Coaching Services

     Personal, business, and executive coaching services have been provided for many years by people outside the mental health profession, but are increasingly being provided by mental health professionals, who have found their mental health education, training, and experience to be an excellent foundation for developing coaching practices. Although both Coaching and Psychotherapy use knowledge of human behavior, motivation, behavioral change, and interactive counseling techniques, there are major differences in the goals, focus, and level of professional responsibility.

     Coaches offer skills in the areas of communication, problem-solving, and behavior change. In addition, our coaches are mental health providers licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Coach’s responsibility is to help the Client use information and skills the Client already has in order to:

The Coach supports, encourages, teaches, and helps the Client stay "on track" toward the Client’s goals.

     The Client’s responsibility is to set the agenda for his/her coaching, and the Client’s success depends on his/her willingness to define and take risks and try new approaches. The Client can expect the Coach to be honest and direct, asking straightforward questions, and using challenging techniques to help the Client move forward. The Client is expected to evaluate his/her own progress, and, if the coaching is not working as the Client wishes, the Client should immediately inform the Coach so both the Coach and Client can take steps to correct the problem. Like any human endeavor, coaching can involve feelings of distress and frustration that accompany the process of change. Coaching does not offer any guarantee of success.

     Unlike psychotherapy, coaching is not a health care service. The primary focus of psychotherapy is to identify, diagnose, and treat emotional, cognitive, and behavioral problems. The goals of psychotherapy include but may not be limited to alleviating symptoms, understanding the underlying personality dynamics which lead to those symptoms, changing dysfunctional behaviors, and helping patients cope with their psychological problems. While psychotherapy is often reimbursable by third-party payers (e.g., health insurance companies, HMO’s), coaching is not reimbursable. Coaching clients are not diagnosed with any psychiatric disorder and are not in "treatment" relationships with their coaches.

     Psychotherapy patients are often emotionally vulnerable. This vulnerability may be increased by the expectation that they will discuss very intimate personal information and will express feelings about themselves about which they are understandably sensitive. The prior life experiences of psychotherapy patients have often made trust difficult to achieve. These factors give psychotherapists greatly disproportionate power which creates a fiduciary responsibility to protect the safety of their patients. The coaching relationship is designed to avoid creation of this power differential.

     Because of these differences between psychotherapy and coaching, the roles of psychotherapist and coach are often in potential if not actual conflict. Therefore, it is ethically inappropriate for the Coach to play both roles with any Client, so that any Client in need of psychotherapy will be referred to another mental health professional for that service. In some situations, the Coach may insist that the he/she have access to the Client’s psychotherapist as a condition of his continuing as the Client’s Coach.

     Finally, it is important to understand that the Coach-Client relationship is a professional one. While it may feel at times like a close personal relationship, it is not one which may extend beyond professional boundaries, either during or after the Coach’s and Client’s work together. Considerable experience shows that, when boundaries are blurred, the hard-won benefits gained from the coaching experience are endangered.

     Both Talya Gershon, LCSW, and Dr. Schlichter completed coaching workshops and intensive coach training programs with Ben Dean, Ph.D., a Master Certified Coach and the founder of MentorCoach.com, a training program designed to train therapists to become coaches. Following completion of these training programs both Ms. Gershon and Dr. Schlichter established their own coaching practices, in which they provide both in-office and virtual coaching to clients, both locally and nationwide. They have found their coaching practices to be an especially rewarding part of their professional lives, in which they work with high-functioning adults motivated to make significant and positive changes which will improve the quality of their lives.

While both Ms. Gershon and Dr. Schlichter provide personal coaching, Dr. Schlichter also specializes in coaching of owners and mangers of family and closely held businesses. Ms. Gershon and Dr. Schlichter may be reached by calling our office at (757) 473-3770 or by contacting Ms. Gershon by E-mail at TalyaGershon@TalyaGershon.com, or Dr. Schlichter at DrSchlichter@DrSchlichter.com.