Men's Life Coaching

Men's life coaching is one of those concepts that seems to fit the times perfectly, coming at
the perfect time. After the boom and recession of the wildly noted men's movement of the
70's and 80's, it would seem to the casual observer that men's awareness has gone the way
of the activist woman's movement of the same period. But in fact, just the opposite is true.
Men are more concerned and involved with their evolution today as ever, but like many
women, men have changed the ways in which they are pursuing their growth. One of those
ways is Personal Coaching.

Personal coaching has become a major source of discovery for many men in the 90's both
in the corporate environment and in their personal lives. My own experience as a personal
coach reflects some of the same evolution. After a number of years of working with men in
a therapeutic environment, I found that the great majority of men came to me not with
bona fide therapy issues but with concerns that reflected the general heightened pace,
demands and complexity of the culture. Most of them simply wanted to be able to get a
clearer picture of what it was that was standing in their way of truly enjoying life. I evolved
into coaching because I found therapy to be more complex, expensive and non-directed for
many men and ended up coaching them instead. The difference being that therapy deals
with issues of causality and the past, and coaching deals with helping a person get from
wherever they are to wherever they want to go in as straight a line as possible.

Just the opposite is true. The healthier a person is, the more benefit they can create from
coaching. Because coaching has now become so acceptable at the corporate level, men can
work with a coach and not feel the pressure of "something is wrong with me" that often
accompanies therapy. Many of my clients use me mainly as a sounding board. I am
regularly amazed at how effectively a person can find their own answers by just being
asked the right questions. That is a coaches main function: to ask the right questions. I do
not need to know anything about a persons particular business or interest to help them
find their answers. Coaching is an intuitive listening process. Listening has become a lost
art in our busy, self-engrossed culture, but the coach preserves that art. I need only to
listen and the questions come as a result of the conversation. Hearing ourselves say
something is a lot different than just thinking about it. It opens multiple accessing
channels to the brain and greatly fosters responsible action.

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