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Quite serendipitously, as graphic designer Karen Reese struggled with some personal and professional challenges, she happened upon a piece of information that changed her life.
It had to do with personal coach Dianne Arguelles and her Santa Barbara, California-based business New Heights Coaching, through which she helps her clients "design the lives they want, set goals for themselves and make their dreams come true". What a personal trainer can help you accomplish for your body, Arguelles suggests, a personal coach can do for your life. |
| Get Unstuck and Make Some Changes |
"I had heard about personal coaching a year or two previous to that and I remember thinking what an interesting thing it sounded like," Reese explains. "I was feeling stuck in my life professionally and personally and saw it as an interesting opportunity to take the bull by the horns and make some changes."
After working with Arguelles for three months, Reese discovered her life had changed dramatically. "I felt that all of a sudden things just started to happen. It was a very powerful thing."
Confidence Building
Kira Anthofer, a sales representative with Powercom in Santa Barbara, found personal coaching to be exactly what she needed to help build her confidence working in a male-dominated telecommunications field. The only saleswoman in her company, she regularly works with engineers and technicians regarding network hardware. "When I go to technical seminars a maximum of 15 percent of the audience is women," she says. "I have to be able to interact with men."
Personal coaching, which taught her to look inside herself for strength, made her a more powerful person. "I'm a former athlete and coached high school basketball," Anthofer continues, "and when I heard the word 'coach' I knew what that meant. It's all a matter of you. All a matter of the athlete. And the coach is there to guide you and help you fine-tune your skills. I don't become dependent on the coach. I'm refining the tools I need to do it on my own."
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| It's All About Learning and Taking Action |
Unlike psychotherapy, which focuses on emotional healing and examines an individual's past to address his or her present state, personal coaching emphasizes learning, action and moving forward. People who seek out personal coaching usually have a good sense of what they want to work on, according to Mary Olk, PhD, a licensed psychologist and certified personal and professional coach.
"Some people are relatively insightful and know they have past patterns to address, past stuff that needs to be focused on, and know that healing and changing historical patterns has to be done. In coaching you deepen your insights, but it's a combination of learning and action." Therapy tends to be problem-focused, she says, while coaching tends to be strength-focused.
While psychotherapy tends to characterize the trained therapist as the expert, personal coaching suggests that the client has all the answers but may not know it and hasn't figured out how to access them.
"The client may have a negative self-talk, a 'gremlin', I call it, who chatters such things as 'Who are you to want something different?' or 'You can't be happy; you don't deserve that.' It is usually this phenomenon that stops us from getting what we want. The coach helps in challenging and breaking through this," Arguelles explains. |
| And It Requires a Commitment to Change |
When Arguelles works with clients she asks them to make a commitment of at least six months, although many stay with her for as long as a year and a half. "You don't really see changes until about the fourth month."
The process begins with a two-hour, face-to-face intake session during which clients complete a detailed questionnaire about their life and where they want to go with it. "It's getting them in touch with their values," she says. "I'm constantly helping people bring forth their truth. It's something people don't give themselves permission to do."
While that preliminary session takes place in person, the subsequent weekly coaching periods usually happen over the telephone. Arguelles arranges a specific time to speak with the client about issues relating to the goals at hand and, if necessary, goes over homework assignments she's made the week before. |
| It's Like Having a Private Cheerleader |
The evening before a scheduled one-half hour coaching session, Reese fills out a form faxed to her by Arguelles. The form helps her outline the course she wants the conversation to take. "She asks questions like 'What did you accomplish this week?' or 'What are you struggling with?' or 'Are you living with your values? And if not, why not?'"
"Every week I have homework and she'll start off talking about that," Reese says. "Sometimes there are specific things I want to talk about and sometimes it just flows into something I didn't know I wanted to deal with."
Arguelles describes the personal coach as a "private cheerleader", someone who helps you figure out what you want to accomplish and keeps you on track. |
| Looking at the Entire Wheel of Life |
Frederic Hudson, founder of the Hudson Institute in 1986 and the Fielding Institute in 1974, says, "Coaching is much like parenting or re-parenting. People come to you because they want you to help them be different or act differently." Hudson has worked with about 1,700 people and has trained nearly 500 coaches. As he sees it, his job is to help people "grow, develop and facilitate the future".
"Personal life coaching involves the entire wheel of life," Arguelles says. The eight sections that make up the wheel include career; money; significant other; physical environment; health and wellbeing; personal growth; family and friends; and fun and recreation. "You look at the wheel and give each section a number relating to your satisfaction. It's amazing how unbalanced your life can be."
Although Arguelles focuses on personal rather than career coaching, she acknowledges that career is one of the sections in the wheel, "and you can't help but take a look at it. And if the person is unhappy with it we're going to look at how to incorporate it into the overall coaching work." |
| Check to See That Your Coach is Certified |
Becoming a coach can be as simple as taking a few classes and then hanging up a shingle, or as rigorous as the training program Arguelles followed at the Coaches' Training Institute in San Raphael, California. The coaching industry is not government-regulated, but the handful of schools that teach coaching have credentialing programs.
To become a certified personal coach, Arguelles first had to complete 98 hours of classroom instruction working with master coaches. Then she spent six months enrolled in intense training TeleClasses. She was able to complete these from her home base in Santa Barbara. Then came 24 hours of lab work covering a variety of topics and 100 practical hours of coaching five paying clients. With all that done, she was ready to sit for the all-day written exam and performance evaluation, which had her coaching two individuals in separate situations under the watchful eye of master coaches.
It's important, Arguelles stresses, for people looking for a coach to check for certification. "Ask her if she's certified and where she got her training to be a certified personal coach. When I got certified I knew I was a really good coach. And there aren't that many certified coaches out there."
Many coaches focus on business and corporate environments, she adds, and got their training as business people or consultants. Their expertise may be better suited for career coaching than life coaching and it's important to know that up front. Just as you wouldn't call on an orthopedist to handle a cardiac problem, you shouldn't expect a coach specializing in one area to excel across the board.
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| The Aim is to Create a Healthy, Happy Life |
According to Arguelles, the going rate for personal coaching runs anywhere from $200 to $300 per month for weekly half-hour sessions. However, the International Coach Federation (ICF), a non-profit professional organization of personal and business coaches, lists prices ranging from under $150 per month to more than $500.
"But don't equate the cost with the coach's ability," warns Arguelles, who hosts the Santa Barbara Chapter of ICF.
When it comes to coaching, ability involves more than a coach's professional acumen. It also requires that she know the limits of her abilities and when a client is standing on ground she's not qualified to measure. "If coaches aren't clear on their own boundaries and what they can and cannot handle, it can be a problem, says Nancy J. Smith, PhD. "Coaches have to be really clear on their own issues and what they're equipped to deal with and have some appropriate referrals on hand." Also, she added, the person seeking a coach should be mindful of confidentiality issues because the coaching industry isn't regulated and coaches aren't ethically bound the way licensed therapists are.
Licensed psychologist and certified personal assistant Mary Olk concurs. "Coaching is on a continuum of personal growth. Therapy is more into healing and rebuilding and coaching is part of creating a healthy, happy life. I haven't met a therapist who doesn't see the value of it. And as a coach I don't believe it's a replacement for therapy." |
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