

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