You're behind the curve if you've never worked with a coach before

2025-04-17 10:10

In the 21st century, you can't be truly successful if you don't have a coach. Everyone has a coach: sports teams, Formula 1 winners, billionaires, stars, successful CEOs. If you've never had a coaching session, you're a dinosaur. Nowadays it is easy to find a coach not only in the capital, but also in any provincial town. But don't worry, you still have more to gain. And right after reading my article you will be able to catch up quickly. But don't rush to google the phrase ‘looking for a coach’, but read to the end, so that you don't end up with a charlatan, of which there are plenty, just like in any other profession.)

In this article I want to shed some light on the topic of coaching, as there is a lot of ambiguous information about coaching and coaches in the former Soviet Union. Some people got to the right coaches and are very happy with the result, while others got to charlatans and realised that they just lost money.
In addition, I'll give you some tools to experience what coaching is all about.

In this article I will discuss:

Who is a coach (history, definition).
The difference between a coach and a psychologist, coach, counsellor.
How to distinguish a coach from a charlatan.
On what issues clients turn to a coach.
How a coach can be useful to a client.
What a typical coaching session looks like.
How much a coach can earn.
Whether coaching can be useful for you.
Whether you can become a coach.
What it takes to become a coach.
My path of coaching: how I became a coach and what it gave me.

I am sure that my thoughts will seem objective to you, because, on the one hand, I am a certified coach, and on the other hand, coaching is not a source of my income, as my main job is personnel management at the largest Ukrainian TV channel. Besides, I myself hire coaches for the development of company employees and I see different representatives of this profession.

I have been a certified coach for several years now. When I tell people around me that I am a coach, I am constantly asked the same questions:

Who is a coach? Is it a personal growth coach?
And how do you work with clients? Do you probably give them advice?
Is it true that clients pay $100 per coaching session?
And do you really only ask questions?

Everyone has had the word ‘coaching’ on their lips for a long time. Each of us has different associations when we hear the word ‘coach’. Someone imagines a personal growth coach, someone is a psychologist, someone is a charlatan infobusinessman, and someone, perhaps, an avid NLPer.

Of course, all this has nothing to do with coaching. It's just that all of these people caught on to the trend of coaching's popularity and began to ascribe to themselves the newfangled word ‘coach’ among other regalia.

Real coaches don't teach you anything at all.

But everyone will probably agree on one thing: coaches make good money. And this is really true. A coaching session even for a novice coach costs $50, but experienced coaches charge from $100 to $200. But there are also those who can charge $500 or even $1,000, but these are usually very well-known coaches who work with business owners, and this work is limited either to a series of intensive coaching sessions with a pause of 6-12 months between them, or, on the contrary, to occasional meetings once a month.

But the most striking thing is that real coaches (and I'll tell you who a real coach is below) don't teach you anything at all. They don't tell you what decisions to make, they don't make you work better or harder. And just as strikingly, they don't talk to the client about their past, but usually about the future.

So what do people who ask questions about the future get thousands of dollars from their clients for?

Let's try to figure it out. Let's start with a definition.

What is coaching?

Official version:

Coaching is a method of counselling and training, it differs from classical training and classical counselling in that the coach does not give advice and rigid recommendations, but seeks solutions together with the client.

My take:

Coaching is a special kind of coaching work with a client through which the client achieves outstanding results faster, more joyfully and more easily than they would have worked to achieve them on their own.

A bit of history

TIMOTHY GOLVEY

It all started with Timothy Golvey, who was the author of the concept of the inner game, which became the basis of coaching. The concept was first outlined in the book The Inner Game of Tennis, published in 1974. It is this date that can be considered the birth date of coaching.

He came up with the idea of the inner game while working as a tennis instructor.

Timothy Golvey

American coach, author of the ‘inner game’ method of increasing personal and professional effectiveness

The opponent in the head is much more dangerous than the opponent on the other side of the ‘net’. The coach's task is to help the player eliminate or mitigate internal obstacles. As a result, the individual's natural ability to learn and achieve effectiveness will manifest itself. The goal of the ‘inner game’ is to reduce any interference in the discovery and realisation of a person's full potential.

JOHN WHITMORE

He is the author of High Performance Coaching, published in 1992.

He developed Golvey's ideas as applied to business and management. John Whitmore is a British motor racing driver, one of the UK's leading business coaches and the creator of the popular GROW coaching model.

John was a pupil of Timothy Golvey. In 2007 he received the International Coaching Federation (ICF) President's Award, recognising his work in promoting coaching around the world.

THOMAS LEONARD

He is considered the creator of coaching as we know it today.

Thomas was a financial counsellor. One day he noticed that the most successful of his clients were not so much asking him for financial advice as they were asking for personal business advice. Business leaders and top executives wanted to know how to react quickly to the changing economic environment, how to manage employees effectively, and some simply could not formulate their future professional goals.

These are just a small part of Thomas' achievements:

Founder of Coach University (www.coachu.com), the International Coach Federation (ICF), the International Association of Certified Coaches (IAC) and the CoachVille.com project.
He has developed 28 personal and professional programmes.
Author of six books for coaches and 14 internal exclusive works for students of the University of Coaching.
Among the more than 28 programmes he has developed, Clean Sweep is very popular with us.

How coaching has evolved

From the 70‘s to the mid 80’s - the stage of the birth of coaching in the USA.
Mid-1980s - coaching began to spread in the USA.
Mid 80's - coaching became active in Germany.
Late 80's - staff development through coaching started in Germany.
Early 90's - in Europe and the USA the division of coaching into specialisations began.
Mid/late 90s - in Europe and America coaching is actively gaining momentum.
From 2002 to the present day - the phase of advanced professionalisation.

The difference between coaching and other types of help and counselling is shown in the graph:

Coaching is therefore the only counselling modality in which it is the client who is the expert and the coach only asks questions.

So how do you tell the difference between a real coach and a real charlatan?

Separately, I want to talk about the ‘coaches’ who studied at Ericksonian Coaching University.

It is worth noting that because Marilyn Atkinson spent many years of her life calling her former NLP teachings the newfangled word ‘coaching’, many students of this school are now perceived as coaches. I don't want to challenge their right to be called what they want to be called, but I am obliged to shed some light on the matter.

Who is Erickson, after whom his teachings are named:

So, Erickson (Erickson) Milton Hiland (1901-1980) was one of the most popular American psychotherapists of the 20th century.
He wrote more than 140 works on psychotherapy. In 1923 he developed a number of hypnotherapy techniques, including the hand-raising method.
Erickson is the founder and president of the American society of clinical hypnosis (American society of clinical hypnosis), founder and editor of the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. He regularly conducted his famous hypnotherapy and short direct psychotherapy seminars.

Erickson's biography does not indicate that he was a student of any of the then famous coaches (they are listed above). Furthermore, Erickson himself did not call himself a coach, nor did he call his science coaching.

But here came Marilyn Atkinson, who taught NLP to her followers. However, at some point she started calling herself a coach without stating who she had learnt from. Here is some information about her:

Marilyn Atkinson - President of the International Ericksonian University, doctor of psychology, coach, world-renowned trainer, a student of Milton Erickson, the famous psychologist.
Marilyn is the author of many works, since 1985 she has been teaching and consulting in the leading corporations of the world, is the founder and president of the International Ericksonian University (Canada) to this day.
Marilyn is the author of the books on coaching: ‘LIFE MASTERY: The Internal Dynamics of Development’, ‘Achieving Goals: A Step-by-Step System’, ‘LIFE IN THE FLOW: Coaching’.

This is why internationally certified coaches often challenge Atkinson's right to call herself a coach, as do her students.

What kinds of issues do clients go to a coach for?

The range of issues with which clients turn to a coach is very large indeed. Here are some of them:

Business planning, budgeting, goal setting.
Establishing a work-life balance.
Dealing with difficult situations.
Achieving maximum productivity at work.
Solving business and personal problems.
Making key decisions and developing strategies.
Increasing sales.
Managing my life instead of letting other people manage me.
Increase my company's profitability by at least....
Take the adrenaline out of my life so I don't burn out.
Accelerate my own development.
Develop a path for my own growth.

An example of specific enquiries I have worked with:

Which career path to choose.
How to address one's weaknesses to become a marketing director.
Learning how to run a company (person recently made partner).
How to talk to a shareholder about your development.
Increasing your income level by 50% in 6 months.
Creating a passive income of $200 in 10 months.
Buying a car (not on credit) in 1 year.
Career advancement to a management position in 1 year.
Reducing stress and tension levels so that work is a high.
Finding a boyfriend by the end of the year.
Finding life balance (so that work is not to the detriment of other areas of life).
Increase in well-being and energy levels.
Learning to manage my time, identify my capabilities and effectively set deadlines for completing tasks.
Bringing order to life (instead of the existing chaos).
Lose 5kg in 3 months.

What does a typical coaching session look like

A typical coaching session lasts 60-90 minutes. If meetings are frequent, it can be reduced to 30-45 minutes. Meetings usually take place in a café or restaurant, or at the client's workplace (in his/her office or meeting room). Less often, the client comes to the coach's office.

Before the coaching session, the client forms his/her request - a kind of task for the session. During the session, the client and the coach have to find a solution to his/her request.

The result of the coaching session is a clear understanding of what the client needs to do to achieve his/her goal and a plan of action, usually for a week.

During the session, the coach asks the client questions and applies various coaching tools.

A typical coaching session is based on the GROW model that Whitmore invented:

Goal - what is your goal? What do you want to achieve?
Reality - describe your situation now.
Options - what are your options for achieving your goal? Who can help you? What do you need? Let's have a brainstorming session.
Will - what do you need to do to achieve the goal? What are the next steps? When would you be able to do it?
One of the jobs of a coach is to raise the client's bar. That is, to help the client set higher goals so that they achieve more in life.

Now, as promised, I will give you one of the coaching tools.

This is a tool for a comprehensive assessment of the client's life and finding weaknesses in it.

There are 30 questions. You have to answer yes or no to each question.

Now count your score for each area separately. If an area scores less than six yeses, it means there are problems. If it's eight or more, it's fine. Between six and eight, it could use improvement.

Now your goal is to make it so that you collect all 30 yeses in 90 days. Weak? ;)

How much a coach can earn

Most often a coach charges $100 per coaching session.

Clients do not apply one-time, but buy 5-10 coaching sessions on average (private clients usually take five, corporate clients 10). In such cases, the coach can make discounts.

The coach is not loaded 100% of the time. A 40-60% load is considered good, as the remaining time is required for travelling around the city, attracting new clients, maintaining websites and so on.

Many coaches conduct trainings, for which in general they also charge about $100 per hour.

Let's take a normal working day of a person - 8 hours. With a 40% workload, our coach will work 3 hours a day. This will be three coaching sessions of 60 minutes each. For such a day, the coach will earn $300 (assuming that the coach did not give discounts).

In 20 working days, a coach earns $6,000.

This is a person who is not involved in any other activity other than coaching. There are not many of them, but I know a few representatives.
More often than not, a coach's income varies between $3,000 and $10,000.

If coaching is not the main activity for a person and he/she has a regular job, such a coach does not have more than one session a day. And he does not have clients for all 5 days. Usually it is 3-4 days. That gives 300-400 dollars per week or 1 200-1 600 dollars of additional income per month.

There are some coaches who practice coaching solely to maintain their expertise and do one session a week. That works out to $400 per month.

Can coaching be useful to me

Are you ready for coaching?

Rate from 1 to 4, where 1 is incorrect, 4 is completely correct.

___________ total score

Score:

60-53. You are a very good candidate for coaching!
52-47. You are ready. A slight resistance is holding you back. This is a good place to start coaching.
46-39. You're in a wait-and-see position. Before we get started, we'd better talk first about why you're thinking about coaching.
38-0. Come back when you're ready to make a decision. Right now, you're not ready to take charge and make significant life changes. Coaching is for those who are READY. Right now may not be your time yet. This slice gives you insight into where you are now.

Can I become a coach myself

You can safely answer this question in the affirmative if you can answer ‘yes’ to all the items:

You want to help others to achieve their goals.
You are ready to be a model for them and to do this you want to achieve your goals in different areas of life.
Are willing to put in the time to learn and practice basic coaching (more than 100 hours).
Have the time to conduct coaching sessions after the training is complete.
Ready to learn, train to conduct sessions in the presence of others, receive feedback from the coach.

What it takes to become a coach

The algorithm here is as follows:

Choose a school that suits your needs in terms of location, course times, reviews and has ICF certification.
Raise the money for the course ($1,000-2,000).
Take the course (average 1-3 months of intensive classroom training 2-3 days a week or 10-12 months of online classes once a week for 60-90 minutes).
Start doing free coaching sessions. You need to do a minimum of 100 hours.
Start telling others around you that you have become a coach.
Create your website.
Start attracting clients.

My journey as a coach: how I became one and what it has given me

Initially, I didn't go to study coaching to practise coaching at all, but to improve my leadership skills. My team had grown from 2 to 10 people and I needed to learn how to manage them effectively. Since I had read all the main management books at that time, I looked for management advice in the area of leadership.

Leadership training did not gain my interest and respect, so I switched to coaching. I met a coach who explained and showed me what coaching was and my learning began. I studied at the International Academy of Coaching MAXIMUM (don't consider it an advert) with Maxim Tsvetkov for 10 months, every week for 90 minutes in the format of webinars.

By doing all my homework, I started to set myself goals, work on achieving them and saw the effectiveness of coaching as a way to achieve goals (although I just wanted to learn how to manage people).

Coaching works like magic: all you have to do is set a goal and realise ways to achieve it, and you automatically start working on it.

At the end of the course, I had clear goals in all areas of my life. In addition, my employees noticed a change in my management style and our relationships became much better.

I needed coaching practice to get my certification, so I started coaching everyone I knew. As it happened, many of them achieved their goals very quickly. One of my subordinates after a month of coaching went to a higher position in another company with a salary twice as high. :)

I realised that coaching works like magic: if you set yourself a goal and realise how to achieve it, you automatically start working on it.

I got my certificate and started to coach those clients who came to me mainly on recommendation. As time goes by, there are more such clients. But for me the main priority is my career: I want to become a CEO in 5 years, so I don't devote as much time to coaching as I could. For me, it's more of an opportunity to earn pocket money for my favourite toys (phone, laptop) on weekends.

What coaching has given me:

Achievement of a number of goals (career, health, salary).
Experience of managing people in a more democratic style.
Getting to know new and interesting personalities.
Realisation of my purpose.
A more balanced life.
Improved relationships with others.