To wonder why there are so many life coaches

[Eastie77Returns]

My Linkedin feed is awash with former colleagues and acquaintances who have become life coaches. It seems as if every other person is now qualified to guide me through whatever life stage I'm at even though there is no official credential necessary to call yourself a coach. My extrememly toxic former manager has set herself up as a fertility coach - an area she has zero experience in.

Another coach pitched her services to me the other day via LN. She coaches 'Senior Female Professionals' and offers a package for £485 consisting of a few sessions in which she helps women cope with burnout, manage your career with kids, elevate your personal brand and reach C-suite positions. All fine except her profile revealed she is about 25 years old and has 2 years professional experience😂

On the one hand it is great that so many people who want to branch out into self employment are able to do so. On the other hand, AIBU to think that this coaching industry is largely a lot of nonsense, targetting (mainly) women and persuading them to pay out £££ to receive common sense advice or stuff you can just download on the internet for free?

not all NLP is guff but when your in therapy - your therapist shouldn’t be there telling you about courses she is on… so i think you had a terrible therapist

You're comparing totally different things.

The 50 hours is based on working with 5 clients for 10 sessions each.
That's roughly the amount of time a client has.
And that excludes the theory. The whole course took me a year.
All sessions annotated in detail and submitted for feedback.
That's just one example of training. There are degree-level courses as well.

I already had a degree and additional professional training in a relevant area which is on my CV for potential clients.

Many coaches already have degrees or experience in psychology, HR management, management consultancy, etc.

What's surprising about this thread is that the role of a coach is being 'knocked' by posters who have misconceptions.

It sounds like you’ve not had a very good experience with coaching. This person is obviously offering group sessions for professional environments. Probably as an executive coach. Thats not the only mode of coaching out there. There will be people who offer professional coaching that are much better than this fellow appeared to be.

To say that life coaches don’t have any specialist skills is quite insulting to the ones who have actually worked really hard,
spent good money to complete reputable training and gain accreditation, in order to become life coaches. For example, to undertake a diploma via animas, it costs around £6000. Then to become accredited, you have to do a minimum number of hours with clients. The more hours you’ve done, the higher your accreditation.

Also, many good life coaches have relevant experience before they decide to train as a life coach. My friend was a qualified, trained and accredited counsellor under BACP with specialist training in bereavement. My other friend who now coaches was a teacher for 20 years before retraining. Both of these have transferable, relevant experience and skills for life coaching. They also do lots in terms of CPD and self study. These people want to help others.

Unfortunately, there absolutely are bad life coaches out there, who haven’t done any training, who are selling snake oil and they are giving all life coaches a bad name. Thats why it’s important to do your due diligence before working with one. These people are completely unethical.

Some people have no real talents but still need to eat, some just need a way to launder money in this increasingly litigious world.

Career coaches are not life coaches.
There are specific qualifications ( up your master level) in career guidance/development and a professional body.

It's basically a pyramid scheme. Same as those women hawking business babe nonsense and talking about growing brands and marketing and streams of income that require no effort yet somehow make thousands. It's all nonsense. People are stupid.

As a pp said, it seems to be a growth area in MLM. 'Posh' travel agency is another one that seems to be on the up. People with good career histories and experience are being targeted for this type of work. It's not the same as the vulnerable ones with little else in the way of opportunity. It baffles me, but it's obviously working (the recruitment side, at least), given by the number of people touting their services.

That’s the minimum number of hours training that you have to do to apply for the lowest level of accreditation. You also have to have 100 hours in practice on top of that. However, the more hours of training and practice you’ve done, the higher your level of accreditation. So to be a master level certified life coach, you need a minimum 250+ hours of training and a minimum 2,500+ hours of professional practice.

It’s more to do with people selling things like courses or mentorship’s

stuff like : want to know how to flip houses then sign up for my course

wantbto know how to make money on forex then sign up to my course

99% of these folk are frauds & just selling crap advice

it’s easier to sell shovels than dig for gold

Where are you getting those figures from @TipsyJoker ?

Out of interest.

The issue is that accreditation is down to the coach provider or the professional association.

It varies and there isn't one industry standard.

The point is that anyone who thinks they might want coaching has to research the coach's training.

Just like you would for anyone you might use whether that's a doctor, dentist, counsellor, hairdresser, plumber,,,,whatever.

I've been in the coaching world for years. Many coaches offer life coaching and career coaching.

Coaches can specialise in whatever area they want to.

Career 'guidance' is different and it's not coaching.

Career 'guidance' is different and it's not coaching.

I teach career guidance and career coaching. Career guidance and career guidance practitioners use coaching skills and techniques.
It should be delivered by someone who has specific qualifications in career guidance, development or career coaching.

ExH was a business/life coach. It was one reason that led to divorce besides others. The kids and I used to go crazy when he'd ask 'and how does that make you feel?' as if that was the answer to any problem!

God, that is annoying!

Sorry, this made me laugh😂

I can imagine how infuriating that must have been!

Watch "a very british cult" on the BBC, which shows how badly things can go wrong if you get duped into taking life coaching from the wrong people. I actually know someone who got sucked in to the group that it's about, back in about 2010. He's lost his home, alienated most of his old friends, and is in complete denial about how awful they are. He can't hold on to a girlfriend because as soon as they realise what's going on they very sensibly run for the hills. The only time I hear from him, he's asking to "borrow" money. The sad thing is that he totally believes in it all, but is now behaving like one of the 'bad guys' because the cult leader guy in charge has convinced them all that it's everyone else in the wrong.

It was! Talk about grit our teeth whenever he said it as well as an eye roll😂

Based on some of folk I actually know who call themselves 'Life Coaches' a lot of it is a big con - folk selling 💩, silly philosophies and magic well being plans.

Maybe she means the trend in folk who market houses but aren't actually qualified to do any of the legal stuff. There's a particularly annoying one near us.

@LennyBobenny
@toomanydiets
@HappyLittleNarwhal
@Izzosaura
@GreenPoppy
@SouthernFashionista

I'm interested in getting some career coaching. I'm also conscious that while there are good people out there, there are also the charlatans that just trot out "inspirational" platitudes.

Given you've had positive experiences, would you be willing to share details of who you've worked with?

Thanks

Its a profession which desperately needs regulating - the life coach I know is the last person who should be giving any one advice on what to do with their lives, she has lead an incredibly sheltered existence and has not really accomplished anything on her own.

That's a bit mean-spirited. Presumably she's still a single mother when not working, and it's not like she can take the kids to work

She’s not a single mother!

I disagree with this take to some degree.

When I returned to work I had a lot of mental health challenges... not PND as one might think of it but I found life overwhelming: a coach paid for by the company was very helpful. Sometimes you need someone else externally to help guide you when you're too overwhelmed to get clarity.

Yes there are BS coaches around for sure and it does seem there is a proliferation of them all of a sudden. Some people are just better at helping people than individuals themselves

The ICF. Yes potential clients do need to consider a coaches credentials and experience before working with them. A good coach should make all their qualifications and credentials available on their website, etc.

https://www.coachingfederation.org.uk/credentialing/credential_path

I don't think the analogy with a Personal Trainer is accurate. If I tried to set myself up as a PT I'd be laughed out of town. It would be immediately obvious to any potential clients that I'm unfit, unable to instruct anyone in even basic never mind more advanced training manoevures and I'm basically completely unqualified. Ditto coaching in any kind of professional or specialised area. You can't bluff your way through as a Chess or Badminton coach.

On the other hand, I'm fairly confident that I could set up myself up as e.g. a life coach fairly quickly and it would be difficult for anyone to dispprove my alleged expertise. I can use ChatGTP to create a really good description of my skills and experience, complete any number of online courses that would enable me to appear qualified (or take up a MLM opportunity) and launch my website with a few clicks of a mouse. Since the whole business is unregulated I don't even need to do the courses.

Many coaches I know lay claim to expertise based solely on their life experience and nothing else. So if I say I know I can help you on your 'journey as you navigate your life post divorce' (and why is everything a 'journey' these days?) because I've been through similar, it's difficult for anyone to argue otherwise with me even if my own divorce has been a complete car crash and I'm in no way qualified to help, because I have this lived experience.

To be clear, I'm not denigrating qualified, professional coaches. My point is that it's quite easy for anyone to set themselves up in certain coaching areas and my original question was why has there been such a rapid increase in people doing this over the last few years.