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If you think you can, then you probably will ….. with a life coach

ANYONE intrigued by the BBC’s latest hit documen­tary, Confidence Lab, will have an idea of what life coaching is about.

Put simply it’s about enabling people to achieve goals they previously thought impossible, by encouraging them to find their own answers to their own problems and then, crucially giving them the individ­ual support they need to see their ideas through to fruition.

The goals can be in any area of life, including career, relationships, personal finance or just general motivation.

For a manager, it could be finding ways to tackle stress, manage change, or strike a better balance between work and home.

And for a business owner or entrepreneur it could be about finding ways to exchange ideas for profit.

Ann Skidmore, who lives in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, has been a professional life coach for the last 18 months following a career in human resources.

Today she works part-time for Norwich and Peterborough Building Society as a consultant with Advanced Solutions, but is just as likely to be found on the phone coaching a client, or conducting a confi­dence and motivation building session with senior managers, health workers or head-teachers.

She said: “People today thankfully no longer equate life coaching with coun­selling, which is half the battle for us.

“It’s about finding out where you are now and where you want to be. It’s not asking where you came from and then saying ‘let’s talk about problems in your childhood’.

“To me, life coaching is about knowing you’ve got someone on your side.Lots of business people, for example, will have attended motivational seminars, and got a real buzz from them, but there are no long-term effects unless the coaching continues right up to the point when you achieve your goals.”

The basic approach is to look at where a client has been successful in life and then create a model of success which can be applied to other areas of their life.

Ann said: “Clients always tell you about their weaknesses. They will say something like ‘I’m not very good at the butterfly stroke’, ignoring the fact that they can swim quite well.

“My job is to tease out what they are good at and why, and then find ways to transfer those skills to another sphere.

“I listen for the energy in their voice, to help them set goals and targets and realize their potential.”

To prove the worth of life coaching, Ann can point to a string of big clients on her books, including BAA, BP and Pricewater­houseCoopers.

Closer to home, she has coached some 90 senior managers at Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, when it was going for re-accreditation for Investors in People. The purpose was to show them how to coach their staff to help them reach their full potential.

She said: “What I give people is the confidence they might lack, and I can also give them back a little control of their lives.

“Getting the right bal­ance between work and home, and finding ways to handle stressful situations, is of major importance for a lot of people. It is about empowering people and giving them ownership.

“One of my clients recently sealed the best sales deal of his career after we looked .t how he would approach a crucial meeting.

“He was focused, but was worried that he would mess it up and his body language reflected that.

“I got him to think back and visualise an occasion when he had pulled a big deal off, to remember what he’d said and how he’d felt, and it helped.”

There are about 800 life coaches in Britain today, the majority of whom, like Ann, are members of the Life Coaching Academy, and the numbers are likely to grow as more companies see the benefits. There are an estimated 12,000 life coaches in the USA.

Ann believes that companies which focus not just on the task in hand but on the team and the individuals within it are more suc­cessful.

She recalls a conversation with Gary Lineker who was reflecting on the 1990 World Cup in Italy The England vs Ger­many semi-final had gone to penalties and manager Bobby Robson was striding out on to the pitch to talk to his players.

Ann said: “Robson’s body language was awful and what he said to all the penalty tak­ers was ‘don’t let me down’. Gary said he could feel all his energy sapping away and, of course, England lost, If only Robson had told them they were going to win"

(c) Ann Skidmore Associates Ltd 2009