There’s a sucker born every minute
How is “life coaching” even a thing?
With early roots in the late-20th-century pull toward self-improvement, life coaching broadly encompasses a program of goal-setting and talk-therapy-style sessions aimed at improving an individual’s circumstances and well-being.
They may be “talk-therapy-style” but that doesn’t mean they are talk therapy. There’s no body of knowledge behind “life coaching”; it’s just people giving advice, with no training or education required. I don’t understand why people pay other people to do that when they could just do it themselves.
Business is booming. The International Coaching Federation, the world’s largest nonprofit coaching association, estimated that the industry was worth $4.6 billion in 2022 and that the number of coaches increased 54 percent between 2019 and 2022. Because the industry lacks standardized accreditation, it’s most likely larger — one of the dangers of life coaching is that anyone can claim the title of life coach.
And, clearly, lots and lots of people believe that the title of life coach means something.
“Coaching is a self-regulated industry, which means that anyone can establish a coaching practice regardless of their training or professional background,” said Carrie Abner, the vice president of credentials and standards at the International Coaching Federation, in a statement. She said that clients should make sure they were working with trained and experienced coaches who had credentials.
Trained how, by whom, where?
Ms. Abner said that coaches with credentials from the International Coaching Federation agreed to abide by a code of ethics. “If a client feels a coach has acted in a way that is out of alignment with professional or ethical standards, the client has a formal process available to them to hold the coach accountable,” she said.
Well that’s good but what is the substance of the training? What is the body of knowledge that trainees are taught?
Spoiler: you can read to the end of the article but you still won’t find any answers to that question.
I put them on the same level of hell as the ‘motivational’ speakers that bosses are so enamored of, the ones that tell you if you’re unhappy in your job, to change your attitude and to stay away from poopy people (they never tell you how to stay away from yourself, and by definition, I would be one of those ‘poopy people’ because I saw the crap in my workplace and didn’t hesitate to speak out). They don’t have training, either, but they make money just telling employees the boss isn’t to blame for the crappy nature of the job, it’s you thinking it’s crappy that’s to blame.
I can’t imagine anyone paying for this when the free version is so insufferable.
Related: “influencer”
Myself when young, did eagerly frequent / Doctor and saint, and heard great argument, / About it and about, but evermore / Came out by the same door as in I went.
Someone said that once. It’s definitely been said. Can’t exactly remember who by, though. I’ll leave it alone, and it will come home. Coulda been little Bo Peep.!
I’ve never in my life heard of anyone paying for a life coach’s services, and that’s puzzled me more and more; I seem to come across a self-declared life coach online at least once a week. Who the hell are they coaching?
Now I have my answer: like Amway salesmen, life coaches are their own target demographic. The only people gullible enough to buy it are the people gullible enough to get roped into selling it.
It feels like everything is a pyramid scheme these days. In the information-overload/hypertechnology age, we’re all feeling lost at sea and searching for safe harbour. In this environment, people everywhere are throwing themselves behind dubious “life changing” schemes. When you look at it that way, getting into “life coaching” isn’t all that different from getting into gender ideology.
I would say the same about Bitcoin, or NFTs. They’re pyramid schemes that sell the promise of life improvement through investment in junk products.
I happen to believe Canada’s entire economy has become swept up in one such pyramid scheme, a craze that promises to change everyone’s lives but which is centred around junk products: the real estate speculation bubble. Countless Canadians have redirected their savings into investing in the condo craze. Many people have even quit their jobs to become full-time real estate speculators. Prices have ballooned far above anything remotely rational, and now the entire country is deep in debt, trying (and failing) to keep up with their preposterous mortgage payments. Millions of Canadians now depend on food banks; there’s a national boycott of our chief grocer (resentment at sky-high grocery prices is a side-effect of people finding they don’t have enough money to eat after the rent/mortgage bill comes out); there’s a catastrophic spike in homelessness; international students and recent immigrants are turning around and leaving; storefronts are shuttering. No one can afford any discretionary spending, leading to mass layoffs in the service sector, leading to a cascade of job losses throughout the economy. All because of the get-rich-quick condo investment pyramid scheme. The true believers are adamant that the problem is simply a temporary increase in interest rates, but the true problem is the principal on these home loans, not the interest: everybody’s real estate valuations need to be cut in half, coast to coast, to make life liveable again in this country. There is in fact more for-rent housing and more for-sale housing on the market right now than there has been in decades, so the problem is certainly not supply. The problem is that the prices are too high for anyone to afford, and the normal machinations of supply and demand haven’t yet succeeded in bringing the prices back down to earth, because everyone — including policymakers in the federal government — is desperate to put off the inevitable reckoning with reality.
It feels like I’m living in a bizarre dream where everyone around me has succumbed to some cult or other. It’s Invasion of the Critical-Thinking Snatchers, and the few of us un-snatched remainers are laying low, just trying to hold on until something comes along to save us all.
Re #3
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, translation by Edward FitzGerald.
I’m reminded of what Crocodile Dundee said when the concept of talk therapy was explained to him:
Unlike Mick, I don’t have any quarrel with people getting help from a trained and licensed mental health professional. But “life coaches”? Ugh. Get yourself a friend or two.
Didn’t life coaching grow out of all those TV advertised self help ‘gurus’ from the 80s and 90s? Basically targeting those too upper middle class to go to one of Tony Robbins
lectureshysteria sessions. I’ve seen a lot of fitness personal trainers/sports coaches also bill themselves as life coaches. Apparently thinking that a relentlessly positive attitude and putting your needs first is critical to happiness and success is all that’s important.I’m not surprised it’s turned into a pyramid scheme. I know someone who is a trained Reiki Master (they have the certificates!), but who never actually takes on paying clients because the people training her have convinced her that she needs further training – which costs thousands of dollars. it’s all much the same bundle.
I once knew a “Life Coach” on a personal, not professional basis. He seemed to spend a lot of time drinking coffee. At home.
It seemed his whole business model was to borrow a client’s watch, tell them the time, return the watch and submit an invoice.
There’s also this as an antidote.
https://www.amazon.com/Bright-sided-Positive-Thinking-Undermining-America/dp/0312658850
Five stars; would laugh again.
@Rob,
Yes, Reiki is another one, isn’t it. Seems there are an awful lot of Reiki practitioners but I’ve never heard of anyone gullible enough to pay a masseur to give them essentially the weakest massage possible. It’s all the awkwardness of the occasion — getting undressed, lying on a weird table, and letting a stranger touch your body — without any of the satisfaction that comes from a good muscle tenderizing. I can’t see the appeal.
[…] a comment by Artymorty on There’s a sucker born every […]
Spot on Arty. Nothing you can’t do for yourself. Dim the lights, make the room warm, quite restful music, choose of aroma, lie still and relax for 40 minutes. Practically free.
Rev, that’s really funny. It’s also the definition of a ‘business consultant’. Someone told me years ago to never pay for a consultant who starts by asking what the problem is. I don’t think that’s quite right, but there is a strong element of sense.
Sackbut @ #5: One of my favourite books ever since my own youth. Hence my nom-de-blog.
Re #12
There are a lot of situations where people need help being guided or advised to do things they can do for themselves. They don’t think of it, or they can’t make themselves be bothered. So, on that basis, I don’t have objections to the concept of a coach, even for things that are painfully obvious to most of us. And a coach can get away with advice that a friend is reluctant to give for fear of damaging a relationship. So, again conceptually, I can see a potential benefit. But lots of things with potential benefits get pushed to extremes when money is involved and there is no oversight.
Re #13
Ah yes, I should have noticed or remembered that. Your subtle humor has bested me once again!
Clearly, the answer to this question involves some coaching. And you’re alive, so….