Life coaches help clients succeed

According to The International Coach Federation in Washington, D.C., there are more than 7,000 coaches worldwide. Coaches commonly help clients with time management, communication skills and organization.

Denslow Brown has worked as an organizer and personal coach since 1974. She is based in Drury, Mo., about an hour and a half from Springfield.

Lora Newman started her career as a life coach five years ago. Based in Springfield, she is working toward a master’s degree in counseling at Southwest Missouri State University.

Both Brown and Newman charge $100 per coaching session, with each session lasting for one hour. Both earned certification as coaches via distance education – Newman through CoachU and Brown through Optimal Functioning Institute. The majority of clients for both are located across the United States and abroad, and coaching sessions are conducted over the telephone. Some of Brown’s organizing work is done in person as well.

Citing confidentiality, both Newman and Brown declined to provide the names of current clients, but Debbie Hopkins, now a salesperson with Clear Channel Communications in Springfield, hired Brown about seven years ago.

“I ran my office out of my home. I was in medical sales and I had a lot of equipment and had to do tons of paperwork and work with insurance companies. I was just having a really hard time being organized,” she said.

Brown and Hopkins created a plan of action, and then got to work. Brown, Hopkins said, was very hands-on, doing everything from setting up files, throwing things away, packing boxes and carrying them to the basement.

A benefit of her office makeover, Hopkins said, was spending 20 to 30 percent less time looking for things.

“Sometimes you just need that outside help,” Hopkins said. “I’ve gone to classes and I’ve read so many things on organization, but it’s just different when somebody who’s done it before and done it many times comes in and uses their expertise, and then physically helps you do it.”

Psychology myth

A common myth that coaching is an alternative to seeing a psychologist is not true.

“In counseling or psychotherapy you get more into the emotional wounds, the things that are really holding someone back in the quality of their life,” Newman said. “With coaching you don’t get off into that. You stick with, ‘Where are you right now? Where do you want to be? What’s in the gap?”

Newman added that coaches are trained to refer clients when therapy is needed.

Coaching

When it comes to time management, Newman said, “A lot of times it’s like trying to eat the whole elephant all at once when you really need to slice it down and eat it a bite at a time. But when you’re looking at the whole elephant, it looks very overwhelming.

“They know that this job they’re working 60-plus hours a week in is killing them. They have no time with their family, but they don’t see another way out. … By the time the coach comes in, they’re at a point where they can’t take this anymore.”

Communication with self is more of a concern than communication with others, Newman said. Fear of change, a common miscommunication with self, often holds people back.

“When people are striving for success, many times success looks so different than the lifestyle they have currently, and even though it looks wonderful, it’s too different; therefore it’s scary. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just different. That’s what I find in a lot of clients,” Newman said. “They’re just scared of the change.”

Because she specializes in helping people get organized, Brown often works with entrepreneurs.

“They’ve got a vision that’s bigger than their current situation because they’re building up to it,” she said. “It’s their own personal accountability to themselves or to their vision or to their business plan that draws them to an organizer coach because they’re looking at figuring out how to do it all.

“It’s not unusual for people to wait to call me until they feel like they’re in trouble, either with their boss or their business,” Brown said. “The thing that’s challenging about organization is it’s not the most important thing to do, seemingly, until all of a sudden things are being thrown by the lack of it.”

One of the most important things Brown said she teaches clients is how to delegate. “Then they can have an assistant or a partner or a service that they contract with and they have the skills to delegate and communicate well. Then they can work around anything, any weakness or any challenge. If they don’t have those skills, they’ll always be relying on themselves and having to learn new things that, again, might not be the best use of their time,” she said. “The best use of their time is their own specific gifts and genius, whatever that might be. That’s where the communication comes in.”

Goals are another common subject.

Newman helps clients clarify what they really want out of life and out of their careers.

“A lot of times we have a symbol of what we think we want. I want the fancy luxury car, I want the big home, I want this, I want that. When I get down to the bottom of it, it’s not really the car. It’s not really the things that money will bring materially. It’s freedom,” she said.

Results

Helping people utilize their gifts is the reason Brown remains in the industry. “I see people learning how to understand themselves better and choose a life that fits what matters most to them and that fits their values. It enables them to give the best that they’ve got,” she said.

The challenge of helping people keeps Newman excited about coaching. She witnesses in her clients increased self-awareness, willingness to grow and change, a more positive outlook and an abundance mentality versus scarcity mentality..

“They say that outer space is the final frontier. I don’t believe that for a moment. I think the human mind is the final frontier,” Newman said.

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