Coaching has received a lot of press recently, and for good reason—demand has never been stronger. People are turning to coaches with the right training and qualifications to help them with economic and generational shifts impacting our world.
Millennials and Gen Z workers are job hopping in the hopes of attaining better pay, personal satisfaction, and career mobility in an uncertain COVID-19 economy. Baby Boomers facing retirement are asking themselves, “What’s next?” The collective disruption to people’s lives has increased/decreased workloads, expanded/narrowed options, or flat out changed the landscape. In response, people are turning to coaches to help them turn this disruption into opportunity as they manage the choices they must make.
An Opportunity for Growth
Recent statistics published by MarketResearch.com report that “the U.S. estimated market value for personal coaching was $955 million in 2015 and $1.02 billion in 2016, compared to $707 million in 2011.” The market’s value “is expected to reach $1.34 billion by 2022—or a 6.7% average yearly growth rate from 2016 to 2022.” Additionally, IBISWorld estimates the business coaching industry revenue increased to $15 billion in 2019 at an annualized rate of 5.6%, as reported by brandminds.live. These promising numbers indicate a major opportunity for growth in the coaching industry.
What Is Positive Psychology Coaching?
Coaching, as defined by Psychology Today, is “specific and goal-oriented. Like sports coaching, psychological coaching concentrates on individual or group strengths and abilities that can be used in new and different ways to enhance performance, feel better about the self, ensure smooth life transitions, deal with challenges, achieve goals, become more successful, and improve the overall quality of one’s personal and professional life.”
A more recent orientation is something called positive psychology coaching. Positive psychology coaching focuses on inherent strengths to provide for a more authentic life. It also offers motivation for managing career transitions, work balance, and life changes due to technology; finances; relationships; health; and more.
Kauffman, Boniwell, and Silberman (2010) offer this popular definition of positive psychology coaching:
Positive Psychology Coaching (PPC) is a scientifically-rooted approach to helping clients increase well-being, enhance and apply strengths, improve performance, and achieve valued goals. At the core of PPC is a belief in the power of science to elucidate the best [methods for development].
Positive Psychology Coaching Resources
Coaches are sharpening their skills with credentialing to ensure they are utilizing coach-appropriate methodologies to meet the steady rise in client expectations. This is true for all types of coaches—business, education, life, and so on.
The Highlands Certification Training program is uniquely qualified to support coaches and other professionals (e.g., leadership and talent development consultants, psychologists, counselors, and educational consultants). Through certification to administer the Highlands Ability Battery, an objective human assessment tool founded on scientific research, career practitioners are equipped to provide clients with an awareness of their natural abilities, the most powerful piece of self-knowledge for attaining personal success.
The benefits of becoming a Highlands Certified Consultant include:
- Providing clients with an established, objective tool for a strengths-based foundation to work with clients;
- 16 hours of initial training on the Highlands Whole Person Method;
- Ongoing professional development;
- Client-centered information, with applicability to a wide-range of client needs; and
- 32 hours of ICF-approved continuing education credits.
With the demand for coaching on the rise, there’s never been a more advantageous time to become a certified consultant or take your existing consulting business to the next level. Soon we’ll introduce the concept of whole person coaching, but for now, how can you implement positive psychology coaching to better serve your clients?
