Have You Ever Thought About Becoming a Life Coach?

This interview  is currently the cover story of Insight magazine . Contact me to get the complete virtual 60-p.copy of their June issue.

In this interview, "I" stands for Insight magazine and "ML" are my initials. Enjoy!

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I: In 2006, you were the first expert invited to introduce coaching at the world-renowned Smithsonian Institution. How has the coaching industry changed since that time?
ML: Overall, coaching has increased greatly in awareness and acceptance by the general public. It grew tremendously in its popularity and use by individuals and organizations. Internally, there is an evolution towards becoming more comfortable with dealing with our clients’ feelings and accepting those feelings as part of their coaching experience.
Until recently, in our zeal to separate ourselves from psychology, we often drew a line when a client would even mention a negative feeling. It would raise the red flag of crossing over into therapy, and as crazy as it seems now, we weren’t supposed to ask our clients how they felt about something. But that has gradually changed over the last few years.
I: We do talk about how people feel now, because it’s relevant, as long as we’re not diving into the past, right?
ML: That’s another conversation, but my argument was, if you can talk about your feelings to your barber or your hairdresser, why wouldn’t you mention that to your coach? It’s a significant part of the coaching experience now.
I: As the popularity of coaching has increased, so have the number of coaching schools. With so many coaching training programs available, what lead you to create your own?
ML: Because I’m such an advocate of dealing with feelings in the coaching relationship, I came up with the concept of Emotionally Charged Coaching™. I actually felt it was necessary to take a much broader, more holistic view of what needs to be taught in coaching school.
I felt that no one was answering the question of how to deal with emotions in the coaching experience, and as a hypnotherapist, I was very comfortable dealing with emotions. I understood their relationship to the subconscious.
There were a lot of schools of thought that developed in an attempt to integrate emotions into coaching, including brain-based coaching, ontological coaching, and NLP coaching. Some of these schools focused on the importance of thoughts, some focused on the importance of feelings, and some focused on your sense of being and self-awareness.
I felt that all of these aspects were equally important and needed to be integrated to create a truly well-rounded foundation that united mind, body, and soul—to create a program that was truly holistic.
I: With coaching becoming more and more popular, why are so many coaches still struggling to find clients? Is coaching still an attractive career choice?
ML: I definitely think it’s still an extremely attractive career choice, and yes, it’s possible to make good money being a coach. What coaches need to understand is the concept of authentic marketing.