The following letter has been edited and I’ve removed the names of specific coach training programs as well as the identity of the writer.

Hello, Ruth Ann.

I am very interested in the coaching profession, but am finding it difficult to find the funding to allow me to start. Some schools offer payment plans, but they are very expensive ($500 per month) and are unaffordable to me at this time. Other programs offer some kind of student loan, but their programs consist of intensives and travel, which add more to the cost. I have a young family, and traveling long distances would be very difficult.

I am interested in [name of training program] specifically, because of their reputation, accessibility, and convenience, but again their payment plan sucks! I was wondering of you knew of any way to find scholarships, student loans, or other funding options to pay for coaching programs?

It is my opinion that if this profession wants to hit mainstream, someone is gonna have to offer some kind of funding, loan, or scholarship program to assist people like me. Not everyone has $3000- $14,000 lying around to pay for it. So until I find something, I will remain patient and faithful. I will find a way. Any suggestions? I look forward to hearing from you… Thanks.

(Insert sound effect here of Ruth Ann’s head exploding)

I get requests like this all the time, because I have given large grants for coaching-related research, and I’ve funded a number of coaching-related philanthropies.

My answer is always in the form of a question, followed by another question, and another.

What kind of coach do you want to be? What kind of coaching work to you want to do? Why do you think expensive training and certification are required to achieve your goals? Are they necessary right now, or could you start on a low-or-no-cost path today to begin the journey to your desired destination?

I first heard about the field of “executive coaching” when I was a working journalist. I knew that top managers, entrepreneurs, and leaders engaged professional coaches to help them maximize their effectiveness, achieve their goals, advance their skills.

Later, as the chair of the board of a not-for-profit organization that hired a professional coach to serve the members, I experienced a personal coaching session myself. Curious, I began looking into “this thing called coaching.”

I attended conferences, joined coaching organizations, began working with coaches. A journalist at heart, I couldn’t help asking questions, digging, finding out more, looking for the who-what-where-when-why-how of coaching. What I discovered was, to quote Gertrude Stein, there is no ‘there’ there.

There’s no such thing as “coaching central,” no single recognized source or authority, no governing body, no one standard of certification or licensing, no agreement among the varying factions and schools and philosophies about something as simple as a definition of coaching, much less who “is” a coach, or what constitutes “good” coaching.

What I found: there are hundreds – repeat, HUNDREDS - of different certifications. There are dozens of coach training programs, certificate programs, degree programs. It’s possible to get a Ph.D. in coaching and not be “certified.” It’s possible to be a grammar school dropout and be “certified.” Different countries have different ideas about coaching. Different cultures have different ideas about coaches. It behooves the potential student to investigate thoroughly – why should I take THIS training? Is this specific training REQUIRED for what I want to do as a coach? Where does my money go? What alternatives can give me what I need to get where I want to go? Am I getting the runaround when I ask these questions?

Many people think of “schools” as benign nonprofit entitites, perhaps government-sponsored or government-approved. They are shocked to discover that many coach training entities are for-profit businesses. No coaching certification programs that I know of are associated with any U.S. government standard for coaching. [It may be different in other countries.] You’ll find some “accredited” schools are in fact merely licensed by a government agency as a business, not recognized for meeting the academic standards of an educational institution. Many coach training schools are “accredited” only by a trade organization. The trade organization creates its own standard for certification, then accredits schools to teach to that standard, and the wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round. A school may well be accredited, but that doesn’t mean “meets a government-approved standard for coaching education.”

One coach told me that her certification was “the” standard “because it’s the only one accepted for getting [a specific local government contract]. If you want a contract with [a specific local government] then you need that certification. In other words, that organization convinced some local lawmakers to accept their certification as the standard. The lawmakers probably asked, “How can we make sure that the coaches we hire are not charlatans?” (AKA, “How do we legislators cover our hindquarters?”) So they chose to accept the standards of a particular trade organization. Mission accomplished: politician’s backside covered, and bragging rights for that private trade group and its business. And that’s how the world works – at least, that’s how it worked before people started looking harder at how lawmakers decide who gets the goodies.

What kind of coach do you want to be? What kind of coaching work do you want to do? What is REQUIRED in order to achieve those ends?

Research is showing that most clients don’t care about a coach’s certification. They care about the coaching relationship and the results.

Don’t get me wrong: I think professional coaches need to study and learn coaching skills. I think they need to practice those skills. I think they need the guidance and mentoring of experienced, skilled coaches. I think they need to be accountable and responsible for their conduct as coaches, adhering to a code of ethics, willing to allow others to look over their professional shoulder.

I’m just not convinced there’s any single “right way” to do that or that it should necessarily cost thousands of dollars. Coaching is largely unregulated. It’s not universally considered a “profession,” and certainly, not everyone who coaches is professional. Some groups with special interests (monetary and philosophical) would like that to change. My own certification is from the International Association of Coaching, and I only chose to become certified because I served on the IAC’s Board of Governors. As a condition of board service, they required me to become IAC certified, which seemed reasonable. It was not expensive and no formal schooling was required. I had to pass a written test and prove to trained observers that I could coach according to their methods. The preparation, practice, and study certainly made me a better coach. But I saw some coaches “fail” the certification test on the day I “passed,” and trust me, some of them were and are good coaches. They already had thriving practices. Their clients love them and they get results, and the happy clients don’t care if their coach passed some arbitrary test. (All coaching certification tests are arbitrary, subjective, judged by fallible humans.)

Should you pay thousands of dollars for your coach training and certification? That depends on many factors. Right now, in my opinion, it’s simply not necessary. Thousands of people have a vested, monetary, business interest in promoting and perpetuating their own brand of coaching. For many well-meaning people, the coach training business is a righteous livelihood that provides monetary and spiritual rewards. Coach training and education is always “worth it” in terms of your skill-building, experience, and confidence. But how much time and money will you spend? Where will you spend it?

If you can afford the time and money, great! Get dozens of certifications! Join every coaching organization! Do intensives, workshops, mentor coaching! Buy every book! Take every teleclass! But if money is an object, why would you go into debt to meet an arbitrary and optional standard when it is entirely possible to acquire the skills without racking up the bills?

I welcome your comments – if I’m mistaken on the facts, I’ll make immediate corrections. If you have further suggestions for the aspiring coach, I’ll be delighted to post them. After all, I like to think of myself as “coachable,” and I promise I’ll only judge your reasoning, not your credentials.

The city of Long Beach seems to have the art of wooing conventions down cold. I mean, warm. The welcoming banners are decking the lampposts. The taxi drivers have been briefed on who’s coming. Even after three TED conferences, I felt like a stranger and a newcomer in Monterey, where TED was born and lived for a quarter of a century. Here, everyone’s a newcomer. I like that because it’s in perfectalignment with my theme for 2009: RESET.

Jeff Immelt, CEOof General Electric,explained it in a speechin November:”This economic crists doesn’t represent a cycle.It represents a reset. lt’s an emotional, social, economic reset.” That’s right! Stop waiting for things to “come around.” Stop waiting for things to get back to “normal.”It’s a RESET. Are you ready to join those of us who arecreating the new “normal,” whatever that may be?

The”formerly entitled” withMarie Antoinette mentality are headed for the figurative guillotine, and the doomsayers of Davos didn’t seem too happy about it. But there wereothers at Davos whoreached for the reset button, and some of them will be arriving at TED today.

It’s time for TED – on “reset.”