Staying on task

It's lonely at the top.

And what about the climb? Some people hire a coach the personal trainer of the career club to provide an extra spark of motivation.

Career coaches come in as many flavors as do their customers.

Kit Prendergast is a career coach; Marti Benjamin, a business coach; Kalena Thiessen, a soul coach; Joelle Jay, a leadership coach; Ileana Vassiliou, a corporate training coach.

What they all have in common: membership in the Nevada Professional Coaches Association with 10 members locally and 35 throughout the state.

The International Coach Federation's annual conference in San Jose this year attracted 1,750 coaches from 42 countries.

While 20 percent of career coaches come from a mental health background, 70 percent have a business background.And 44 percent have graduate degrees.

Anyone can hang a shingle calling oneself a coach, says Benjamin.

But an accredited coach has completed a training course with more than 100 hours of classroom time.

The nearest institution is the Coach Training Institute at San Raphael, Calif.

But classes are also available online and via teleclasses.

It's a new profession, says Prendergast, started in the 1990s when companies hired coaches to move top execs up the ladder.

While counseling looks back to what prevents people from moving forward, coaching focuses on the future.

And, while counseling helps people fix what's broken, coaches assume their clients are whole.

"It's not for those battling depression, addiction, or suicidal thoughts," adds Vassiliou."A coach shows people the diamond they are and inspires them to change."

Fees range from $300 to $1,000 a month.

Sessions vary in intensity, depending on frequency and intensity.

Coaching is available to individuals, pairs, groups, and company teams.Many start with a complimentary sample session to determine compatibility between coach and client.

While some clients contract for a mere three months,most people make a commitment of up to nine months,meeting two or four times each month, says Benjamin.

It's the repetition that keeps people on track, she says, citing the oft-failed New Year's resolution to work out at a gym.

"Simply making a resolution doesn't keep it on track," says Benjamin."A coach keeps them on track."

A common goal, she says, is how to take business to a new level, how to picture and set goals.

Among her clients, says Vassiliou, a common goal is maintaining a balance between work and life.

Leadership coach Joelle Jay adds that company principals who feel they need to work 24/7 become stressed out.A coach works to find ways to maintain quality of life.

Thiessen, who moved from the Bay Area to Minden 10 years ago, serves corporate clients from San Francisco to Chicago.

"I think there's a longing among women in the corporate world to find their hearts' calling," she says.

And to achieve balance between work, personal and spiritual life.

Coaches work with groups as well as individuals.

When dealing with a company's work group, says Vassiliou, the job is to accelerate team results.

The team goal could be product development, project launch or management objectives.

Private individuals form groups, too.

Benjamin conducts coaching circles for up to 10 people with something in common, such as Women on the Brink of Change, which meets with her once a month.

Online groups of 10 sign up for monthlong email sessions with Thiessen.

These soul-coaching sessions, she says,"help people to get in touch with themselves, get their heart and soul in alignment with their authentic self." And some people hire a coach indefinitely.

Benjamin has a client who added her to what he calls his support team for life.

"Some people want to be in top form," she says, "always on the cutting edge in the sport of life."

The greatest challenge for a career coach, says Prendergast, is finding customers.

"We're a young profession, so not well known.

The general knowledge level of what coaching is and what it can do is not there yet."

Clients encounter challenges as well.

Family and formerly-held beliefs commonly throw up stumbling blocks, says Thiessen.

A common pitfall: getting stuck.When that happens, says Benjamin, she might say,"My observation is that we've been here before; this is a stuck place." But the client is always in control.

If a client says,"I'm not ready to do that," the coach might reply,"So, what are you ready to do?" When a company team gets stuck, says Benjamin, its members lose sight of the overall objective and look inward at their own domain.

They can get stuck in personalities.

Or mired in the company culture.

Long-time habits are hard to break.

Coaches work with company leaders, too.

Jay applies her doctorate in adult education and leadership to helping company presidents envision what they want to accomplish and how to do it.

"Rapid promotions lead to rapid challenges," says Jay."The pace can be overwhelming."

And, she adds, when outstanding technicians are promoted to management positions, they can find themselves in uncharted country.

Those who lack a mentor turn to a coach to manage the stress.

"A coach helps people find the answers," says Jay."But doesn't give them the answers."

The best part of the job, says Prendergast, is when people are able to identify where they truly want to go.

Carol Cizauskas, a client of Prendergast, is an example of someone who knew where she wanted to be, but not how to go there.

Her goal: landing a reporter's job with a high-profile National Public Radio station.

She started as KUNR's first news intern while still a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Next came two part-time jobs in commercial radio.

Then a stint as afternoon anchor at KUNR.

But, says Cizauskas,"By the end of my one-year contract, I had done everything I could do there." She met Prendergast while networking at a ProNet seminar and took on a coach.

After attending the public radio newscasters conference in Chicago last July and lining up some interviews, Cizauskas says,"I got very very close to some amazingly highlevel jobs.

But there were challenges.

Sometimes it was heart-breaking." For months, Cizauskas flew around the country to interviews (while freelancing to pay the bills).

All the while, she says,"Kit was supportive and totally focused on me.

It's so important to have someone supportive." The outcome? Cizauskas just moved to the Washington's Tri-City region near Richland to take her dream job with the Northwest News Network, which feeds to nine National Public Radio stations in the Pacific Northwest.

And what about the goals of the coaches themselves? Benjamin is a coach who has a coach.

She says,"The concept is to keep taking it to a new level."