Tuesday, Sep. 25, 2012

Finding the solution to a difficult problem lies in asking the right questions. On the afternoon of Sept. 1, in a stylish office building in Aoyama, a gathering of Japanese life coaches practiced this Socratic skill in groups of four. It was a role-playing exercise, in which one person played the role of a client with a problem, and the other three took turns asking questions.

As I walked around the room, I caught snippets of the kind of questions that you often hear in job interviews.

"What do you want to do in four year's time?" one man asked. The "mentee" of the group, a bearded man in his late 40s, silently considered the question.

The activity was part of a conference on the future of the coaching industry, held at the Japan Chapter of the International Coach Federation, one of the largest global accreditation bodies for professional life coaches. It was also an excuse to the celebrate the fifth anniversary of the ICF Japan Chapter, led by Susumu Shinbori, an executive coach with more than 25 years' experience.

Interest in life coaching, which is often described as a training program to help individuals or corporations achieve specific goals, has risen sharply around the world in the last five years. According to figures released by the ICF, there are 47,500 practitioners worldwide with 3,300 based in Asia and the industry has generated $2 billion in total revenue.

In Japan, growth has been more modest than in Western countries, such as the United States, but Janet Harvey, the current president of the International Coach Federation, says that although the numbers are smaller, the rate at which ICF credential holders are increasing here is similar to that of other countries. There are now 120 practitioners with certifications from the ICF in Japan, up from three in 2002.

"Applications for credentials have been doubling every year," added International Coach Federation CEO Magdalena Mook.

While personal coaching has yet to take off in Japan in the same way that it has in the U.S. or Europe, the practice of executive, or business, coaching is fairly well established. More than half of the coaches in attendance at the ICF seminar were business coaches, and most of them have been practicing for nearly a decade.

Katsuhiro Suzuki, a senior manager in the airport quality-control division at ANA, has been an internal coach for more than seven years. He got into coaching about 10 years ago, after undergoing management training in the human resources department.

Link:
It's not all about the mid-life crisis