Life coaching versus friendship

In one of his recent monologues Jay Leno mentioned the trend in Hollywood toward hiring a life coach. He claimed there were life coaches in his youth, only they were called “friends.” As always, he makes a point with some validity, but lets take a look at some of the differences, and some of the similarities:

- A coach will be a trained, high level listener, who will listen for the things you say, how you say them and the for the things you DON’T say. Of course good friends may well do the same

- Your coach will be highly committed to your success (hopefully friends will be too). However the coach is not affected by the outcome in the same way as a friend may be. If you decide the best option for you is to relocate, how will your friends feel about that? Will it affect what they say to you?

- Coaching in the style I believe to be most effective will not offer you solutions. That sounds strange sometimes. The power in a coaching relationship rests in the coaching process leading to YOU identifying and chosing the best course for you. Well meaning friends are likely to offer advice – it’s natural to do that. However such advice may contradict what you were inclined to do, it may also convince you that what you were thinking was somehow less valid. Also you may accept the advice but not wholeheartedly buy into it, and that is the route to not following through

- Coaching will challenge you, as will your coach on occasion. Being coached isn’t always comfortable, friends may not want to put you through that. The results are always worth the discomfort though and it will always be done to get you to your goals

- Coaches will recognize when there are beliefs that are driving or holding you back. We will examine them with you to discover how they are serving you or otherwise. This is specialised and can be very powerful, but may go unrecognised in a friendly discussion

I’ll take a look at beliefs in a future post. Leno is right in part, friends are great and provide an invaluable support network. Friends and coaches complement each other and bring unique things to the relationship. I argue that coaching will perhaps take you further, faster than friends alone will.

Well the time has finally arrived to practice what I preach on work life balance and get this Blog going. My name is Jerry and I arrived in the USA at the end of the summer 2005, moving my family from the UK.

My first 40 years of life were spent living in England, and for the last 11 years I have been married to the most wonderful American – she has served her time in England! We have two kids, aged 10 and 7. We all moved here, arriving via New York City after a transatlantic journey on the Queen Mary 2.

My passionate interest is life coaching – in particular concerning the area of Work-Life Balance (WLB). What is that all about then?

Over the next few posts I will cover these topics in some detail, in a way that will hopefully help anyone reading them. I am here as a professional qualified coach. I have a great life, balancing my work (which I love) with time for family; we all walk to school every day – even in a Kansas City winter! We live with my parents in law (temporarily!) so as to maximise the time they spend with their grandkids. I spend time on my own self development by getting my tennis game in shape. Friends and socialising is an area I am working on having left this back in the UK!

In short my goal is to live a life of perfect balance of all these areas. This balance changes – it is different for everyone, contiunal work in progress.

So coming to the US was a means of achieving this balance for me. In future posts I will examine some of the techniques that can help you achieve your ideal balance.