Put Me In Coach!

Put me in coach—a phrase often associated with a competitive sport of some sort. We think about coaches for teams, but we need to broaden our perspective, to think about coaches in a much broader aspect:  life coaches, marriage coaches, business coaches, study coaches, and now… retirement coaches.  The NY Times ran an article, Finding an Identity Beyond the Workplace:  There’s More to Retirement Than Financial Planning.  We have heard stories before of people whose identities are so intertwined with working, that they are lost when they retire.  Coaches can help those folks, and others, in finding goals for their post-work time.

This entry in the non-sport coaching field, retirement coaching, can help with goals and motivation, according to the article. “Retirement coaches … are popular these days. The cadre has emerged in the crowded coaching field to cater to a growing number of boomers who are grappling with what’s next.”  According to one expert quoted in the article, part of this need for assistance is longevity–with the years post-working stretching out longer in the future, people are looking for help in defining what to do in those years.

Here’s how one retirement coach describes what they do  “[w]hen someone retires, they tend to be literally levitating with excess productivity that can’t be channeled … We help them slowly build a basket of activities.”

So what’s in the basket? It could be a veritable potpourri of activities, such as “part-time work, humanitarian endeavors, entrepreneurial adventures and artistic pursuits, [as well as] … a search for legacy and significance ….”  A significant number of clients  of one coach are described by the coach as “hav[ing] some kind of ‘give back’ gene. They want to get involved with a charitable board, or find ways to be a teacher or tutor.”

There are plays to be run in retirement coaching, just like in sports. It takes time for the recently retired to learn those plays and to be prepared for the “game.”   This means the first play run will be “a self-assessment that examines values and strengths and clarifies goals, hopes and dreams for the future.”  The playbook involves running numbers, too, using “retirement calculators to be sure they won’t outlive their savings.”  But although a football coach can use a stop watch to see how fast a player can run the 100, it’s more intangible with retirement coaching.  “[I]t’s far harder to compute in advance how to best navigate the intangibles like building a new social network and finding value in how you spend your time in retirement.”

How long do you need your coach? It simply depends.  Cost does as well.  There isn’t quite as much regulation for these types of coaches as there are in sports, but there still are at least two organizations, according to the article.  So why use a coach? One of the coaches is quoted: “This is a fresh track adventure ….Be patient. For the first time in your life, you need to be able to deal with white space. People get addicted to busyness. White space is the source of creativity and strategic thinking, so don’t fill up your dance card too fast.”

Since all of us are “in the game” of life and aging, we all need to think about our retirement readiness. Now we can have our own coach for that, and maybe there will be an app as well. (Please note my sports analogies are an attempt, feeble as it may be, to have a bit of fun in writing this post. Any sports analogy errors are definitely my own).