LIFE COACHING THAT WORKS

Sanderfur offers a concise guide for aspiring life coaches.

In this short overview of life coaching, the author adapts the basic principles of Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), an action-oriented approach that aims “to help clients identify skills, resources, strengths, and other qualities already possessed by the client which can be tapped and used to reach the goals which are set” and is much more concerned with solving problems than dissecting their origins. He transforms SFBT into Solution Focused Coaching, which is equally results driven and designed to enhance resilience in clients facing all kinds of obstacles. In these pages, Sanderfur encourages would-be life coaches to adopt the Solution Focused Coaching method: “Any coach who can think quickly, relying on experience and knowledge to communicate,” he writes, “is well on the way to becoming an effective life coach.” The author’s own experience is working with “legends” in the arena of professional sports, and many of the examples he draws upon and quotations he cites are from that field. A life coach, he explains, is someone who helps people achieve their greatest dreams by overcoming whatever barriers are in the way; to facilitate this process, Sanderfur proposes a series of clarifying questions. There are “Empowerment” questions: “If money was not an issue, what would you like to be doing right now?”; a “Discovery” question asks, “What is the most important thing for you to accomplish right now?” Readers may be distracted by occasional style and usage problems in the text (“mambo jumbo,” for instance, or a reference to Helen Keller as “muted”). More troubling is the fact that Sanderfur’s vision of life coaching involves on-the-job training requiring the patronage of the needy and credulous: “You will not have to look far for clients willing to submit themselves to a life coach for little or no fee, for you to gain experience.” The enthusiasm here is uplifting, but the infrastructure feels a bit wobbly.

An upbeat but provisional-feeling manual for becoming a life coach.