Reprint from USA Today, 06/02/96 issue, Life Section, back page
UNIVERSITY TRAINS COACHES FOR THE GAME OF LIFE
Is your boss driving you crazy and you can't seem to do anything about it? Have you been in the same job so long you're bored out of your gourd? Do you have a list of must-do things with your life but you keep doing the same old thing and don't know why? Do you hate how you look? If you answered yes to any of the above, you are perfectly normal, which isn't good enough anymore. You need a coach. For between $250 and $500 a month, you can talk on the phone once a week, or through e-mail or even in person (!), with a trained coach who will basically cheer you on. He will guide you to a fuller life or a slimmer figure. Whatever you want. Your weakness is his challenge.
If it was financial planners in the '70s and fitness trainers in the '80s, the man to have in the '90s is a personal coach. Thomas Leonard, who lives in a motor home in New Orleans and travels the country promoting the fledgling coaching industry, founded Coach University in 1992 to train just such coaches. He is one of several jumping on the coach bandwagon. He estimates there are 1,000 full-time coaches in the country now. That number is expected to double by the end of this year. Leonard's is a two-year training program held over the phone and Internet. It includes 36 four-week classes conducted in weekly conference calls with a trainer and up to 30 coach trainees. Tuition: $2,495.
He says it's part Dale Carnegie, part Tony Robbins, part Norman Vincent Peale. All with a '90s "enlightened self-interest" twist. This is how it works: "You come to us when you realize that something is in the way, something is bugging you," Leonard says. "Or just if you're an executive and you want to accomplish something more. We're a professional cattle prod. "The first step is we ask the clients to list 10 things they're putting up with," Leonard says. "Usually goals are set before people start cleaning things up. What we do is take care of the things cluttering your life first." Leonard stresses this is not therapy, and he is careful not to step over that professional line, although he admits 10% to 15% of the people who seek a coach are in "or soon will be in therapy."
The program begins with a call (800-482-6224) to find your coach, who is matched to you by his specific training. Then away you go. You begin with a clean-sweep checklist of 100 things. Leonard says most people are able to wipe 30 to 50 things off the list immediately. "The coach's goal is to get up to 90 things off the list." Leonard says most issues a person is grappling with become obvious within a month. "We're not diagnosing but assessing," he says. "What we're finding is that most people tell more to their coaches than to their spouses. You can experiment with your coach and go off, something you can't do with your spouse." Leonard says 60% of his clients are women. He doesn't find that the least bit surprising. "You know men don't ask for directions."
Leonard says there are different classes of clients: the under-earning client, the people in transition, and the eager beavers who know they're bright but "haven't found a partner yet. They have to find someone to spend high-quality intellectual time with." He says CEOs fall into that category, and many have kept their coaches a secret. But not anymore. "It used to be a dirty little secret, kind of like therapy, but more people can talk about it now. There's a certain cachet now. People even brag about it now. It doesn't indicate a weakness."
Although Leonard doesn't coach anymore, he does have stories from when he did. He remembers advising one of his clients to bankrupt his company. "He was running a production company and it was killing him, but he was too embarrassed to quit," Leonard says. "It took courage on his part, but he did it (filed for bankruptcy) and became a full-time coach and now works for AT&T. Sometimes success is failure. Another coach might have pushed him harder, but I thought that was the wrong path." You can even have a coach who will give you a complete personal makeover, which takes about three years. "We take care of everything from the way you come across, to how effective you are, to how you smile, to when you're going to retire." Leonard thinks this is a better way to spend your money than cosmetic surgery. "These people get the face lift done and then wonder why their life is the same," he says. "We have people think smarter. Leonard likes to say that people have to take a helicopter view of their life, but they have to be emotionally strong to do so. "Sometimes the client sees more than he or she wants to see and stops." But what Leonard says he's trying to do "is close the gap between where people are and where they want to go."
Many people who are coached eventually become coaches, says Leonard, who claims once they've graduated from Coach University most coaches have five clients within 90 days and are earning $75,000 within two years. There are really just a few basic "nos." "You are not encouraged to coach your friends," Leonard says. "And spouses are definitely coach-free zones."
By Craig Wilson
