The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 1, 2002
Eils Lotozo, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
After 20 years as a psychologist, helping to mend frayed psyches, Ralph Jaffe needed a break.
"This is very wearing work," said Jaffe, who has offices in Center City and Elkins Park. "We are dealing all the time with human pain."
Two years ago, he added a sunnier sideline to his work. He became a personal coach, counseling successful achievers in their quest for more. Pummeled by managed care and weary of a steady diet of depressives, mental-health practitioners are finding a satisfying and lucrative new source of clients in personal coaching — acting as paid cheerleaders for generally high-functioning people.
"With coaching, you can come to see me when your life is going well and you just want it to go better," said Jaffe, whose practice is now one-quarter coaching.
Cherry Hill stockbroker Matt Dansker hired Jaffe to help him retool his approach to his job after a market downturn. "I thought it was the perfect time to get a partner, maybe someone who could guide me and get me to think a little bit differently," Dansker said. "I guess I needed some support that even a family member or friend couldn't give." Dansker said Jaffe has helped him with structure and discipline and has worked with him on nutrition and establishing an exercise program. "I expected he would help me at work, but it really crossed over, because life isn't 9-to-5," Dansker said. Personal or life coaching was pioneered in the 1980s by Salt Lake City financial planner Thomas J. Leonard, who found his clients seeking broader life advice. Mentors can be hired - over the phone - for about $100 a half-hour.
Mental-health practitioners are flocking to the booming field. According to a survey published in October 2000 by the newsletter Psychotherapy Finances, 20 percent of therapists now offer coaching. And coach-training programs designed specifically for mental-health professionals are burgeoning.
Jeffrey E. Auerbach, founder and president of the College of Executive Coaching, based in Ventura, Calif., said 2,000 mental-health professionals had taken his courses in the last two years.
Many practitioners are fleeing managed care and its severe limits on therapist visits, said Ben Dean, founder of a training program in Bethesda, Md., called MentorCoach (its motto: "Helping Accomplished Clinicians Become Extraordinary Coaches")."There are more and more therapists who are not happy with what they are doing. Managed care has taken the joy out," Dean said.
"You find yourself arguing with a clerk, begging for two more visits for a patient you really know needs six months to make progress," he said. A therapist-turned-coach, Dean ran an introductory MentorCoach seminar in King of Prussia last fall that drew 75 therapists.Many therapists say the freedom to coach over the phone is a big attraction. "I can be anywhere and do a coaching session," Jaffe said. But therapists say the real draw is the chance to offer their skills to a whole new world of clients: can-do types chasing their dreams, people who would never seek the counsel of a therapist.
"The word coaching has no stigma," said Diana Adile Kerschner, a coach and therapist in Gwynedd Valley. "It doesn't indicate in any way that they have personal problems. It indicates they want to achieve and create their future."Besides, said Kerschner, most people don't need therapy. "They need guidance, someone to help them envision where they'd like to be." MentorCoach graduate Jeffrey Kaplan has shifted his Norristown psychotherapy practice to nearly half coaching. With a specialty in child psychology and expertise with troubled teens, he even coaches groups of parents by phone through the wonders of conference calling.
A recent morning found Kaplan pacing his home office, phone pressed to his ear in an introductory coaching session with Bethesda, Md., real estate agent Sarah Funt. Her reason for seeking Kaplan's help? "Work tends to consume me," said Funt, who confessed she took few days off and routinely worked 14-hour days.
Over the half-hour, Kaplan listened and probed, finally pushing Funt to focus on change. "If you were to move one little notch forward to honor a little more personal time, what might you do?" he asked.
The two came up with a goal: One morning a week, Funt would make no appointments and not answer her phone until 10:30. "That's great," said Kaplan. "If you try to change too quickly, often the gremlins of resistance come up.Shirley Kirchner, herself a psychotherapist in Plymouth Meeting, sought the help of therapist-turned-coach Lisa Kramer when she found herself "in a funk." At 62, Kirchner had become sedentary and out of touch with her once-adventurous side. "I was doing this number on myself, that I'd just have to get used to life as it is," she said. After a year of coaching with Kramer - who does coach training for North Wales-based Comprehensive Coaching U - Kirchner had completed a backpacking trip in the Adirondacks, taken a 70-mile bike tour, and gone whitewater rafting. "Lisa helped me with goal-setting, and even if the goal wasn't reached, she affirmed me," Kirchner said. "I think everyone responds to encouragement."
While more therapists may be embracing coaching, they still have qualms about the unlicensed and unregulated nature of the field. There are voluntary industry certification programs (such as the one run by the 4,000-member International Coaching Federation), but anyone, trained or not, can advertise as a coach and solicit clients.
"Some people are just intuitively natural coaches," said Melinda Vilas, spokeswoman for Coach U, founded by the coaching pioneer Leonard. "And there are hundreds of niches. Stay-at-home moms could coach other moms; former schoolteachers could coach teachers." Most therapists-turned-coach don't buy that, insisting that they are the best-qualified."People get more when they come to a coach who is a clinician," said Dean, the MentorCoach founder. "We've got thousands of hours of working with people, and a century of social-science research and practice behind us." While most training programs instruct would-be coaches to refer clients to therapists when appropriate, coach/therapist David Wilde, who has offices in Newtown and New Hope, wonders how the untrained can even make that determination.
Said Wilde, "You may say that in coaching we're not looking at unconscious issues, or how mommy and daddy treated you. That's nice. But if such obstacles affect the present day, you'd be remiss not to know how to direct them."Telecommunications executive Lon Justice agrees. Justice, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif., hired Norristown's Kaplan as a coach when he wanted to develop better leadership skills.
"What I'm working on is behavioral," Justice said. "How do I express vulnerability in large groups? How do I stay out of the dramas that often arise in organizations?"
"Coaching is a very simple concept," he said, "but having Jeff be a highly trained psychologist really helps."
site design by jack out of the box designs