Below you will find the replay for our call “Your Thoughts on the Coaching and Therapy Professions”. This was a great call and I enjoyed connecting with all of you.
In 2002, the Psychotherapy Networker had an issue devoted to coaching. The issue predicted that coaching is the next (and great) opportunity for therapists.
Has that happened? Do you offer coaching services? What do think and how do you feel about the coaching and therapy professions?
Click on the arrow to listen now or download an mp3 file to your computer.
Here is your replay info:
Until next time!
Casey
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with provocateur. Our professional identity as therapists must be protected. Another therapist whom I deeply respect once told me that we are “too nice” as a profession. I wonder if that’s what’s going on with us and the practice of coaching.
I have used coaches in the past for practice building and I appreciate the help they have provided. However, the public must be protected from people who are not trained to work with the variety of issues that can arise in working with human beings.
Someone can ask me about a rash and I might be able to identify poison ivy and tell them somethings to use that will cure it. Just because the rash goes away does not make me capable of practicing dermatology, it makes my friend and me damned lucky that I didn’t screw up.
I might understand seeking a certification in a specialized coaching area (practice building comes to mind), but I wonder what it does to our professional identity when Masters-level therapists are trying to get certified as a Life Coach? I saw a website with training requirements. Therapists are paying thousands of dollars and the curriculum includes listening skills? Seriously?
I have to agree with the provocateur. I’m continually being shocked by the fact that physicians, including psychiatrists, don’t even know that there is a formal counselling profession. They know about nurses and social workers, psychologists and physicians, that is about it. When they mention counselling, it is in the sense of listening over a cup of coffee, something amateurs and volunteers do. The general public tends to be equally ill informed, unless they have had direct experience with a good counsellor or therapist.
The fact that we tend to avoid marketing our services keeps our profile below the radar.
This was a great discussion. I’d like to provoke more discussion, inspiration, and most likely bountiful ire as well:
What no one mentioned is how there is such a thing as “protecting” one’s profession politically and economically from “de-professionalization”. Other professions do this all the time in their lobbying. Many coaches just “assume” that they can “do what a therapist does” without the training and regulation and licensing process, while no one (or few) in society would assume that just anyone could “do what a doctor does” (or nurse, lawyer, dentist, plumber, veterinarian, or teacher), without going through the processes they do to earn the privilege to practice or work legally. Any unlicensed person who attempted to provide paid client services under the name of “dental coach” or “plumbing aide” or “law guidance counselor” would be prosecuted for praticing without the proper license — those professions would make sure of that. You can’t even act in a major film production without meeting the requirements, paying the dues, and joining the Screen Actors Guild first (you could say that about all unionized workers who unite and lobby to protect their wages and working conditions once you’re in, and make others work to earn the right to be in).
Therapists are too passive when they allow their profession (and, yes, the associated economic privilege and status) to be undermined by amateurs in a way that these other professions would never tolerate. They would insist that their professional associations use their political lobbying muscle to protect their dignity and their livelihood. Yet the NASW, AAMFT, CAMFT, etc. are virtually silent on de-professionalization (although the NASW has lobbied for “title protection” for social workers, which has consistently politically failed, while titles like “nurse” and “physician” are protected without ever a debate).
States like California “protect” the California consumer by having a Board of Behavioral Sciences to shield the client from unscrupulous therapists, or at least give them recourse, and it’s notable that this Board is a division of the California Department of Consumer Affairs. That’s understandable. (And, yes, they do “miss” a lot of wrongdoing, but it’s not that they don’t even try). So why doesn’t California have a “Board of Coaching” to protect the California consumer from unscrupulous coaches?
Investments in graduate school, ongoing continuing education, and the efforts associated with getting and keeping a license are not petty nor meaningless, and are not to be denigrated nor dismissed by self-appointed amateurs. Those mandated prerequisites for practice preparations, and ongoing oversight requirements, are there for a reason: to prepare professional therapists to be competent and ethical, and to protect consumers. Those efforts deserve to be rewarded by a professional credential in order to “hang a shingle” or get certain jobs, and the resulting economic opportunity. Coaches who circumvent this process are trying to have all the rewards, with none of the initial and ongoing investment and accountability, because they appoint themselves as “equally qualified” to provide all-too-similar client services. While they sometimes, or even often, can be talented, skilled, and produce good outcomes, the question is, should they be ALLOWED to practice an “interpersonal helping profession” without getting training and being regulated first. Consumers deserve to be protected, and therapists deserve to be rewarded for the investment of time, money, and effort it takes to be allowed to do their work legally.
I advocate for the abundant co-existence of therapists and coaches, but I also politically advocate for coaches to be subject to state-regulated minimum educational requirements, ongoing oversight, and subject to disciplinary standards and consumer recourse first, as with so many professions. I think the public should be educated on the scope of practice for both disciplines; we generally have a dramatically un-educated public on all the “interpersonal consultive human services”, and all our professional associations are to blame for decades of not even making a dent in the public’s misperceptions and naivete.
For therapists to shirk their duty to protect the dignity of their unique profession politically and economically would be allowing their function to be de-professionalized and de-valued in some sort of “internalized social stigma” about therapists, and be a sheepish abdication to far too many ambitious, well-intentioned, but under-qualified and even predatory presumptuous competitors.
Casey, thanks for all you have done to make these discussions available to professionals. As I listened to the recording I experienced fellings of anger, confusion about the profession , and then eventually excitement about the possiblity of collaborative working relationships.
I am a clinician/therapist in Maine, I utilize skills as a coach to develop the therapuetic relationship developing trust so the process can become effective for the client. It sounds as though we need to meet clients where they are at and also meet other professionals where they are at if we desire to work collaboratively for our clients best interest.
Very interesting thanks
Kim
I thought this was a great and thoughtful discussion. As the developer of CounsellingBC.com, a counsellor, and an individual who is just about to embark on intensive coach training for psychotherapists, it was great hear the opinions.
I can really see how coaching can be effective, given that I have had a business coach for some time.
I can also see that many coaches, who do not also have training as a psychotherapist, could potentially cause great harm by blurred boundaries and that lack of skill/awareness that would be necessary to know when coaching is not enough.
The reason that I am taking coach training is so that I can ethically offer coaching and be able to be really clear as to the boundaries of what I offer.
Great discussion.
Jeffrey Fisher, M.A. , RCC
The discussion on coaches vs. therapist was interesting and it seemed that most of it focused on coaches who are not trained as therapists and I wanted to let you know about another potential growing trend related to this issue. There is a movement in divorce, beginning about 10 years ago, called Collaborative Divorce. A therapist is involved as a communication “coach” to help a couple through the process of divorce. The role is different from a therapist. However, in order to be on a collaborative team, the coach must be a licensed as a mental health provider. Additionally, this approach utilizes another one of the trends you have discussed: using a retainer. I know this doesn’t provide too much information but I just wanted to add this to the discussion that this service is an additional way that therapists can serve as a coach role. For more information on this great method for divorcing families go to: http://www.collaborativepractice.com/