Do you need a life coach?

Ever heard of life coaching? Most of us have not. Gerard O’Donovan, Managing Director and Principal Coach of Noble Manhattan, was in India recently to talk about his company’s plans to train people to be life coaches. In an exclusive interview with TCP, he spoke on the benefits of Life Coaching and how it can be a viable career option.

Very briefly, what would you define a life coach as?
Coaching is about performing at your best through the individual and private assistance of someone who will challenge, stimulate and guide you to keep growing.

Essentially it is about helping you to reach self-actualisation - a point at which you not only truly know yourself but within this knowledge possess a feeling of comfort with and understanding of the person you discover.

Your coach engages in a collaborative alliance with you to establish and clarify purpose and goals and to develop a plan of action to achieve those goals. They will establish an understanding of what is really important to you in life and subsequently enable you to take charge of your life; to construct and act upon action plans that will help you to realise these priorities. Put simply, coaching is about helping you to create and work towards the grandest version of the greatest personal vision you have; to achieve success - success being the continuous realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.

Coaching is essentially a conversation - that is, a dialogue between you and your coach. Within a productive, results-oriented context, coaching involves coaching you to access what you already know.

What attributes in people make them suited to be trained to be life coaches?
We find that the two most important attributes that all coaches should have are good communication skills and a genuine liking of people. It also helps of course if they have the administrative and logistics skills needed in building and running a business, although this is not as crucial, as in fact the business side is quite simple. It is not necessary that a life coach be a graduate, as full training in all the technique skills and knowledge is provided.

What is the cost and time period required to qualify as a life coach?
In order to be a good and professional coach there is a commitment required in terms of time, effort and money. The initial diploma course consists of 250 hours of training. This is spread over a period of six to 10 months. In Britain and the rest of Europe the cost for the life coach diploma training is £2820 (Rs 2,19,960). However, in India we would be charging only Rs 1,40, 000.

Are young people with little experience of life suited to be life coaches?
It is not strictly necessary for people to have had any life experience before they train to be a professional life coach because the main tenants of coaching are being non judgmental and non directional and the fact that coaches have no answers. We do find that it is more beneficial if the coach does indeed have some life experience. The majority of people who train with us are in their 30s to 40s and 50s.

What are the career options and earning potential for life coaches?
With regard to the career options, these are many and varied. Approximately 25-30 per cent of coaches trained by us have gone into coaching full-time. The rest add coaching to what ever they already do like counselling, therapy, training management consultancy, business advising, human resources, personnel managers etc.

There is also a huge market for coaches to work within the corporate world helping companies to develop a coaching culture and to get away from a ‘command and control’ type of management.

In terms of income, it is important to look at both markets - life coaching and corporate coaching. In India it is very common for a life coach to earn Rs 1,500 – 2,500 per hour or even higher. In corporate coaching the coaches generally get paid a day rate varying between Rs 15,500 – 65,000.

A good coach is thus able to recoup the cost of his training very quickly indeed, and then go on to generate a very attractive income for himself/ herself.

Who is your target audience requiring life coaching? Is the Indian market ready for it?
India is in a very interesting place right now, in terms of its culture, values and integration with Western society. Indian people are now working longer and harder than they have ever done, and facing unprecedented levels of challenges and stresses. It is absolutely perfectly placed to embrace coaching and all that coaching can offer. As India is such a family based society, Indians could really take coaching to their hearts and embrace it fully.

We also want to bring coaching into the workplace, and we have seen this work with tremendous benefits for organizations in many other parts of the world.

What are the targets for your company over the next 2-3 years in India?
Based on our initial research, we believe that the Indian market will easily sustain in the region of 500,000 to 800,000 life and business coaches. But our targets are very simple. We would like to attract, train and work with in the region of 1,000 life coaches in the first three years. We would also like to work with at least 30 to 40 medium to large sites corporations, and help them to introduce a coaching culture within their organisation. We feel that these figures are eminently achievable.