Best place to find a personal coach

[dominick]

Life has been great lately but I'm getting ready to take things to the next level. When I was at this stage a few years ago I hired a coach who really helped me to accelerate my progress and held me accountable to the goals I was setting. I felt like I outgrew him though during our time together.

I'd love to find an incredible coach to work with now. Other than simply asking people does anyone know a great way to do this. I've talked to a lot of coaches in the past and am not overly impressed with many of them in large part because a lot of them haven't actually achieved the levels of success (financial or otherwise) that I aspire to. I'd love to find someone who has "been there done that" to work with. Any suggestions?

[Ironkettle2]

You'll never beat a personal coach! I don't know much about coaching but you should be able to coach yourself after a certain level. Do what coaches do and research a lot of books on the information you want. It'll save you expenses.

I guess it all depends on what you want to be coached in.

Maybe you'd like Brain Tracy audio books. Nightingale Conant has some good things.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by dominick

...
I've talked to a lot of coaches in the past and am not overly impressed with many of them in large part because a lot of them haven't actually achieved the levels of success (financial or otherwise) that I aspire to.
...

Why is that relevant? Their goals may be totally different from yours and so may be their definition of success.

Anyway, an example for what you seem to be looking for is Anthony Robbins, but he is veeery expensive .

[CoolBee]

Dominik - I'm a coach. From what you say about not having found a coach who has achieved the levels of personal access (defined in your terms) that you wish to achieve, I am wondering whether you are looking for more of a mentor?

Most of good coaching is about asking you questions to get you to think through your ideas, uncover limiting self beliefs, challenge your assumptions, access your own wisdom. Most of us follow a process model to explore your goal-areas, help you set those goals in 'achievable' terms, then the current situation, options and specific action steps available to you. We have a range of exercises, tools and so on to help you with this.

A life coach does NOT give you advice or suggestions. If they do give you advice or suggestions, that becomes mentoring, consultancy, teaching or advising and there is a distinction. My personal liability insurers would have a fit if they thought I was giving advice as I would be in a whole new realm of insurance!

For this reason, whether or not the coach has achieved success in your terms should not matter, whether you have excellent rapport and whether they challenge you or keep you focused does matter.

You might like to consider why the best mathematics teachers are often those who struggled to get their degrees (thereby having to consciously understand the difficulties they had and how they overcame them0 than those who are naturally good at math and to whom everything was obvious and who cannot understand why others cannot understand!

[dominick]

That's a fair point CoolBee but I also think it's fair to demand that a coach be dialed in in many or all of the same areas as you wish to be. Think about Tiger Woods. He wouldn't have a coach who has a 20 handicap. His coach isn't going to be as good of a golfer as Tiger but is going to be pretty good and also have a track record of success in coaching people.

I feel like a lot of coaches (no offense intended please, I have a ton of respect for people who choose coaching as a profession) are focused more on technique and process rather than outcomes. The equivalent from the Tiger Woods example would be a coach saying "I teach this swing technique" rather than "I've coached three Masters champions".

I realize it's probably not as cut and dry as golf coaching but it does seem like a more results-focused coach would be who I want. And as for a coach not giving advice, I wasn't aware of that. Coaches all around the world give advice and maybe if they aren't supposed there's a different word we should use other than coach?

Final thought: It would be really cool if there was a website you could go to and read reviews, testimonials, etc. for coaches from all around the world. Kind of like Yelp or Trip Advisor but for coaching. Does anything like that exist? If not, it definitely should!!!

[CoolBee]

Most of the coaches I know try to spend a long time working with the client to define achievable goals - so are heavily focused on outcomes.

Whether or not coaches give advice probably depends on whether they have actually had proper training or not! As far as I know, there is nothing to stop anyone anywhere from just saying "I'm a life coach" and off they go. All sorts of people get in to a complete muddle between mentoring, therapy, counseling and coaching.

On a simple level, the Tiger Woods' (life)Coach analogy would probably be more like:

What golf swing techniques have you tried already?
Are there any other golf swing techniques which you are aware of which you have not tried already?
Now, consider whether there are any other possible golf swing techniques which you may NOT be aware of already - how might you go about discovering these?
This may lead, say, to 'find a mentor' (aka sports coach) which may lead to - ok where will you look for the mentor, how will you approach them, what will you do, ok, diary out WHEN will you make that call - time date, how committed are you to make that call.

I'll look out a few links for you on 'comparison' places.

[Thekla]

Hi! I am also a life coach and I agree with CoolBee's comments on coaching. I do think that personal referrals, when possible, are the way to go for hiring any kind of a professional, life coaches included. Other than that, and in addition to that really, I'd suggest continuing to talk to coaches until you find someone who has the qualities you want.

There are actually different kinds and specialties of coaching out there; many coaches specialize these days. If you don't mind sharing, what (very generally) are you looking to work on with a coach?