Coaches, Should You Specialize?

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Whether to specialize or not seems to be a dilemma for many coaches. Should you specialize? First we’ll define what this means. Then we’ll give the answer, which is “yes, but.” “Yes” for reasons other than you might think, and “but” because you should also NOT specialize.

DEFINITION

Specializing means choosing a specific area within the field of coaching, just as lawyers do, for instance. There are divorce attorneys, litigators, medical malpractice, and guardian ad litem attorneys. Specializing can mean what problem you work on, what area of life, or what group of people you work with.

Other fields have these specialties. A gerontology social worker works with seniors. A pediatric nurse takes care of babies. A special education teacher works with ADHD students.

In coaching you can work with a special population (teenagers or seniors), on a certain area of life (career or personal life), on a transition (divorce or retirement) or different sets of life skills (accountability or emotional intelligence).

Specialties developed as knowledge grew. Way back when there were doctors. They were all general practitioners and you were lucky if your town had one. As knowledge grew in different areas, specialties evolved.

THE BENEFITS OF SPECIALIZING

The most important reason to specialize is for your clients’ benefit; so you can get really good at something. Even within your specialty new things will always be developed and you’ll always be learning. If the area is too broad, you’ll simply be spread too thin.

Another reason is pragmatic. “Specializing is the key to getting clients and growing your practice,” says Deborah Brown-Volkman in a recent article in CoachVille, and I agree. It’s crucial from the marketing standpoint. From the name of your business, to your URL, to your tagline, to your press releases, people have to understand what it is you do. Exactly what you do.

The field of coaching is relatively new, but consumers are going to relate it to other professions with which they’re familiar. Consider, for instance, asking someone “What do you do?” and they reply, “I’m a doctor.” What’s your next question? “What KIND of doctor,” of course. Baby doctor or gerontologist? Orthopedic surgeon or shrink? MD or Ph.D.? We use big terms and little, but we know our specialties.

So if you’re lucky enough to get to the second round with a potential client, they’re going to ask “What kind of coach are you?” They want you to narrow it down. What issues do you work with? What age of people? And of course the question at the bottom is, “Can you help me with this specific problem?”

Therefore many coaches fear specializing. They think it will eliminate clients. It will, but it will also draw clients and it will draw pre-qualified clients.

What if you reply, “I do all kinds of coaching.” This, says Deborah, would be like putting on your resume, “I can do anything.” The main problem is that it isn’t true. No one can do “everything,” even within one field. Saying that will not make you attractive. It simply doesn’t make sense to people. In fact it raises suspicion.

It’s true that particularly with age and experience you can broaden your specialties, but you should still quickly be adding “except.” For instance, when someone asks me what I like to do, I reply, “Just about anything.” But then I start adding (because you never know) “nothing dangerous, life threatening, illegal, immoral, unethical …” and pretty soon I’m back to listing specific things I like to do! Why not start there?

You may think you do all kinds of coaching, but did you know there’s a Bipolar Coach, a Breast Cancer Survival Coach, a Ph.D. Dissertation Coach, and a Coach for Co-parenting with a Jerk out there? You may think you do it all, but you don’t. If you’re honest with yourself, there are things you aren’t that good at. If you look far enough, there are things on which you really wouldn’t want to coach.

Specializing will not only draw clients, it will get you publicity with the press (which will bring you more clients). If you say you are “a coach,” that’s of little interest. There’s no “hook” there. The press is always looking for interesting, informative, and inspiring stories with a hook. They need to relate things to other things that are going on. For instance around Father’s Day, they’re looking for related feature articles and would like to hear from a fathering coach. He’d also be a good person to interview about life balance for men, or men’s health, parenting, or marriage. “Fathering” gives a slant to each of these issues.

NOW HERE’S THE ‘BUT’

I think another reason why coaches don’t want to specialize is because it’s limiting. The solution to that is, while you do have a specialty in coaching that allows clients to recognize you, find you, and hire you, do not allow this to limit your quest for knowledge. In reality, we are whole people and the interfaces of our life are not hard and fast. The more you know about many different things, the better you can serve your clients.

For instance, say you’re a career coach. If someone is having a career transition it is going to affect their relationships, and their health. They’ll need stress management skills and they’ll need to be considering the repercussions for their retirement.

If you’re an emotional intelligence coach, you need to know the field of emotional intelligence well, but also know enough about career, relationships, stages of life, conditions such as ADHD, transitions and age groups to be able to apply it to the client’s situation, and to make it useful for them.

The debate continues about what’s appropriate preparation for a career in coaching – coaching credentials, an academic degree in the human sciences, being trained by someone with a graduate degree in life sciences, relevant life experience, or all of these? I think this is a win-win proposition. Specialize, but continue to broaden your knowledge base. As with any profession, you need to be comfortable with what you don’t know. Get as much education as you can, book learning as well as experiential, and keep learning. You may master your specialty but there will be fields it interfaces with that will be changing all the time that will impact your practice as well. Specialization is an opportunity for mastery, and a necessity for marketing, and not a limitation.

Author: Susan Dunn, MA, Mentor and Marketing Coach

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