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Personal Coaches Boosting the Game Plan by Kelly Gormly

Ever since Teresa Champion graduated from Clarion University 22 years ago, she knew she wanted to own her own business. Yet, until recently, she couldn’t pin down any details or a concrete plan.

“I knew where I was sitting was not working, and I was just sitting,” says Champion, 44, of Plum. “I knew I wanted to own my own business. I just didn’t know what it would look like.”

That’s where her personal coach, Leslie McKee, came in. In March of 2009 — after honing in on Champion’s vision, and then mapping out specific steps Champion could take to make it happen — Champion opened “Do Me a Favor.” She works for many companies who hire her to play the role of temporary executive assistant, and she says things are going very well.

These days, many people don’t just want to improve themselves and get ahead: they hire someone as a personal coach to help them do it. Coaches do everything from general life and business-coaching to coaching on specific skills, like parenting, getting organized, getting healthy, fashion sense, public speaking, time management, relationships, running a household, and more. A coach can serve as a combination trainer, therapist and cheerleader, and will help clients develop a game plan and take concrete steps toward goals, experts say.

“They hire someone essentially … to help them get some practical, realistic feedback about how they’re doing,” says Hank Walshak of Bethel Park. The coach — who calls his business Walshak Communications, Inc. — works with professional individuals and organizations to help them with their executive presentation skills.

“People reach … stages where they realize they need to do something better, though they don’t really know where they need to begin,” says Walshak. He is the vice president of public relations for the Pittsburgh Coaches Association, which lists many area coaches at www.pittsburghcoaches.org.

Nate Perry, who just graduated from Hempfield Area High School, says he would be scrambling to figure out his future if he hadn’t worked with his personal recruiting coach. Perry, 18, hired Steve Potter, who started working with Perry, a basketball player, as a sophomore. Potter — national scouting director of the National Collegiate Scouting Association — helped him research and target colleges that were likely to recruit Perry onto their teams. Potter, of Greensburg, gave Perry regular feedback about his athletic skills, and encouraged him. Now, Perry is still deciding which of the many schools that recruited him — including Youngstown State University in Ohio and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro — to attend in the fall.

Without Potter, “it would have been more hectic,” says Perry, of Hempfield. Potter “helps me a lot, to get my name out there.”

Potter says he loves identifying talented kids, and helping them work toward the next phase of life, though the ambition must come from them.

“We don’t do the work for them. We lay it out for them,” he says. “If they follow the blueprint we lay out for them, then they have been really successful.”

Dress for success

Chris Buffington of Dormont — who writes for Pittsburgh Fashion Magazine and is a manager at Charles Spiegel for Men in Squirrel Hill — is expanding on his love for advising men on how to dress well. Last week, at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library, he held a group coaching session, and he hopes to do more coaching on personal style. How someone dresses makes a big impression on people, Buffington says.

“I think that you can really have the ability to ‘wow’ somebody,” says Buffington, who says he loves watching male fashionistas-to-be blossom.

“It’s like watching someone progress and graduate,” he says. “I want to be able to help them with feeling confident. I guarantee that people will definitely notice.”

One growing area of coaching is professionals who do in-home consultations to help people, usually mothers, with parenting and family management. That is what Sue Berman, based in Squirrel Hill, does with her business, Pro Parent Coaching. Clients seek her out for coaching sessions about how they handle power struggles with their kids, how to manage their time as moms, and other issues. Berman has a background as a clinical psychologist, and coaching sessions have some similarity to psychotherapy: the clients are seeking to make changes in their lives, and to figure out where the problems are coming from. However, if coaches sense a deeper problem, they will recommend a medical or psychological evaluation, she says.

The popularity of personal coaches comes from this era of greater self-awareness and knowledge, Berman says.

“People hire coaches when they want to take steps forward from where they are,” she says. “Coaches help people set goals. … People have more information about what’s possible, so they can dream bigger.”

People who hire personal coaches tend to improve because of the personalized help and accountability, Berman says.

“You can tell your best friend how frustrated you are with parenting, but your best friend is your best friend. … They don’t have a notebook full of strategies,” she says. “It’s very much tailored to the individual.”

McKee, of Mt. Lebanon, works as both a family coach and a professional organizer, and does some other coaching projects, like Champion’s. She is working on her organizer coaching certification, in order to take her role a step further and help clients understand what is behind their chronic disorganization. Household organizing and family management go closely together, says McKee, who calls her business McKee Organizing Services. Many clients are learning how to delegate tasks with their families.

“We’re empowering mom to work as a team with the family,” says McKee. “We really study our clients. We’re really tailoring a solution to what they want.”