Game plan for life

Greg Zemp decided he and his business partners needed to use a life coach to improve their leadership skills in the Liberty Lake company they run, data center Tierpoint.

Zemp started with business coach Alison Zecha in December and stayed in touch with her most of this year, said Zemp, one of four owners of Tierpoint, formerly Liberty Lake Internet Exchange. While his partners chose not to use a coach, Zemp endorses the practice. “It helped me be better at my job. I am able to give subordinates more responsibility than I did before,” he said.

Zemp or any other area business owner or manager could have chosen from more than a dozen regional coaches in addition to Zecha, whose company is CoachAZ.com.

Admittedly a difficult job to describe, the term “life coach” has become hugely popular in the past five years, say people who provide consulting services to individuals and companies. For most people, the term means life coach, someone who works in a one-on-one arrangement to help a person reach professional or personal goals.

The International Coach Federation — which works to establish certification programs for coaches — estimates North America has 10,000 professional or life coaches. Fewer than 3,000 have earned ICF certification, the federation has noted.

The industry continues to grow, although no one group has compiled valid numbers covering all of it. The ICF’s global membership has soared from 6,800 in 2003 to more than 11,000 in 2006, covering more than 80 countries.

Many people earning a living as coaches call their area of work a profession. But John Lazar, co-executive editor of the Chicago-based International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, said, “It’s really a field and not a profession. It’s a field in the process of trying to establish itself, through self-regulation, into a profession.”

The corporate world, until recently, has been cautious to embrace the concept of coaching.

For a number of reasons, the activity of professional coaching is more likely to be accepted now than 20 years ago. Business leaders say several key factors changed the coaching idea from borderline New Age to acceptable business practice.

Among those reasons, said Spokane therapist and life coach Sean Smitham, was the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “At that moment people realized, ‘Hey, if it all ended today, is this the life I wanted to live?’ ” he said.

Another factor in the movement was the recognition that people benefited more from sustained and ongoing personal support toward goals, as opposed to simply being given a set of tasks and left alone, said Lazar. He said America’s love for rugged individualism evolved to acceptance that having a guide was useful. The cultural importance of books by Carlos Castaneda, in the 1960s and ‘70s, helped lay the groundwork for that acceptance, he said.

Another factor, say those in the coaching industry, is the arrival of affordable, always-on computing.

By and large, the coaching business has shifted from the old model of people meeting inn person to the process of people connecting by computer, exchanging e-mails or contacting each other once a week to discuss objectives.

Companies have used some form of management coaching for more than 20 years, said Mary Beth O’Neill, a Seattle business coach. What has changed has been the acceptance in corporations of the value of coaching all workers, not just upper-level managers, said Gail Keeling, general manager of Premera Blue Cross’s Eastern Washington operations.

In addition to expensive and high-quality coaching offered to supervisors and up-and-coming executives, Premera also offers five free coaching sessions for every employee as part of its benefits package, Keeling said.

More than a decade ago, companies that brought in a coach were doing so as part of a disciplinary process. “It was the case that if that coaching didn’t work, the next step would be disciplinary action,” he said.

Many companies in recent years have moved to a different understanding of professional coaching, he said. The strategy for coaches now is to come in and work directly with a team or a single manager and improve their skills and level of satisfaction.

Six years ago Premera Blue Cross CEO Gubby Barlow gave his company’s vice presidents a list of coaches and said they were encouraged to use them. Barlow told the vice presidents that he knew they were talented but he wanted to draw out even more of their talents, Keeling said.

“That’s the big philosophical change,” said Keeling. Premera now may spend $15,000 to $30,000 from development funds per manager targeted for coaching.

“It’s a long-term arrangement usually,” Keeling added, saying the services might run nine months or more.

Today, the notion of coaching spans the entire spectrum of personal and professional services. Several worldwide institutions work on establishing credentials for those people wanting to be coaches. The Web shows thousands of links to companies and individuals offering coaching tailored to any specific job area, age group or lifestyle.

Sandy Vilas, who is CEO of Coach University, a Web-based company that provides extensive coaching instruction, said the term “coach” has come to mean a guide or personal counselor in the past 20 years. Its meaning is still confusing to many, said Vilas, who is based in Arizona and who bought Coach University in 1996 from Thomas Leonard, considered the father of life coaching.

“Back when I started saying I was a coach, people asked, ‘What team, basketball or football?’ ” Vilas said.

Leonard started Coach University in 1992. His sister, Susie Leonard Weller, is a Spokane-based personal life coach, specializing on spiritual and parent coaching.

Even so, Weller herself is hired by business professionals who want help in reaching goals or changing careers. Earlier this year a recent Spokane transplant asked Weller to help her decide whether she wanted to stay in Spokane. The woman’s company, which has headquarters in the East, put her in charge of a 350-person firm. After being here a year, the manager decided Spokane might not be the best city for her.

“I come from Ohio, and I wanted to see if I could identify a city and a company that might be better fits for me,” said the manager, who asked not to be identified because of privacy concerns.

In February she began weekly phone sessions with Weller and now continues with 30-minute phone calls once a month. This was her first encounter with coaching; she found Weller’s name through a Web search “and I liked her Web site,” said the manager.

While high-end business coaches sometimes ask for $200 per session, Weller says her fees are meant to affordable. She charges $50 to $75 per hour for most clients, she said.

The manager pays Weller with her own money. But she’s also spoken frankly to her company president, who fully supports her efforts to relocate and change directions. “He’s embraced this effort and understands completely that this is right for me,” she said.

During those calls Weller gives the woman an assignment for the next session. It might be reading a book; at other times the assignment will be doing something she hasn’t done yet, such as going to a Spokane night club.

Most area coaches try to market themselves to serve niche specialties, either in personal coaching or professional services.

Spokane business coach Mitch Bowers targets small- and midsized area companies that have large sales staffs and want to help them find more success in their work. Bowers left Premera, where he worked in management, and started his coaching business in 2002.

Cynthia Hallanger, based on Spokane’s South Hill, caters to men or women who need direction or help in overcoming academic career problems. She’s been hired by academics from area colleges who are struggling with completing a doctoral thesis or hampered by managing the demands of writing, teaching and having a family life, Hallanger said. She also specializes in coaching women going through life or job transitions.

Hallanger said coaches distinguish what they do from services offered by counselors, psychologists or psychiatrists. If a client has anxiety, depression or serious personal problems, the coach will refer to a mental health professional, she said.

Spokane-based psychologist Smitham says he’s gradually switching his professional focus which is roughly half-therapy and half-life coaching.

He said he’s like many therapists who appreciate having the wider range of options a coach has. In general, therapists are dealing with individuals with serious personal problems. Life coaches, on the other hand, often deal with high-achieving people who have the energy and the commitment to make changes in their lives, said Smitham.

Though companies like Premera extend coaching to workers through benefit plans, many other insurance providers have no interest in doing the same, said state Rep. Don Barlow, a Spokane Democrat who tracks the topic as a member of the House Health Care and Wellness Committee.

Insurance companies will not generally extend coverage to coaching because the services rendered are highly subjective and its practitioners are not required to go through professional certification, he said.

“The problem is there’s no regulation. Anyone who wants to call himself a coach can do that,” said Barlow. He doubts the state is ready to get into regulating the coaching business. It won’t unless malpractice, abuse or widespread fraud occurs, he said.

Vilas, whose Coach University has more than 20 employees, said he expects certification to become the norm within the next 15 years.

“All I know is for the past dozen years people have asked me if (coaching) is a fad. All I tell them is we’re having our best year in the past seven years,” Vilas said. “They’re still asking, but it’s not as pronounced as it once was.”