One-on-one coaching

By ADAM GIFFORD

They will be there at the Olympics, almost as many of them as athletes. They'll be discussing strategy before the event, motivating the contestants, cheering from the sidelines, and analysing performance afterwards.

They're the coaches, the people who often get the blame, but not always the credit.

If coaching is good enough for sports, why not for other activities?

That's the thinking behind one of the fastest-growing business trends, people employing their own coach to help them work better, bring more to their company or to live more fulfilled lives.

Toney Fitzgerald, managing director of CoachU Australasia, says the first career coaching organisation started in the United States in 1988 and the field has grown rapidly. Mr Fitzgerald will be in New Zealand this month to run seminars - Christchurch on July 12, Wellington the next day and a coaching skills weekend in Auckland on July 14 and 15.

The seminars are an introduction to the CoachU "virtual university," a two-year course, costing almost $6000, where students learn to be coaches through telephone conference call classes and access to course materials on a comprehensive web site.

CoachU Australasia has trained about 230 people in its three-year existence, including 26 in New Zealand. Many are now working full or part-time as coaches.

"People are buying knowledge and a community," Mr Fitzgerald says. "Coaching is a methodology, a way of working with a person. It's part consultancy, part mentoring, part therapy."

Not too much therapy though. The CoachU approach includes identifying issues which involve emotional trauma and healing, at which stage a person is referred to a therapist.

It's also not a traditional mentoring arrangement. Mr Fitzgerald says while he has a coach who works with him personally and professionally, he recently "realised I needed to seek new experiences, strategies and ways of doing things."

To help with that stage in his development he approached a business person he respected to become a mentor. He says organisations are increasingly adopting coaching strategies.

"In a business context, having a coach in a corporation or for an executive team can improve performance. It's about reinforcing skills. Coaching is all about partnering with a person, finding out what that person wants and you help them achieve that by coaching.

"People don't take time to be intimate with themselves. They have to discover who they are, what are their values and needs. Coaching is not about being an expert or giving advice, such as you would use a consultant for. Everyone has potential to do whatever. A coach should help them achieve that potential."

Under the CoachU model, clients pay a fee of between $200 and $350 for three 45-minute calls a month. The client is given a time to phone, or there could be some face-to-face time scheduled. Coaching assignments usually last six to eight months.

For information contact toney@coachuoz.com.au or 00612 9294 7007.