“You talk about the excitement of doing this, it’s absolutely incredibly exciting. It’s one of those dreams that I’ve had for a long time,” said Bennett. “It’s the kind of dream that when I think about where coaching has been, and where coaching can go, this is a significant step for coaching, but it’s only a step and there are others that will build on this step and really make a difference in the world.”

The master’s program, the only MS program of its kind in the United States, is a 36 credit hour program designed for working professionals–either coaches looking to enhance their abilities, or executives interested in adding the “coach approach” to their leadership skills. “This program is designed to not only teach good coaching skills, but also to understand how the executive operates, how business operates, and the theory behind coaching, not just the practice of the skillset,” said Bennett, whose first group of MSEC students will begin their studies at McColl in May 2011.

“For coaching to move forward as a profession, and I believe that it has the opportunity of evolving into a profession, a degree such as this really moves that forward.”

The program focuses on enhancing a coach’s ability to perform in a business environment in several key areas:

-Improving the productivity, performance, and satisfaction of individuals, and teams to achieve business results
-Collecting, analyzing, interpretation data and providing feedback
-Designing, implementing, and evaluating organizational change
-Evaluating measure outcomes and current levels of performance to manage executive coaching efforts strategically
-Building and maintaining key partnerships with stakeholders to enhance business results aligned with strategic change initiatives
-Coaching individuals and teams for development and improved performance

“We are really putting a stake in the ground that says coaching is something that’s valuable, we believe coaching is something that has a body of knowledge and a skillset and that there is a science to the practice of coaching,” said Bennett.

While McColl’s MSEC program may be the first of its kind, Bennett believes it’s very unlikely other business schools won’t follow suit.

“We want people to use coaching skills and improve their effectiveness in working with others, and at the same time we’re now moving to a level of professionalizing coaching—building that body of knowledge, improving that skillset and becoming thought leaders around how coaching can be used, and putting some rigor around that–and that’s the movement we have, and I think college and universities are going to pick up on more and more of that.”

Bennett says he doesn’t know yet how many students will be in the first group of MSEC candidates, but that “interest has been high,” and the school has designed the program in a cohort fashion so that students will have the benefit of learning in small groups of about 20, but high demand for the program can be met with additional cohorts.

The commitment to coaching–and to overcoming the difficulty of creating a new master’s degree program–came from a faculty that’s benefited from coaching. “The institution has had a real interest and an appetite and a service around coaching,” said Bennett. “Many of our senior administrators have had coaches, so they really believe in coaching and understand it. Want to be on the front edge of leadership development and serving the development of coaching around the world.”

Listen to Mark Joyella’s 14 minute interview with Dr. John Bennett here:

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NOTE: Dr. Bennett served on the first Research Advisory Panel for The Foundation of Coaching and later as Director. Through a grant from The Harnisch Foundation, The Foundation of Coaching is now The Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate.

How about this: have a coach, land that great new job.

Coach Caroline Dowd-Higgins believes it makes sense for executives to put their coach on their resume as proudly as they’d list that business school degree: “I think it’s a tremendous asset because you come with your own personal guru.”

Dowd-Higgins this week urged executives of all levels to consider adding that guru to their support team in a story on The Huffington Post that explained how coaching can “distinguish you in the workplace.” Dowd-Higgins says what works for the CEOs of the world will be just as empowering for employees on the way up.

“Having a personal career coach for C-level executives is expected as part of their continuing professional development and it also makes great business sense,” she writes. “Coaches can also be helpful for non executives in various stages of your career. A coach can help polish your communication skills, develop and implement effective leadership strategies in your workplace, and plan a road map for you to move forward on the promotional ladder.”

“I think we need to think long term about the coaching relationship,” says Dowd-Higgins. “It’s not just about refining skills and implementing strategy, but what are your long term goals? How do you want to effect change in your organization if that’s the case, but also in your personal career life.”

Dowd-Higgins’ own career has taken her from opera singer to coach and author. Her new book, This is Not the Career I Ordered tells her own story of career transition, and the stories of twenty extraordinary women like Tana Poppino, a marketing executive who worked twenty years in marketing while keeping her childhood dream–of riding in the rodeo–under wraps. Ultimately, Poppino took the leap and joined the professional rodeo circuit as a barrel racer.

Reigniting careers–or reinventing them–has become Dowd-Higgins’ own coaching passion.

“Sometimes it comes from adversity in a difficult situation, and sometimes it comes from choice–wanting something different, something that’s more meaningful in your life. And many of those women have used coaches.” Dowd-Higgins believes this kind of reinvention can happen in the toughest of economic times, and says for those clients who can afford it, hiring a coach at a time of transition can be a major investment in the future.

“I’ve been there, and I can relate to it so much,” says Dowd-Higgins, who in her work often shares her own story of moving from the opera stage into the world of academia and coaching. “What I caution coaches and clients to think about is how can you have a unique offering in the workplace that is authentic and genuine and skill-based and experience-based.”

Of course many of the people whose job misfortunes have come in the form of layoffs may be the people least likely to make the financial investment in a coach to help them navigate a life-changing career reinvention. “I have a lot of people say ‘I just can’t afford it,’ and I understand that, I really do,” said Dowd-Higgins, who encourages those people to seek out mentors.

“Sometimes a coach can be an investment in your future financially. If you’re not getting what you need from your mentors and your personal resource team which is made up of your family and friends and colleagues who are generous with their time and advice, then I’d like you to consider coaching as an investment in your future,” she says. “And it may just be what you need to jump start and take it to that next level.”

Sound like a promotional campaign for coaching? Coaching: an investment in your future?

Listen to Mark Joyella’s interview with Caroline Dowd-Higgins here:

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While many coaches may not have even pondered the concept, it’s one life coach Kirk Akahoshi has built his business around—helping 20 and 30-somethings who feel lost, lacking passion and confused about where they’re headed in life…and why.

“For thousands of years there was a rite of passage, and there was a clear delineation between adolescence and adulthood,” said Akahoshi, who says he went through a quarterlife crisis himself and ultimately decided his path led to coaching.

“A lot of my clients, they’re in a certain industry, for five or ten years and they come to me and they say to me, I don’t even know if I like engineering…this was kind of pushed on them either through their family, or society or their peers, and they weren’t given a chance to say, who am I and what do I really want?”

Akahoshi says clients in quarterlife crisis often can’t explain how they ended up where they are—feeling as if they were following a path someone else set for them; leaving them as bystanders in their own lives.

The economy, meanwhile, has left them with great fears about taking a leap into something else.

“The harsh reality is,” Akahoshi says, many of his clients can’t even pay their bills, let alone answer fundamental questions about what do no next. “They’re in a job they don’t really like to do…do I really want to do this for the rest of my life?”

What does quarterlife crisis look like?

Akahoshi says it’s a lot like the traditional midlife crisis, only without a middle-aged person’s sudden drive to reclaim a lost youth. The underlying problem, Akahoshi says, is nonetheless the same.

“Deep down it’s an existential identity crisis.”

So, where the crisis in mid-life is spurred on by a realization of impending mortality—“I’ve lived half my life, I can’t believe I’ve done this what am I doing?”—in the quarterlife crisis, Akahoshi says, “they’re not exactly reliving their youth, but they’re asking these same type of questions…they’re asking what do I do with my life because they’ve never actually secured what that is.”

Akahoshi works with clients one-on-one, and through intensive workshops and retreats… engaging tough-to-reach 20 and 30-somethings with a heavy reliance on social media. “it’s a lot of social marketing, be it Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Yelp. Of course, the best marketing is still word-of-mouth.”

But while they may not be the easiest clients to reach, they tend to warm to coaching quickly—once they understand what it is. “With my peers, (coaching) is still something new and I have to do a lot of education.”
The positive nature of using a coach to help determine a career path or climb the corporate ladder resonates with members of Generation Y, who tend to share success stories with their friends.

“They’re more open to telling people, yeah I had some great results with coaching.”

Listen to Kirk Akahoshi’s conversation with CoachReporter Mark Joyella here: (podcast runs 14 minutes)

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“It is growing. It’s been fun because in the past, the Christian church has been about ten years behind the secular community in just about everything. And in coaching, it doesn’t seem to be like that. It seems like the Christian community is very like what’s happening in the secular community, and that’s been exciting to watch,” said Miller.

The language, Christian coaches Chad Hall says, can at times be different–invoking Biblical passages, for instance, or even joining a client in prayer–but the basics are fundamentally the same, grounded in ICF principles and for clients, very powerful. “Leaders and professionals in both areas really do benefit from coaching.”

Christian coaching, Hall and Miller say, really took off years ago in North Carolina, when 4,000 Baptist churches were searching for a way to help ministers become more effective leaders. “We were looking for basically a way for churches to be more effective without a cookie cutter approach…and we stumbled upon coaching. We were really looking for a consulting model that explored and discovered a church’s unique best way forward and we stumbled upon coaching,” said Hall. “We began to learn about coaching and we equipped a probably hundred or more ministers over a three year period with some core coaching skills, and it began to mushroom.”

Linda Miller calls the years since “an explosion,” with more and more Christian congregations turning to coaching. The work, Miller says, is grounded in ICF principles and practices, but with a strong respect for Christian principles as well, combining “a real grounding in the scriptures and in the Bible” and also ICF core competencies. “We want to make sure that the thing we’re doing not only is coaching but also is firmly established in the word of God.”

Linda Miller and Chad Hall spoke about their work with CoachReporter Mark Joyella:

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Read more about Coach Approach Ministries here.

Linda Miller, MCC, works as a coach in two worlds–the secular executive coaching world and the Christian business community. As the global coaching liaison for the Ken Blanchard Companies, she has broad experience in coaching, coach training, and public speaking. She’s also written books on corporate and Christian coaching.

Chad Hall, PCC, has been a pastor and ministry leader as well as an executive coach and consultant. He works with Linda Miller as part of Coach Approach Ministries, formed in 2001 as a means of bringing coaching to the world of churches.

“Partly, parent coaching can support and relieve anxiety and worry and also support parents to be their best for their children, just like we have coaches for CEOs and business managers–and parents sure are the CEOs of their home and really deserve the best support they can get.”

PCI, a year-long program that carries graduate credits through Seattle Pacific University, puts parent coaching students through at least 100 hours of coaching before granting the PCI certification. “This model grew out of my work over the past twenty years as parent, teacher, and educational consultant,” says DeGaetano. “I looked for what brought aliveness to parents; and I looked at how parents used the information presented to them to bring about change in their lives.”

DeGaetano also drew on some truly valuable experience–her own role as a Mom. “I…found the discipline and organizational skills I didn’t know I had until I became a single mother,” she says. “For several tough years with ever-present health and financial challenges, I thought I could not go on another day. But thanks to daily fun, creative experiences with my boys, I found a way to not only survive, but to thrive as a solo parent.”

DeGaetano believes parent coaching is an emerging niche, and not necessarily a niche for coaches who are themselves parents. DeGaetano says most of her students do have children, but a few don’t, and they have been excellent parent coaches, drawing on their own experiences in teaching, working with kids, or simply being around their own nieces and nephews.

DeGaetano spoke with CoachReporter Mark Joyella about parent coaching, her Parent Coaching Institute, and the next big step Mark’s making in his life–becoming a father.

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To learn more about the Parent Coaching Institute and some of the research being performed in the area of parent coaching, click here.

Steitz, founder and CEO of 3 Peaks Consulting, says the victory in Vancouver proves something about success that’s as valuable to Olympians as it is to Fortune 500 executives. “For me, our company has always been built on the premise that the same tenets that apply to successful leadership in teamwork–whether it be in the corporate area or the Olympic area–drive and promote success.”

Steitz knows a lot about both worlds, having coached Olympians at both the Winter and Summer games, and working with corporate executives at some of the world’s top companies.

And yet Steitz, who’s in Vancouver to work with athletes and corporate clients, says the two jobs aren’t different at all. “It’s the same job. I’m literally going from coaching medal-winning athletes in the morning to working with some of the biggest business leaders in the afternoon, and the conversations are almost the same.”

Steitz says at the height of athletic achievement in Vancouver, coaching doesn’t involve telling a skier how to hold a ski pole–the work involves “building relationships and staying strategic”–exactly the kinds of things Steitz zeroes in on with his business clients. “Everyone’s under tremendous pressure, whether it’s Olympic athletes with the whole world tuning in to watch, or corporate executives trying to get a return on investment.”

And Steitz says he’ll be bringing his experience with the Nordic Combined Team in Vancouver back to the board rooms to talk to executives about teamwork–and reaching success that had been out of reach, even for years. “There’s a sense of security in being on a strong team, and knowing that your teammates are going to work with you and not allow you to fail. That’s really what allows great Olympic athletes and successful CEOs to keep charging ahead.”

So who’s faster–an Olympic skier or a high-powered executive? CoachReporter Mark Joyella got the answer in this podcast interview:

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Strong was so impressed with the power of coaching he went back to school and became a coach himself, getting training through the Landmark Forum and the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching.

Strong, who bills himself as a “gay life coach for gay men” didn’t set out to carve a niche as a gay life coach. “I had a more broad niche of high-achieving professionals,” he said. “And over time, I discovered that there was a need in the marketplace for a gay life coach who would coach gay men.”

Strong decided to focus his business on serving that need, and “helping gay men be fully expressed and joyful in all areas of their lives.” And his business took off. “It grew because gay people were looking for someone they could relate to.”

“I hear all the time, someone will say they have a therapist and they’re straight and they don’t understand me,” said Strong.

Are there enough certified professional coaches like Strong to work with gay clients who’d like to hire a gay coach? “My first answer is a resounding no,” he said. “There really aren’t that many qualified gay life coaches out there.”

Strong believes gay life coaching will continue to grow as more and more people learn of coaching and get to know friends and colleagues who’ve found success working with a coach. One of the areas that many of Strong’s clients want to address first is coming out at work. Strong works with clients to develop a plan for breaking down the barriers between work and a man’s personal life–a life many have carefully kept hidden for years.

“In coaching we talk about authenticity and alignment, so whether it’s coming out at work or being more honest with family members, it’s an important part of raising people’s levels of happiness.”

Strong, who like many coaches has been busy with clients who’ve set goals for the new year, has also noticed a sharp rise in clients who want to set aside time for intensive coaching sessions lasting several hours and–in Strong’s words–”where we build a life architecture and a life plan for 2010 and beyond.”

Listen to CoachReporter Mark Joyella’s (15 minute) interview with Mark Strong here:

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Lyremark–a former exotic dancer–calls herself a “professional ass kicker,” and that’s exactly how she approaches her coaching. “I teach people how to kick their own asses for success, happiness and fulfillment,” said Lyremark, who works best with clients ready to change their lives–and willing to do the tough work to get there.

“Helping people live their full potential in life, and I understand that to do that, sometimes you have to take scary risks, and I know what that is to take scary risks in my life.”

Lyremark has created a unique brand for herself–complete with stiletto heels and a whip–that focuses on putting clients into a “boot camp” that aims to shake free the ties that have held them back from reaching their own success, just as she was able to step down off the dancer’s stage and build her own career. (She will tell that story in full later this year, when her book, “Think Like a Stripper” is published this summer)

“You are not defined by your work, you are not defined by your job,” she says. “Because who wants to be defined by being a stripper?” Lyremark encourages clients to be ready to invest in long-term, meaningful change–not exactly the kind that most people experiment with in January.

“I think people can get into the action, but it’s not long term action. That’s why every year, everyone’s starting a new year’s resolution—and it’s usually the stuff they didn’t do last year,” she said. Lyremark’s “boot camp” aims to take those resolutions and turn them around, “so small change becomes consistent.”

Lyremark calls her initial coaching “boot camp” and her daily email the “Daily Whip” as part of a distinct–and highly memorable–branding. She says the business end of coaching seems to be an area where coaches themselves could use a boot to the backside. “Coaching is a business, this is not a hobby for me”

“You have to have good branding, you have to have marketing.”

Listen to CoachReporter Mark Joyella’s interview (17 minutes) with Erika Lyremark here:

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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Time: 12:00 Noon to 1:00pm Eastern

Guest: Nancy Gerber, PCC and Nancy Spivey
Host: The Coaching Commons
Topic: What is a Mastermind Group?

“The Nancys” — Nancy Gerber and Nancy Spivey, long time business coaches and founders of www.TheMagicofMastermind.com — were with us in March for an Uncommon Conversation about “The Magic of Mastermind.”  They return to talk about how starting and leading Mastermind groups is a natural fit — and perhaps an additional revenue stream — for coaches.

With the changes in the economy and the continuing evolution of the coaching profession, coaches are looking for new ways to serve greater numbers of people at a more modest price point, while also generating more consistent revenue for their businesses.

Mastermind groups, when well organized and facilitated, are a powerful tool for growth and transformation that can be simply and easily delivered, creating “magic” for both coaches and clients.

In leading Mastermind groups for coaches every month, the Nancys have experienced a tremendous surge of excitement and interest in the process and how it can enhance the business of coaching.

Topics to be covered in this one-hour program will include:

*Principles of Masterminding
*Distinctions between Coaching & Masterminding
*How coaches use their coaching skills to be great Mastermind facilitators
*A live 30-Minute Mastermind Session facilitated by “The Nancys”

For more information, visit http://themagicofmastermind.com

Leone specializes in “helping people discover and express strategically their unique talents and to bring them into the job they were born to do.”

Listen to the 22 minute podcast here:

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