January 23, 2006	Monday	Zilhaj 22, 1426

LONDON: Jonathan Jay thinks it’s going to be another good year for coaching — and as a 34-year-old millionaire, it has all been pretty good so far. In 1999, Jay spent his last £145 advertising a seminar on how to be a coach. Now here he is, director of the Coaching Academy, the UK’s biggest coaching school, living in a panoramic Putney penthouse, all leather, suede and views of the Thames (if you can see past the plasma TV). Then there’s his new book, Sack Your Boss!, and his TV commitments — Now I’m the Boss! (for Living TV) and helping families emigrate (for the BBC’s Get a New Life). And let’s not forget the coaching for businesses, for a day rate of £10,000. “I think we need to reconcile helping people with getting paid for it,” he twinkles.

If the typical image of a life coach is a bit new age and touchy-feely, Jay comes as a surprise. Slick and charming, he looks and sounds every inch the entrepreneur — he printed his first business card at 11, and says, “Me personally?” when asked a question, before delivering the smoothest reply. And he is at the forefront of UK coaching. Until his seminars in 1999, wannabe life coaches had to train in the US. Now it’s impossible to count the number of courses available in Britain, some offering seminars, some online learning, some in colleges and others stamping certificates on their kitchen tables.

“In 2006, we intend to take coaching into all the nooks and crannies of British life,” says Jay. “We’re taking it to Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton. We want to take it into the NHS, local government and local schools. I reckon we could have more impact on the state of education through coaching than Tony Blair could ever have.”

For Jay, coaching is the all-powerful panacea. “You meet someone on the street who doesn’t know what to do with his life and you know that if you had one hour with that person, he’d walk away knowing exactly what he wants and believing he can do it,” he purrs. “There’s nothing weird about it, nothing voodoo — it’s very simple psychology. It doesn’t take a genius to do it. Anyone can be a coach. And whatever critics say, coaching works. If it didn’t, it would be an American fad that disappeared in six months.”

A lot of people agree with him. In 1999, life coaching was practically unknown in the UK. Now, a Google of ‘UK life coach’ throws up 4.5m sites. You’ll find wardrobe coaches who’ll do a mini-Trinny and Susannah for £200 a day. There are parent coaches to tell you how to get your two-year-old to eat peas. There are cancer coaches to help you through treatment, crisis coaches, career coaches ... the list goes on.

On top of this are the self-help books, one of publishing’s fastest-growing genres. Each week sees at least one new title knocked out by a life coach elbow its place among the bestsellers. Then there’s TV’s saturation by self-improvement programmes. You can watch people being coached out of debt or obesity, a failed fashion sense, sloppy parenting or a dating drought.

According to the UK’s Association for Coaching, an estimated 100,000 British people used a coach last year and the industry has been valued at £50m. This month, it enters the mainstream with the finalization of its National Occupational Standards as set by ENTO, the national network of training organizations. For the first time, there will be official standards of good practice and training for British coaches.

Pam Richardson, leading life coach, author of The Life Coach and principal of the UK College of Life Coaching, is just as excited about the future as Jay: “I can see coaching for newly qualified teachers, doctors, lawyers — newly qualified anythings.”

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent and author of (among others) Therapy Culture (Routledge) and Paranoid Parenting (Allen Lane), is one man who disagrees. According to Furedi, while we pour scorn on institutions and mock our politicians, the monarchy and the church, we are developing a slavish, unthinking devotion to a ‘new priesthood of gurus’ who have stepped in to fill the void. Life coaching is, he believes, at best a waste of mon-ey and at worst dangerous.—Dawn/The Observer News Service