As people's lives become increasingly complex, they often need a little help to stay on the right path. A life coach acts as a person that clients can rely on for advice and guidance to achieve their goals. This career path, which was once a little-known position, has experienced significant growth in recent years and is now an established and respected occupation. As many coaches focus on major life transitions, the demand for them has naturally increased over the past decade.
Universities are trying to catch up with the many online training and accreditation programs that have flourished over the past five years, and are increasingly advocating for training over the phone or online, perhaps alluding any skepticism from a younger person that may arise during a flesh and blood meeting. The field of life coaching has never been so promising to work with, as the number of people who want to be trained continues to increase. Maltbia, which is developing a master's program in leadership training as a joint initiative of the Teachers College Educational Outreach and Innovation Center and the executive education unit of the Columbia Business School. According to a report released by the International Training Federation (ICF), there are approximately 71,000 life coaches in 161 countries around the world.
The positive effects of life coaching are now being felt all over the world, and federations such as the ICF are great at keeping the training world up to date with the best innovative tools. In other words, no one can stop you from jumping on the coaches' bandwagon and creating a life for yourself. In fact, training other trainers on how to use social media is a “bedroom” under development within a niche (another industry phrase). More than 30 American universities have introduced training programs, such as Harvard, Yale, Duke, New York University, Georgetown, the University of California at Berkeley, Penn State, the University of Texas at Dallas and George Washington.
In the past ten years or so, companies have seen life coaches directly help increase their results. In addition to being a great networking tool for professionals, LinkedIn is also an interesting information bank for coaches who seek to continuously evaluate the growth of their industry. Because of this, more and more people are looking for great life coaches who can help them manage the stressors of modern life. Janet Harvey, 52, the next president of the International Federation of Coaches, one of the largest organizations competing to standardize accreditation, with more than 19,000 members, dates it back to the Human Potential Movement of the early 1970s and to the teachings of Werner Erhard, whose self-motivation workshops “The Best Training” became very popular in the 70s and early 80s.
Harvey, from the ICF, said there's nothing wrong with having a young life coach; they're just tasked with helping clients listen to themselves and take responsibility for articulated goals, he said.