Someone to Watch over Me

Harpers and Queen Mag. Cover.If you want to realise your ambitions or overcome your frustrations, forget the analyst's couch and get a coach. Helen Kirwan-Taylor meets the personal 'life trainers' who can steer you from crisis to success.

When Hillary Clinton was feeling the stress of negative public opinion (not to mention the stress of her wayward husband), rather than close the shutters and wait for the winds to change, she hired a life coach. Judging from the almost miraculous shift in her personal popularity, one can only assume that it worked.

Michael Pilsworth, CEO of the London-based Chrysalis Visual Entertainment Group, felt himself disappearing under the waves seven years ago when he made the decision to hire a life coach. At the time, his turnover was £1 million. Today, it is £70 million. He gives his coach, Liza Charlton McDowell of the coaching consultancy group Amadeus International (who worked with many members of staff), full credit.

'When we hired a coach, we had mapped out what we wanted to achieve over seven years,' says Michael Pilsworth. 'We wanted the business to be number one in the UK and grow in reputation Internationally. Certainly, without Liza, we wouldn't have made it. She taught us to prioritise, delegate, communicate, and she showed us to work from the bottom up and not the other way around.' When Pilsworth spots 'symptoms' in one of his staff, he immediately calls in a coach.

Life coaching is a process by which a trained practitioner literally 'coaches' a client into attaining their personal or professional goals (or both). Unlike psychotherapy, life coaching is entirely forward-looking and practical, working from the vision or a set of objectives the client wishes to achieve. Using techniques loosely borrowed from other schools of thought, such as management and personal development, the client is encouraged, cajoled, and sometimes even bullied into reaching his or her full potential. 'It's not counselling and it's not therapy,' says Fiona Harrold, who came into the business after she herself was coached when suffering from ME. 'There are lots of "How comes?" and "Why nots?" What I do is take people out of their comfort zone and make them work.'

The principle of coaching is not that different from personal training, where a fitness programme is created around an individual's physical requirements, but here the results are almost immediate. 'Half of life coaching is getting a client's expectation into place,' says Harrold. 'Once we've cleaned out the mental spider webs, we can focus on what it takes to attract a great boyfriend, get a great job, get into shape, and so on. Coaches help people take responsibility for getting what they want.'

Coaching sessions generally last 40 minutes to an hour, are held on a weekly basis (eventually less frequently) and can range from £50 to £125 per session. Presently there are about 400 life coaches in Britain (in the US they number about 3000), but according to The British Coaching Academy, which offers the only coaching training programme in the UK, more and more are joining the ranks (they will also supply coaches: the first 30 minute phone conversation is free). Companies such as Unilever, Arthur Andersen, Glaxo Wellcome, and British Telecom already employ coaches on a regular basis.

H&Q article - page 256The main difference between a coach and a psychotherapist, cognitive behavioural therapist, and management consultant - all of whom are in the business of self-improvement - is that, where in psychotherapy professional distance is an integral part of the treatment, life coaches bring their own background and life skills into their coaching. Many come from the world of business or media, but others have overcome personal setbacks, even bankruptcy. The other fundamental difference in thought is that coaches believe in integrating a client's personal and professional lives. In other words, business executives are often urged to bring the behaviour they unconsciously display at home (which is often more caring, relaxed and spontaneous) into their office. Housewives may be encouraged to treat their domestic routine and children as a small business with it's own mission statement; women trying to shed pounds might practise the technique they used during the last cost-cutting exercise at work or when they were happiest (and forgot to eat).

Coaching is really about applying the set of skills you already possess, but in unfamiliar ways. It is about short cuts, mental acrobatics, and well-tested, much rehearsed tricks. 'Ninety-nine per cent of the time, our belief about what others are thinking is wrong.' Says coach Simon Gowen, explaining how easily one gets into negative mental traps. 'You can't change another persons mental behaviour; you can only change your reaction. Coaching is about realising that no one is going to do anything for you. It's about developing goals, values and strategies that allow for immediate and dramatic change in performance and communication.' Gowen, who prefers coaching in person (generally in the lobby of hotels) and charges £80 per session, came into the profession after several years running a health club.

Most of life-coach Jenny Watson's clients - heads of newspapers and eminent, but often 'stuck' writers, arrive with one goal and leave with another. 'Most come in asking certain questions to find out what they already know, but often what they really want is something altogether different,' says Watson, who teaches at the Coaching Academy and charges £250 for two telephone sessions.

'Life coaching is not about adding to one's ever-expanding-to-do-list,' she says. 'It's just the opposite. One of the things about coaching is not piling on more, but streamlining. Coaching helps people concentrate on what they're really good at. It's not a quick-fix solution, but what happens here will echo through the rest of one's life.'

H&Q article - page 257. For Sue Birbeck, coaching allowed her to reach her ultimate fantasy: to become a television comedy producer. 'I had just been made redundant by J. Walter Thompson when I started being coached, so I was more open to the possibilities of change. But at the time I couldn't give a voice to my dream. It was too big. Who was I to think that at the age of 40 I could become a television producer?' In Sue's particular case, she was approached by Liza Charlton McDowell (during a seminar) who saw her humour, spontaneity and joyfulness as life skills that could be taught to others. 'Liza made me focus on what I'm good at,' says Birbeck. 'I had the skills before, but now I had a mission. I hadn't realised that it's not what you do, but how well you get along with people that matters. I was beavering away and reading every script that came my way. I reserved my personality for after work and for friend. These are qualities I should have brought into business.'

Probably everyone will soon have a life coach in the same way they already have a personal trainer. Coaching is not only here to stay, it's expanding into every walk of life. There are diet coaches, business coaches, and the latest offshoot, spiritual coaches (ready to help you communicate with God). In today's frantic world, where time equals money, coaching makes perfect economic sense. Instead of visiting a psychotherapist, who has no idea what happens in business or on the school run (because he or she has only ever been a psychotherapist), you can call your life coach from the privacy of your office, home or hotel room (or even on the mobile at the airport with an hour to kill) and work on self-improvement techniques with someone who has already achieved similar goals. In a service society where everyone wants 'results now', not to mention wisdom without effort, coaching seems the perfect, time-effective solution.

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