Anyone have experience with a career/life coach?

here is a link to look at

Here is a link you can read about the show:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit!

 

I said I'd report on what Steve Salerno says about coaching in his book SHAM [the Self-Help and Actualization Movement], subtitled, so you see where he's coming from "How the Self Help Movement Made America Helpless." (Crown Publishers, 2005)

It's a long and far-reaching section of the book, that does not summarize easily. There is real concern with the unregulated aspect of the field ("The nonseriousness and laissez-faire nature of the enterprise is clear in the fact that many of the top Web sites that offer life coaching also give the visitor the option of becoming a life eoach. Indeed the very first link on www.life-coaching-resource.com, even before the ones that click you through to the coaching help you presumably sought, reads, 'Start your own coaching business.' Imagine consulting a site for medical help and being greeted by the offer 'Would you like to find a cdoctor...or become a doctor?'"

Warren Bennis (long one of my heroes) says "I do wonder about the vulgarization of coaching," says Bennis who, make no mistake, regards properly done coaching as instrumental in molding the next generation of visionary business leaders. 'I'm concerned about unlicensed unqualified people doing this,' Bennis says.

A major theme is the growing number of coaches who see and promote themselves as therapists, often under another name: life coaching, love coaching, Seranism, the Sedona Method ("a wild inspirational potpourri that borrows freely and not always seamlessly from spiritualism, neurolinguistic programming, native American rituals, trust exercise...and throwing chairs as symbolic ways of letting go of the impediments to happiness and power." A Washington Post critique is subtitled 'Large numbers of people are skipping the shrink and hiring a life coach instead."

Benjamin Dattner, professor at NYU: " It's unrealistic to expect a marginal life coach to bring up caveats that may cost him business or may make a client think he needs several levels of help and helpers. The temptation is for the coach to want all that business for himself." In other words, not only do coaches shrink from making the distinction but they actively imply just the opposite--that they're there to fix what ails you, whatever that may be."

And so it goes.

Like choosing schools: apparently good ones, bad ones, and a big grey area.

 

Or, you could go to your local clergy type person, who makes around 20K a year and won't charge you for encouragement.

 

Oh that I had your faith! My local clergy-type person makes close to six figures and is hard to pin down for an appointment!