Written by/ Zhao Zikun
edited by/ Li Yuan
"life coach" demand exploded
Last year, in order to solve his emotional problems, 28-year-old A Miao went from Wuhan to Shanghai and spent 300 yuan to get into the psychology department. But I only met the doctor, did not do psychological scale , and did not ask many questions, and I was directly concluded: "You are nothing, you are just fragile." I was also recommended by the doctor to read more psychology public accounts.
A Miao was hurriedly sent, feeling that she was not valued; she did not dare to take medicine randomly, "(Doctor) gives me the impression that you little girls have not experienced setbacks in life, but are just pretentious."
A Miao turned to Chai Xiaolang, "Life Coach" (Life Coach). Although a consultation cost 599 yuan per hour, she was a very expensive person; but she was from both art majors, and she felt that everyone was talking in the "same field". A Miao's speech is slow and abstract, while Chai Xiaolang can have a "sense of tremor" about her expression.
To a certain extent, the "life coach" undertakes the needs that grow from psychological counseling. In the past few decades, psychological counseling has tended to give a path to solve problems. And when consensus is gradually breaking apart and the standard answer is difficult to find, the "life coach" also fits this more uncertain sentiment of the times.
The market now has undoubtedly strong demand for "life coaches". Taking Chai Xiaolang as an example, she almost never worry about income now and does not have to take the initiative to look for customers. Even if the clients want to make an appointment with her, it is difficult to make a reservation. Since the beginning of this year, she has slowly increased the coaching price of 599 yuan per hour, doubled compared with the same period last year, and there are still a steady stream of people coming to her for consultation.
Compared with psychological counseling to solve the "historical pain", life coaches focus on "how to help customers move forward" and follow up on customers' progress throughout the process. Generally speaking, the "life coach" conversation starts with the questions you want to communicate the most, and is led by the consultant. According to the International Coach Federation (ICF), people themselves are complete and creative individuals and can rely on themselves to find solutions. Compared with psychological counseling, "life coach" focuses more on self-exploration, and helps customers transform external problems and conflicts into the desired results through continuous listening, communication and questioning. When the demand for
was the strongest, A Miao would keep in touch with the "life coach" 2-3 times a week, and later simply bought an annual card worth 20,000 yuan. She was once worried that she was too dependent on the other party, "Are you brainwashed?" But with the continuous encouragement of the coaches, A Miao completed the daily postgraduate entrance examination reading plan and created her own scripts, resigned from an unsuitable working environment, and her overall state became more relaxed and self-consistent.
A Miao recognizes that investment in "life coach" is "an investment in life". After more than half a year, she felt that she no longer needed a "coach". Just have a few words occasionally and "tip" it will be enough for her to recover her energy.
Jade is now a "life coach". She graduated from the 1990s and has worked in many jobs such as foreign trade, marketing, and sales. She has run a headhunting company and has also served as the head of the Career Development Center of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. While coaching at Tsinghua , a girl who was in her junior year asked her for consultation. The girl was once the top scorer in the city and always hated the accounting major she studied. She prefers painting and photography, and is extremely talented and creative, but her mother firmly opposed it and advised her to learn economics and management to find a job easier.
In what Jade saw, there are many cases of "mismatch" between life love and career choice: there are lawyers from foreign investment firms from famous schools who decide to switch to movie distribution when they are middle-aged; there are "Four Big" statement experts who have been reading the numbers for a lifetime but hate finance until they realize that the ultimate career dream is to "eliminate finance", and instead plan to start a technology company with their IT husband; there are also men who have been selling for decades, but they only realize that they are not suitable for the outside world as soon as they retire, but have wasted half of their lives.
(Source: Visual China )
"Life Coach" profession is still a bit unfamiliar to Chinese people and is often confused with psychological counseling. But abroad, the development of "life coach" has become relatively mature. Jade found that almost all American communities have one or two "Coaches" serving the community on the phone books, and the popularity is the same as dentists and psychological counselors. Parents in the Chinese area where Jade is currently located will come to do a coaching consultation before going to college to help the child determine the direction.
In more than ten years of career consultation, Jade has seen many people who hold brilliant academic qualifications and enter the most popular industries, but ultimately struggle with mediocrity. She is now a Life Coach, and her job is to support people with low sense of accomplishment, burnout, and tension in relationships. In fashionable words, what she wants to "liberate" is the person who is trapped in "mental internal friction".
"But success in the workplace is often not linked to intellectual level. More soft things determine how far a person can go in the end. Most people who graduate from Harvard and Massachusetts will end up being just working people." Jade said.
Compared with the rich and boundless life, the career and value choices of Chinese people tend to be homogeneous. Jade has seen a large number of elite students taking the exam in popular and high-paying industries a few years ago. Recently, they have flocked to the "stable" tracks such as postgraduate entrance examinations, public examinations, and education examinations, or repeatedly "jumped" in big cities and homeland choices.
"The most common occupational anxiety for young people is burnout, loss, lack of value, and cannot define the trigger, making it difficult to deal with conflict points on the workplace stage. Behind the workplace, family, society, and emotional relationships are also intertwined." Many people are tired of coping with work, turning to psychological counseling, or seek medical treatment when they are depressed and anxious. However, after taking the medicine, the symptoms were relieved and returned to the original environment, the problem was still not solved.
"Life Coach" enters the big factory welfare
In fact, if no external forces are introduced, everyone's understanding of themselves is difficult to be objective. Jade said that the results are usually 30%-40% inaccurate in the current popular MBTI, Holland (career preference). "Especially when young people under 30 choose the person they want to be. If a person over 35 does it, his personality has been shaped by his profession."
In major factories, in addition to traditional psychological counseling, projects like "life coaching" are also being included in company benefits, and customized projects for management are more common.
"It is normal for a company to invest more than one million in it a year." He Chaoxia, founder of Chuangwen China Coaching Center, said. Chuangwen has provided coaching services to many large domestic companies, such as Alibaba , OPPO, Bosch (China), Pfizer Pharmaceutical , Noah Wealth , etc. Among them, the training service fees provided to corporate executives, business departments, and core employees range from 3,000 yuan to 15,000 yuan per hour.
In recent years, He Chaoxia has clearly felt that the company's talent training and development design is more "coaching", gradually replacing the traditional conventional leadership training . "The company hopes to use regular in-depth talks to help managers maintain a high-competitive and high-energy state."
He Chaoxia said that some large companies have set up separate departments for this purpose, "the internal level is very high", some are subordinate to the corporate human resources department, and some have set up internal coaching clubs to serve the process improvement and performance improvement of the entire company. Although
has the essence of effect, employees of major factories are unanimous about this. "I feel that the administration is also in the process of providing benefits in different ways." An employee who has experienced coaches and psychological counseling services in two major factories commented.
(Picture source: Visual China)
International Coach Federation (ICF) certified PCC-level life coach Jing Fan said: Generally, there are many elites from various industries who seek help from life coaches. They have strong self-exploration ability and want to use external forces to find their own answers.During consultation, life coaches often participate deeply in the lives of clients. Responsible coaches will definitely choose to be inspired and will not give standard answers. "So good teachers usually pass on word of mouth in deep interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of what is widely publicized outside is hard to distinguish the authenticity."
"A high-quality group can stop as long as you need it and see yourself in this lake." Jing Fan summarized that what they need is a coach to help them open the hearts of another side. For example, a female executive was worried that she had bought a house for her mother, but her mother still wanted to live with her. After exploring with the coach, the woman said herself: In fact, she and her mother are both loving each other in the best way.
Similar experiences are often described by consultants as “completely accepted” and “deep sense of connection”. The trust these professional "life coaches" can provide is something that institutionalized and standardized hospitals and clinics are difficult to give.
Yuan Li described the "coaching process" she experienced as a "conceptual childbirth", and the coach played the role of a "midwife". Do not make value judgments, give suggestions and answers, and only use in-depth questions to lead yourself to explore the vast wilderness that you have never set foot in your heart.
Recently, Yuan Li was driving across the US border - this is the 48th day she embarked on the road around the United States. From Boston , Iowa to Texas, Atlanta , she and Xiaoche "Aimin" have traveled to 39 states in the United States. This 23-year-old girl has experienced a life storm in the past two years: she has been infected with the new crown , , broke up with her first love boyfriend who had been dating for five years, was forced to break the plan to return to China, and tore off the labels of "following the rules", "good wife and mother girl", and "fear of driving". She no longer wants certainty in life, "I am waiting for the answer to emerge by myself."
Yuan Li is still studying for a graduate school this year and is working part-time jobs, with piles of papers and homework pressing on her head. But she firmly believes: You can do it and do it. The emergence of this "sound in the heart" is the result of "coaching". In March 2020, Yuan Li held her first coaching talks. She lay down, put on her headphones, imitated herself, who was aged 16-21, and wrote to herself, giving her beliefs to the coach on the other end. At the end of each letter, she found herself asking the same question: Why haven’t you broken up yet?
16, a boyfriend who is together at the age of 16, looks tall, handsome and well-informed, is actually exerting indescribable emotional violence on himself. My friends couldn't understand, and it was difficult for her to speak. "You've done a good job." The coach's voice rang in the dark. She closed her eyes and cried loudly. Two weeks later, she ended this romance that was difficult to separate for five years. "Sometimes I feel that the coach knows all the answers. But when I think about it, I also know all the answers. The coach is just a mirror that helps me to reflect the answers in my heart."
"mirror" is also a metaphor commonly used by life coaches: help others and shine in my heart. Most of the people who come to consult are "stuck" by their lives. They look forward to eliminating the noisy sounds from the outside world, throwing away the tags imposed on them, and discovering a real " I ".
track is still small, and there are many hidden worries
wants to become a "life coach", and the current mainstream path is still "testing". In the 1990s, American financial planner Thomas Ronald developed a training course for professional coaches, established the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and began to internationally certified professional coaches. According to the coaching time, it is divided into three levels: ACC, PCC, and MCC. Introductory ACC level coaches need to learn more than 60 hours of certification courses, and practice coaching time is 100 hours, and they also have to complete a certain number of mentor coaching (supervising). PCC requires 500 hours of practice and also passes the online theoretical examination, with the tuition fee ranging from 50,000 to 80,000 yuan.
According to the official website data statistics, there are currently less than 2,000 people in China who have obtained international ICF certification. He Chaoxia said that there are nearly 3,000 students who have participated in ACC or above professional courses in institutions, and about 15% of them are participating and have obtained ICF certification. Most of the students participate in professional learning for self-growth and master the ability to in-depth dialogue.
Like Chai Xiaolang, he has taken classes and has an ACTP (system coach training program) certificate, but there are also a large number of "wild" coaches participating in level certification. She has done consulting, healing and travel projects and has embarked on the road of exploration because she has "attention deficit disease". Later, I began to study psychology, behavioral , and shared my stories on Zhihu and Douban, writing popular science articles, opening live broadcast sharing, etc.
Chai Xiaolang's current consultation direction is more focused on life. She believes that life coaches always discuss the issue of "existence", and their underlying logic undertakes many theoretical knowledge in psychology, philosophy, sociology, and management. The well-known management or philosophical models such as balance theory , SWOT analysis, GROW model , Maslow , and five-level management or philosophical models can all be used as a tool for coaches to refer to.
Chai Xiaolang's customers are currently more creative and sensitive groups. Her initial seed clients were also word of mouth among friends and classmates, and later they gradually attracted people by introductory recommendations, social and social media sharing. In the final analysis, strong perception, empathy, and ability to understand the essence of things are still the key to coaching.
However, this also proves from the indirectly that the profession of "life coaching" is still in its early stages of development. Not only are the current certification and employment standards far from being unified, but because of the possibility of in-depth communication with consultants, their career dangers and hidden dangers may also appear as the track expands in the future.
Many life coaches expressed similar views: First of all, make sure that the consultant is a sound person and is not hindered by serious past events. Coaches can create viable strategies that help individuals achieve specific goals in their work and life. But the coach only “looks forward” and will not handle conflicts like psychotherapy or be responsible for healing.
Life coaches need to clarify the communication boundaries with their clients. More often, coaches are like "plan companionship teachers". For example, if Chai Xiaolang's clients have a plan to "take their own photos every day", they will recruit groups and supervise and encourage her.
Jingfan emphasized: the coach can explore the experience of the consultant, and must not "explore". "The coach wants to awaken the autonomy of customers. We must never say that I want to guide you to achieve the best goals. If a coach says you should do it, you must be very careful."
Now, around "life coach", content covering almost all dimensions of life has been derived: workplace advancement, intimate relationships, parent-child education, emotional control, self-growth, etc. "You must find your own customer base. Only by working hard can you make money." He Chaoxia said that the most practical thing in China is "coach +", which means using coaching skills to superimpose some other skills, such as intimate relationship answers, parent-child relationship adjustment, or female cognition, career planning , etc.
He Chaoxia said that it is difficult to calculate customer acquisition and order acceptance for pure personal growth. Now, those who can maintain stable long-term income on the track are still professional coaches and team coaches who are "incorporated" into the company for training.
For example, HRD, a technology company with more than 10,000 employees, once told her that the current emphasis on the training of organizational leaders is "hundreds of management trainees, it is worth it to be able to get out of a business leader within ten years." With such talent expectations, companies are willing to pay training costs if they want to maintain a high competitive and high working energy in the organization.
Especially for some old-fashioned enterprises that are eager for organizational change, external forces are urgently needed to promote and improve the team environment. I hope to use corporate coaches to adjust the team's inherent cognition. He Chaoxia said that the team coaches are currently very popular to receive orders, "Mature coaches are too busy."
. For "life coaches" who serve "1V1", "there are very few people who can work after learning qualifications. People who really make money in China are still doing training." Jade said that many people have consulted her about entering the coaching industry, and she will ask the other party to think about what problems you can solve for customers.
After all, in the coaching industry, we must absorb a lot of negative emotions.The coach himself also needs to do a regular emotional "detoxification", which not everyone can complete. The process of selecting customers is itself a "double choice". If you encounter someone who is very resistant to conversations and obviously has a psychological "unable to get around the black hole", "we will still recommend the other party to do more professional psychological counseling," Jade said.
(Yuan Li and A Miao are pseudonyms)
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