Coaching, an emerging profession in the human potential and business development fields has been written up in publications ranging from Working Woman to Inc. It has been touted as the key to success in everything from management to marriage. What's a person to make of this? And how can we evaluate coaching for our own lives?

As I thought about the kinds of problems I faced I came to understand and accept that it would always be difficult to have both an overarching view of my long term goals, a cogent undersanding of my near term strategies, and a confident and simple approach to walking my daily path. Once I thought about it the reason was obvious: each of these activities requires that I adopt a different perspective. And guess what, it's hard to be in more than one place at a time, so often I would be conducting one activity from the perspective of another. No wonder I felt confused and overwhelmed.

Coaching offers a solution by providing objective recognition, validation and reinforcement. A coach helps you to clarify your goals, test your plans against your resources and your intentions, and measure your progress. A coach asks you to live up to standards you set together while reminding you to enjoy the grace of being a human being and not a 'droid. Coaching deals with the human condition: it's not about being or even becoming perfect.

I think of the kind of business and personal coaching which I practice as motivating, instructing, focusing, correcting and encouraging my clients to find solutions to their problems and to achieve a fundamental way of being in the world that flows organically and authentically from who they really are.

It's easy to see that successful coaching requires a good match between coach and client. If you are interested in getting a coach, start by asking yourself these questions: