Life coaching has found its way into all the hidden corners in our lives. There are coaches in our wardrobes, our fridges, our relationships and, of course, our careers.
According to figures released for last week's International Coaching Week, the industry produces $1.5bn (£722m) in revenue each year. It is huge in the US and big in this country, too. The right coach can bring many of the benefits of a psychoanalyst or counsellor without the angst and soul-baring.
Since I left my last job feeling cross, mainly for staying when I should have been long gone, I have known that my professional life needed sorting out - and coaching seemed to be the solution. When I aired my coaching urge in these pages last year I was intrigued to get an offer. "I can't promise you Sven - and I won't give you advice," says Helen Caton Hughes, who runs a leadership and coaching company.
Luckily, Caton Hughes found me. With new coaches being hatched in batches, finding a way through the fluff and flannel can be a challenge. Type "finding a coach" into Google and up will pop almost a million sites with people dying to help solve all of life's problems for you . And thanks to books, DVDs, CDs, websites, blogs and podcasts you can coach yourself, too. In no time you can become a coach and set up in practice
Trawling through the websites extolling the virtues of people, dodgy photo included, offering to take me to heights never dreamed of was an often turgid task - masses of occasionally misspelled biographies, containing qualifications that were no more than letters to me. And the language.
I have never seen so many "passionate" people desperate to bring out my "inner fabulousness" and inviting me to visualise myself on a "magical journey of discovery". I think I may even have seen something about homemade lemon ice cream.
So, coming after that, Caton Hughes's offer seems a pretty rational one - no mention of bring out my inner aggressor here. "Bob would love to coach you," she says. I don't ask why or what Bob knows but I find out that her company, Forton Bank Consulting, provides coaching to some of the UK's biggest businesses.
Bob Hughes specialises in coaching people for leadership and has an eye for potential - even in people in whom it has lain fallow for most of their lives. He is also Caton Hughes's husband and as I have already decided she is all right, I'm happy to work with him.
Nevertheless, it was worth checking him out. After all when you agree to be coached you invite a stranger not just into your life but your head, too. His good intentions are confirmed on the International Coach Federation website (www.coachfederation.org.uk), which is a good place to look for a qualified and experienced coach.
Our first encounter is on neutral ground: Bill Woodrow's bronze seat at the British Library in London. Someone gets there before us but once the initial confusion blows over we make contact. If Hughes is surprised to meet someone in dark glasses and semi-theatrical makeup on a gloomy January morning, he gives no sign of it. Perhaps inscrutability is a prerequisite of a successful coach. The glasses and makeup are an attempt to cover up the outcome of a car accident, which has left me looking like a shooin for the Phantom of the Opera.
What could I expect from my coach? A coach is not a mentor, there's a difference. Coaching is a partnership, rather than a teacher-pupil relationship, where the coach helps the coached reach their potential - a combination of vision, values and inner self. OK, I know that sounds utopian but what it means is making the part of your life spent working as productive, fulfilling and enjoyable as possible, for you and the people you work with, in turn delivering business benefits to your employer.
How long would the metamorphosis take? Hughes explain s that his quickest turnaround to date had been on the Piccadilly Line escalator at Holborn station in London, when he had put a young woman in the right frame of mind for an important meeting - and sorted out her bad language issues at the same time. It seems some of his greatest successes have a transport link - indeed, he is also in charge of Network Rail's employee talent. On the strength of this, we arrange to meet at Euston Station for my first session.
Visualising is a big part of coaching. Looking out over London, Hughes ask s if I see the carpet of lights as a possibility or a restriction. At least, I think he did. Is the tunnel a sharp focus or a restricted space? Is the glass half empty? and so on. Visualising will take some practice.
Our next meeting is in a busy coffee bar. I put some effort into my homework but it isn't a success. I am supposed to come up with an example of when everything had come together to great effect. But, as with visualising, recalling former triumphs is tricky. Hughes reckons this and my over-fastidiousness about words is because of a "gremlin" that holds me back.
Before you start seeing Hughes as Pandora to my Martin Lukes, I must say that he has a point. While many would be glad of "positive feedback", I am allergic both to the emptiness of the phrase and the concept andembarrassed by praise and hyperbole. So when Hughes asks to visualise my "fabulous articulate self", he knows I will recoil from the words but that the tactic would out the gremlin. Self deprecation may be charming in Hugh Grant but in the working world it generally means someone less fabulous and articulate wins the day.
Also, what I might consider basic British good manners in holding back while others pontificate could be seen as limp-wrested, clueless, ineffectiveness, particularly when I'm the best person for the job . It's not a leadership quality when put like that.
Hughes does not agree with everything I say and he does not say what I want to hear or allow me to change the subject when I dislike the course of the conversation. He is an objective but friendly catalyst, with an interest in m y success and he has the experience and training to see where the obstacles are. I can talk openly about things that are best not discussed at work (where unleashing gremlins could be unsettling), or at home (where navel-gazing tolerance can be low).
Although it may be poor coaching form to admit to regrets, I do wish I had stumbled upon coaching a little earlier. I can think of quite a few times when it would have been handy to have had Hughes encouraging me from the sidelines to shoo away all those nasty gremlins and help me to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Despite my initial scepticism, I am a coaching convert. I know enough successful people who can attest to its effectiveness, to convince me it is more than New Age flim-flam and so it was really a question of finding the right coach. Someone I could trust.
