Consumer Watchdog: Do You Need A Life Coach?

By Zlati Meyer, Detroit Free Press

July 01--David Pflaum felt he needed help.

The 55-year-old chiropractor had grown nervous about moving his practice from Sterling Heights to Macomb Township, plus he was having a tough time communicating with his co-worker, who also happens to be his wife.

Pflaum hired a life coach to help him tackle these issues, joining throngs of Americans who've turned to this burgeoning field for support.

Nestled between BFFs and mental health professionals, life coaches advertise that they help you reach your personal and professional goals, learn to be the best you can be, overhaul your life, etc. Not all are Tony Robbins, the worldwide king of the field, whose fees are in the tens of thousands of dollars.

"A job coach is somebody who's going to help you set goals," Pflaum said. "It's not miracle working. She doesn't wave her magic coach wand and all of sudden I go poof. You do know what you need to be doing. It's the accountability factor. She asks, 'How tough do you want me to be on you?' "

In this case, the "she" -- the industry is overwhelmingly female -- is Melissa Fennell of Sterling Heights, who has been coaching since 2009 after training (100 classroom hours and 100 pro bono coaching hours through Georgetown University).

According to the International Coach Federation, the largest of the numerous coaching associations, coaching is a nearly $2-billion-a-year industry globally ($707 million of that in North America) with everything from career coaches to executive coaches, leadership coaches to transition coaches, performance coaches to life coaches. Hourly rates start around $120. The ICF, for example, has 47,500 members around the globe, including 15,800 in North America; that's up from 2,100-plus in 1999.

Pflaum is paying Fennell $2,400 for a dozen hour-long meetings over six months, though she's accessible by phone and e-mail in between. Two months in, they've worked on the importance of language to interact better with co-workers, the need to execute a better marketing plan to attract and retain new patients, and on how Pflaum can allay his concerns about failure, using methods like imagining the worse-case scenario and taking action to prevent that from happening.

"You're more likely to do it than if you did it on our own," Fennell said, explaining the value having someone ask you about it. "How many people are able to lose weight on their own (rather) than have a trainer. ... A coach is more of the observer. We're holding the mirror up to see what's going on."

That mirror is not hanging on the wall next to a license, though. Coaching is an unregulated field: There's no title protection (Anyone can call himself or herself a coach) and no governmental rules for those who practice, in contrast, with, say, a stockbroker, dentist or barber. A bad life coach cannot be disbarred.

According to Berkley attorney Jules Olsman, who teaches malpractice as an adjunct professor at Michigan State University College of Law, life coaches are not subject to liability for malpractice or professional negligence because they are not licensed mental health professionals. However, they could possibly be subject to sanctions or liability under the Michigan consumer protection law if they made false or misleading promises, he said.

The ICF urges its members to carry liability insurance and has "worked closely with insurance carriers to develop professional liability specifically designed for coaches and their practices."

Like any profession, from physician to plumber to -- gasp! -- journalist, there are some lousy practitioners. Pflaum, for example, had two previous coaches before Fennell. The second one was really lousy (gave him bad advice, screwed up his accounting work), while the first was just OK ("She more or less did the rah-rah stuff, but there was no meat to it. She made you feel good, but there was less accountability."). Together, that was $4,000 gone.

And it's out-of-pocket. Unlike licensed mental health professionals, life coaching isn't covered by medical insurance. (That could explain why some social workers and psychologists opt to get certified as coaches, too.)

"Is someone who hangs out a shingle as life coach trained in human behavior, the diagnosis, the potential for personality disorders or mental illness, behavioral strategies, performance strategies? If I was a consumer, I would ask about their credential," said Rhea Farberman, spokeswoman for the American Psychological Association, pointing out that psychologists go to school for seven years and "not a weekend seminar."

Both Farberman and Maxine Thome, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, agreed that in some situations, life coaches could be the way to go -- overcoming smaller life challenges, as opposed to substance abuse or memories of child abuse. But even some of the smaller issues might have roots deeper in a client's psyche.

"Coaching isn't a coffee klatch. It's helping someone," said Nancy Mathias, of Birmingham, who has been coaching for seven years and charges $250 and up per hour. Her training through Coaches Training Institute included 15 classes over six months and 300 coaching hours.

"If you're looking to examine what happened in the past that's preventing you from moving forward, I'd advise a social worker. They'd diagnose what's causing the hurt. ... Coaching is more about what's happening in the present. People are creative, resourceful and whole. The idea is they're not broken, but they need to see the gifts they have within that they're not able to acknowledge or have support to go into that risk place."

From the other side of the spectrum, life coaches aren't mentors or family members, who approach your problems with preformed biases, some born of years of intimacy. There's a neutrality that lets them see straight to the problem.

"It's like meeting yourself and you've never met yourself before. It gives me a North Star. It helps me refocus," said Beate Stumpe, Mathias' client until her company relocated her from Bloomfield Hills to Zurich.

One key aspect of the 43-year-old marketing executive's life she explored with Mathias was how she would like to shape her future. Her conclusion? Stumpe wants to become a coach herself. She liked the experience that much.

"It's literally a clean-sheet-of-paper approach," Stumpe explained. "I have one thousand ways to make that friend miserable if they give me advice and it doesn't work. There's a boundary. The (coach) isn't your friend. It's a business relationship. A very important thing is that I'm paying for this service and if I'm paying for a service, I want to get the most of it."

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