Life-coaches all the rage - USA TODAY

This is a couple of years old - but here are some highlights if you missed it -

By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

Personal growth is hot. Diagnosis is not. That is one reason America has seen a boom in the number of people offering their services as "life coaches." These guides give clients the confidence to get unstuck — to change careers, repair relationships, or simply get their act together. They also raise some eyebrows because they work in a field that is virtually unregulated.

"We are not talking about being incompetent or weak. They are everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box." — life coach Laura Berman Fortgang.

Life coaches are a new option for the worried well — those whose lives are only slightly askew. No longer do they need a diagnosis from a psychotherapist who delves into the painful past. Using the telephone or Internet, they can sign up with an upbeat life coach who becomes a partner in defining a better future.

Coaching is especially popular with men, who respond favorably to a term from sports, says coach Patrick Williams, whose Institute for Life Coach Training is based in Ft. Collins, Colo. "Seventy% of the caseload in therapy are women; 60% in coaching are men," he says.

"It is OK for a man to see a coach," says Martha Beck, a popular life coach who guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show and writes a column for O — The Oprah Magazine. "It is not OK for a man to see a therapist."

The latest trend is life coaching for teens, Williams says. He encourages therapists to take his training program and switch careers to life coaching. "We are training people to do family coaching, parent coaching, retirement coaching. There are a lot of specialty niches."

Some 10,000 coaches of various types are working in the USA alone, according to a review in the current Psychotherapy Networker, a magazine for professionals. Many have signed on in the last five years to what has become a flourishing — and unsupervised — industry that excites some trend watchers but deeply troubles others.

Coaching began as a motivational tool for the corporate world. "It has been OK to have an executive coach for some time," says the Psychotherapy Networker's Jim Naughton.

The business concept was based on organizational research "with intellectual heft," he says. The practice has proliferated to become the equivalent of having a personal trainer, he says.

Life coaching is "action-oriented, solution-oriented, concentrates on forward motion," not looking at the past, says Laura Berman Fortgang, a life coach based in Montclair, N.J. and author of Living Your Best Life.