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June 2001
International Coaching Reports
(Continued)
Thomas
Leonard,
reporting
from the USA |
USA
Americans just
want to get ahead...
but without paying the
price for success that their parents did.
story by Thomas
J. Leonard
Coaching in the US is full steam ahead. Over 1,000
media stories have run (as of 2001), 99% of which have been
positive. Coaches are seen as the next generation of
personal trainers, here to help clients reduce stress on the
job, start their own companies and make the most of their
lives. I estimate that there are at least 20,000 coaches
practicing part and full time in the U.S. And I'm guessing
that about 10% of these coaches have clients who live outside of
North America.
Compared to other cultures, Americans are relatively
risk-oriented, meaning that they are willing to take business
and lifestyle risks because there aren't too many cultural
tethers and finger-wagging when we fail. Thus, the rate of
experimentation is high in the US culture and that leads to
clients who want to try out new things whether it's designing a
new lifestyle, starting a business, coming up with an
interesting idea and trying it out.
As a coach coaching US clients, I find that big part of my focus
is to simply encourage clients to follow their hearts, trust
their minds, exercise their intuition and to just go for
it. Even in the US, clients need encouragement to take
risks. But once they get going in the right direction,
they become self-motivating.
It's commonly viewed that Americans want to get ahead; our
culture is driven by advertising and emarketing, after
all. We are consumers ad nauseum, and much of our
meaning has come from the brands we surround ourselves
with. And, that said, the current trend is that clients
are coming to recognize the emotional, spiritual, intellectual,
quality of life and opportunity costs associated with striving
and getting ahead of all costs. Some clients are dropping
out (voluntary simplicity movement); others are crafting clever
ways to still have it all, but without the stress and costs they
have been paying.
As a coach, it's exciting to serve American clients because they
know there's a better way and they are willing to find it.
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Catherine Marechal,
reporting
from Italy |
Italy
Coaching in Italy is
in its infancy..
story by Catherine
Marechal
The first Italian coach graduated from Coach U a few years ago. Right now of the 5 coach U students-graduates in Italy, 3 are foreigners. In the past six months several Italian consultants have added coaching to their skills list and are starting to promote coaching with their business clients. At this point in time, most coaches living in Italy work either with corporations, or with foreigners residing either in Italy or in other countries.
(I want to warn the reader that this article is NOT written by an Italian but by a multicultural expatriate who has lived in Italy for a total of 10 years).
An underlying reason for this state of affairs is that one of the pillars of the Italian culture is the core family
(grandparents- parents-children) on to which is added the extended family and friends. Another cultural pillar is the "bella figura" "or looking good and showing off". Appearance is very important, one must appear at his best especially to outsiders. No Italian woman would rush out to buy a forgotten item without having put on make up and dressed with her best clothes.
Italians are in fact extremely good and kind to children (both their own and those of others) but many mothers and grandmothers especially have a strong tendency to do too many things for their children and so to spoil them, keeping them in a state of dependency. In addition young Italians are facing other challenges as they reach adult age. The lack of affordable housing obliges many to keep living with their parents for many years. It is very usual to have children 30 (thirty) years old still living with their parents. When a couple finally gets married, they will often look for and find a flat/ house in walking distance of the parents of the husband or wife. Most Italian men are often very, very attached to their mother and it is very common for the son and the mother to have daily communications.
In Italy there are big multinational enterprises but also a crowd of small family enterprises where family or extended family members work together. In this context, even if people are interested in personal evolution, they do not have the tradition to look for help outside the family or the extended family-friends circle. Even if you need a plumber, you will try to find one who is related to your family by some link. As you can see referral, is a strong tradition here but only within the extended
family- friends circle (which can be very big).
In Italy, many people have several jobs at the same time, the official one and a second, often " informal" one since wages are
low. When it is a commercial venture, often the family economic and/or psychological support is important. Many women have a job.
Thru my contact with Italians (but I am a foreigner with no Italian family link), I got the impression that the Italians are not feeling that coaching is something they could use very much. But I believe if an Italian coach was asking around, s/he would get a very different answer. In fact my only Italian client came to me thru my personal interaction on other matters with his mother. A British coach living in Italy (married to an Italian) told me that professionals in human resources or the training industry are interested in coaching and coaching skills. A new American coach (also living in Italy) wrote me "that in speaking about coaching with some of my Italian students, I get a positive response, but I don't know about actually paying for the service. In general, I don't think Italians have that much discretionary income."
This gives me the impression that Italians are not a priori very open to coaching, at least not thru the help of a coach external to the family circle.
Then again, having a coach would need to be perceived as being as important as having a hairdresser, as buying nice clothes, as having a nice car etc. And one would have to be ready to reserve part of one's income to pay for coaching. And the coach from the family circle would be expected to give a discount!!!!
I believe that coaching in Italy has a lot of potential and will develop first in the multinational enterprises, before passing to the national ones and then to individuals.
Local resource links/websites/coaching portals :
Coaches who participated to this article :
Amy Centers and Rachel Turner.
copyright 2001, coachville.com
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