Do You Need A Life Coach
Ten years ago, life coaching was seen as a fringe, New Age fad with just a few thousand practitioners. Today life coaches are represented by a trade group, the International Coach Federation, that claims more than 15,000 members. Work issues? A coach can help. Marriage difficulties? Let them reduce the conflict. Writer’s block? They’ll tap your inner poet. Even as the field grows, critics point out that there is no licensing system, standardized credentialing, or academic discipline behind this. "To me, it’s like going to a psychic," says Dr. Marilyn Puder-York, a clinical psychologist who has coached executives for more than 30 years and who managed Citigroup’s in-house Employee Assistance Program. "If you’re lucky, you might find someone really good."
Life coaching has become the Wild West of the career-development and therapeutic world. Part psychotherapy, part Oprah, and part common sense, coaches often bill themselves as listeners and cheerleaders who help clients figure out how to move their lives in a particular direction. They are typically not trained social workers or doctors. Usually, they charge by the hour with sessions in major cities costing from $75 to $300 per hour. The industry is not regulated or governed by a code of ethics, like the legal or medical professions. At its best, life coaching can help clients change behavior or reinvent themselves. At its worst, life coaching can prey on Americans’ growing anxiety about the future and their jobs.
During the last recession, in 2001, 48-year-old Karen Underhill turned to a life coach for advice. Underhill disliked her job as a computer-network administrator, but she was unsure how to switch careers without a college degree. Her coach helped her map out a plan to return to school, secure financial aid, and find internships in communications and education. "The coaching helped me get motivated," Underhill says. "My coach made me think forward and visualize what I want."
More trained professionals are finding their way into the coaching industry as a means to tap into a growing sector, make extra cash, or work with people who may normally look down on the idea of therapy. The American Psychological Association anecdotally reports an increase in the number of social workers and therapists turning to coaching because the pay-out-of-pocket model lets them circumvent the insurance industry. And, for people who attach a social stigma to more conventional forms of therapy, life coaching may offer some type of relief.
There are dangers, however. Among them: life coaches are not trained to recognize mental or emotional distress—or worse, that their unregulated methods could cause problems in their clients’ lives. Dr. Puder-York remembers a client who’d had a particularly bad experience with a former schoolteacher who transformed herself into a life coach. The client, a 41-year-old female finance executive, needed help coping with the politics of her predominantly male workplace. Instead, the schoolteacher turned coach harped on the client’s personal life, including asking why she’d never married or given birth to any children. "That coach was not credentialed to go there," Puder-York says. "It could have set up a really bad emotional episode had that coach done that with someone more vulnerable."
It isn’t just the desire to help others that motivates people to become life coaches. With unemployment hovering around 10 percent, many out-of-work consultants, middle managers, and human-resources executives are turning to the potentially lucrative field of life coaching. The going rate for life coaches is $189 per hour, with an average annual salary of $52,478, according to the International Coach Federation.
It’s best to look for coaches with backgrounds in psychology or psychotherapy, or for professionals with experience in human resources or management who now work as career coaches. In terms of the actual sessions, life coaches say their colleagues should ask questions rather than dole out advice or probe into clients’ pasts, and they should stick to the topic clients hire them to tackle: be it résumé writing, career development, or relationships.
词句笔记：
fringe：n.流苏，刘海，边缘；adj.边缘的；vt.作为……的边缘，装饰……的边
fringe costs：附加费用
fringe industry：边缘产业
tap：n.水龙头，窃听器；vt.轻拍，敲打，开发，开辟，装窃听器
tap your inner poet：触动你内心的诗意
tap into a growing sector：涉足一个新兴的产业
harp on：喋喋不休
