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Life coaching is a practice of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaches use multiple methods to help clients with the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists nor consultants.

Contents 1 Origins and history 2 Credentials 2.1 International Coach Federation 2.2 International Association of Coaching 3 Specialization 4 Coaching vs therapy 5 Controversy 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Life coaching has roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training. Life coaching also draws from disciplines including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring, and other types of counseling. The coach applies mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in helping their clients.^{[citation needed]}

Writing for the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, Patrick Williams states:

It is helpful to understand that both coaching and therapy have the same roots. Coaching evolved from three main streams that have flowed together:

1. The helping professions such as psychotherapy and counseling.
2. Business consulting and organizational development.
3. Personal development training, such as EST, Landmark Education, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey seminars, Eric Edmeades, and others.^[1]

Williams further states that the movement toward Client-centered therapy in the 1940s and 1950s by psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow helped shift the emphasis in therapy toward the client becoming an active agent in their progress and growth. He credits Maslow's 1968 treatise “Toward a Psychology of Being” with providing the framework for modern life coaching as it is practiced today.

Since there is no official regulatory standard for life coaching and no governed education or training standard for the life coaching industry, anyone can call themselves a coach and take on clients. Multiple coaching schools and training programs are available, causing confusion around the terms "certification" and "credentials" as they apply to the coaching industry. Multiple certificates and credential designations are available within the industry. The status of most of these are in flux.^[2]

Three standards and self-appointed accreditation bodies are internationally recognized: the International Coach Federation (ICF), the International Association of Coaching (IAC) and the European Coaching Institute (ECI). No independent supervisory board evaluates these programs, and they are all privately owned.

Main article: International Coach Federation

The ICF is the self-proclaimed largest worldwide not-for-profit professional association of coaches^[3]. They try to self-regulate the coaching industry, and have developed a system of credentialing coaches that includes a specified number of hours of coach-specific training, number of hours of coaching experience, and proof of ability to coach at or above defined standards for each credentialing level. The credentialing levels defined by the International Coach Federation are Associate Certified Coach (ACC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and Master Certified Coach (MCC).^[4] Coaches credentialed by the ICF and members of the ICF, regardless of whether they are credentialed, agree to abide by a code of ethics. ^[5]

The ICF also provides approval, per their independently developed standards, of coach training programs, when they are deemed to meet the professional standards of the ICF organization, and agree to continuing oversight by the ICF.^[6]

The International Association of Coaching (IAC) ^[7] identifies itself as an independent, global coach certifying body. The IAC states that "coaches who hold the IAC certified coach (IAC-CC) designation are coaching at the most advanced level the coaching profession has to offer." The IAC claims to have a subscriber list that is as large as the ICF's.

Coaches tend to specialize in one or more of several areas: career coaching, transition coaching, life or personal coaching, health and wellness coaching, parenting coaching, executive coaching, small business coaching, systemic coaching, and organizational or corporate coaching.^{[citation needed]} Coaching for women writers, coaching for entrepreneurs with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), and even coaching for mothers^[8] are examples of some of the newer niches now seen in coaching.

Supporters of life coaching say that even though coaching and therapy have similarities, they are not the same thing. ^{[9] [10]} Coaching and therapy both focus on helping clients discover their own solutions. Some types of therapy are more similar to life coaching than others. Some therapies are problem-focused, like treatment of a phobia or addiction. Treatment typically ceases when the symptoms disappear or become manageable for the client. Analysis is another type of therapy. It is long-term and works at uncovering the roots of issues—understanding the client's emotional history and possible past psychological trauma—in order to enable the client to move forward. Thus, there are a wide variety of therapeutic options, ranging from quick and narrowly focused to long and broad-scoped and everything in between, but all are regulated.

The evidenced-based coaching movement supports the use of coaching techniques based on proven concepts in clinical psychology/counseling. Coaching techniques, like ^[11] based on the work of Alfred Adler, ^[12] Gestalt Coaching is based on Gestalt psychology and Reality Coaching ^[13] based on the work of William Glasser, are emerging based on traditional counselling approaches.

Controversy surrounds life coaching because of its currently unregulated, unstandardized nature. Critics assert that life coaching amounts to little more than psychotherapy without restrictions, oversight, or regulation.

However, the legislatures of Colorado have ceased to pursue this kind of a request after a hearing on the matter,^[14] asserting that coaching is unlike therapy because it does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a client's current and future behavior.

A Season Three Episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! on Showtime presented a critical view of life coaching. Penn and Teller call life coaching ridiculous and useless, and they ridicule the jargon and approach of life coaching. Their advice was to: "Skip the therapy and coaching. Talk to a good friend." ^[15]

• Self-help
• Motivational speaker
• Neuro-linguistic Programming
• Emotional Intelligence
• Behavior modification

1. ^ The Potential Perils of Personal Issues in Coaching The Continuing Debate: Therapy or Coaching? What Every Coach MUST Know! By Patrick Williams The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, 2003 9Accessed April 27, 2007)
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ [2]
4. ^ [3]
5. ^ [4]
6. ^ [5]
7. ^ IAC
8. ^ Life Coaching for Mums, Parents and Pregnancy: How life coaching could turn your life round by Patricia Carswell, writing for OneSexyMother.com. Accessed June 28 2007
9. ^ [6]
10. ^ [7]
11. ^ Adlerian Coaching
12. ^ [8]
13. ^ Reality Coaching
14. ^ [9] Digest of Bills - 2004, Professions and Occupations Retrieved April 3, 2006
15. ^ Season 3: Life Coaching Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

• The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations (IJCO)
• Stankovich, Chris (2003). "Outside Help Not All Alike". Business First of Columbus. Retrieved April 3, 2006.
• Carr, Rey A. (2004). Peer Resources - "A Guide to Coach Credentials". Peer Resources website. Retrieved April 3, 2006.
• "Coaching the Life Coach" interviews with life coaches about the business of being a life coach.
• July 2007 CBS Sunday Morning News Report 'Life Coaches Are For Everyone'
  These Days, People Are Turning To Outside Help For Nearly Every Aspect Of Life