Underemployed Coaches

ruby slippers and phone by gwENvision

I do not know if you have noticed, but the world is full of underemployed coaches. Go to almost any networking meeting and you are sure to meet one or two coaches a little too eager to explain how you can be and achieve so much more.

I am curious about this. It is partly a result of all the hype. There has been so much hype about coaching. In France the word hardly means anything. If you are not sure what the word for a coach is in French it is le coach (and yes there is also le coaching). It covers everything from personal trainer, to personal shopper, with some potential for psychologist thrown in.

I blame the training organisations. For years now training organisations have been telling people ‘Coaching is the fastest growing profession in the world…’ with all kinds of promises of being able to earn hundreds per hour while sitting in slippers at home and asking open questions on the phone.

What happens is that people take a training, get hooked on the heady rush of watching people become aware of their deeper desires. Then they get business cards made, some really comfy slippers and a new phone, and then….

…then they find it is not so easy. They head to their local networking breakfast and meet a bunch of other coaches with cards and whose slipper softened feet are struggling with their business shoes. Eavesdrop on the conversation between them and you'll hear allusions to abundance, cooperation, and it 'not being a zero sum game'. Watch the body language, you'll see their eyes scanning for the signs of eligible clients and their thighs tense to pounce.

The next step for these people is to do more courses, to unleash some more potential. Some coaches end up taking so many courses that they decide to teach courses and sell the same attractive dream of slippers and phones that they fell for however many trainings ago. In a gold rush the people who get rich are the ones selling shovels.

But isn’t that what we are doing at NLP School Europe?

Well we do talk about coaching, and we do train people who are coaches. Quite a few coaches come to us because they recognise that NLP underpins many coaching training courses and and they want to better understand the core of their technical base.

In fact I really like training coaches. They often understand what we are doing very quickly, and come back with great stories of how they have applied NLP with their clients.

The difference is we want people to apply NLP I their lives, not make NLP their life. We do not want our trainees to pack in the day job and set up as coaches. We are selling tools, not necessarily a new career.

Here is an analogy. Some years I remember a friend saying that in an ideal world there would be no Green party. All political parties would have integrated an ecological, sustainable agenda. Asking a politician if they were green should be like asking a fish if they could swim. Pretty self evident, and not really a question worth asking.

Back then the sustainable agenda was mostly talked about by people with long hair, and dismissed by people in politics.

Today we are closer to the ideal situation. If you ask pretty much any politician if they are green they will answer 'yes'. The difference between the politicians and the fish is that the fish are telling the truth. Watch the body language, the fish really can swim.

Actually that probably applies to most of us. When was the last time you checked your ecological footprint?

A bit of my own agenda creeping in there, again. Skip over it if you find it clashes with your own worldview. In another few years it will seem very dated anyway. At least that is what I am working for.

I believe that coaching is a useful profession. The ability to work with people in a respectful, compassionate ways is very important. The capacity to look to look at what is important, in a deep rather than superficial way is also vital to our society. An ability to integrate our values with our day to day actions and effectiveness is equally important. All of these are the promises of coaching.

But the ideal is that they would be integrated into our lives. That we would not need coaches for this, any more than we would need a green party.

So whether you want to be a coach or not there is something valuable to be had from coaching training.

For all the underemployed coaches, some of them will keep plugging at it and find a way to get the clients that you want.

Some coaches will hang up their slippers and go back to what they did before - but differently. Others will discover actually that what they really want to do is not coach, but something much more juicy, at least to them.

If you've just met an underemployed coach, and think they may have something to offer, but possibly overpriced,then haggle with them.

They could probably do with the practise. Some of them are not so sure of their skills yet. Give them a chance, they might well be very good. If they do a good job then they may well have created a regular client and a source of referrals. If they do not do a good job you will probably at least have enjoyed some interesting conversations.

For the underemployed coaches among you, haggle back! Do not give your coaching away for free. Make sure you get an exchange which is satisfying to you, even if not financially.

How do you know if it is worth taking on an underemployed coach. It is probably not good to do it on the basis that you feel sorry for them. Better to do it on the basis that there is something that you've always wanted to do, but never have yet. Perhaps there is a nagging sense that you could do better in some way, or some kind of difficult situation at work or at home that seems stuck.

If that is true for you then the next question is to ask which kind of coach you would like? Perhaps you will decide prefer the investment in an experienced well employed coach with fixed rates.

Alternatively you may decide to sponsor new talent. You may prefer someone underemployed, inexperienced and negotiable. In which case just head to a networking meeting and watch the body language.