One of the highlights of the 2006 ICF Conference in St. Louis was C.J. Hayden’s breakout session “If You Can’t Make A Living,How Can You Make A Difference?” It addressed one of the major issues facing the coaching profession… many coaches are not earning enough to sustain their families and allow their coaching to impact the world. The session drew nearly 300 coaches to a discussion of the causes and possible solutions to this issue. I was honored to be a table facilitator during the discussions. Here I will share some of this powerful conversation.
We became coaches because we are called to make a difference in the lives of others and by extension the world community. In order to honor this calling we must have sustainable incomes or we will be forced to take day jobs or give up our coaching practices and not have the impact we would otherwise have in the world. This would be a huge loss to society, let alone the personal loss.
In order to look at the causes of the problem, C.J. came up with the following questions: What is stopping us from earning a better living at coaching? What problems need to be solved for us to remedy this situation? What are the specific areas where we need to focus our efforts? There were five categories of answers. They were obstacles in the marketplace, gaps in marketing knowledge or execution, lack of essential business skills, inadequate business models and negative beliefs and conflicting values.
Some examples of the causes the group came up with include: public is uninformed about coaching, not enough information available on ROI, not being clear about what we offer, targeting people who don’t have the ability to pay us, don’t have the basic skills to run a business, no passive income or multiple revenue streams, not placing enough value on our own work and stuck in our comfort zones, not being bold enough. This is just the beginning there were several pages of results from the group.
In terms of solutions it was clear that while there are resources already available, they are not sufficient to overcome the challenges. The second group discussion centered on possible new resources and solutions we could put in place. Creative energy was everywhere as we did this exercise. Some of the solutions included: a national PR campaign with celebrity spokesmen, regional conferences focused on business and marketing of coaching, making business and marketing an ICF competency for credentialing, create a revolving loan fund to help coaches build their practices, establish business incubators for coaching and organize “rookie camps” for new coaches. This is just a small sample of the ideas they came out of the group.
This is an ongoing and expanding conversation. It is an essential conversation for the future of coaching. I invite you to join in creating solutions by joining the dialog. You can learn more at www.squidoo.com/makeadifference and may participate at www.groups.yahoo.com/group/coachesmakeadifference. I hope to see you in the group.
Posted on Nov 13th 06 by David Stocum.
David Stocum works empowering gay men to thrive in business, career and life. David hosts the ICF GLBT SIG, Rainbow Coaches Alliance (Coach U and Coachville) and Rainbow Network (GLBT business owners) online communities. David will be co-presenting at the ICF Conference on bringing Coaching to the GLBT community. David lives in Las Cruces, NM with his partner of 7 years. He is active in the local GLBT community as a volunteer. http://www.greatlivescoaching.com
Other posts on Coachamatic by David Stocum.
0 Responses to “If You Can’t Make A Living, How Can You Make A Difference?”