What is the promise of wellness and health coaching?
What do wellness and health coaches have to achieve to get the title?
What does the consumer get?

Imagine a public that has a clear idea of the answers to all three of these questions.  Imagine a public that is familiar enough with wellness and health coaching to know what it is and whether they (personally) want it right now.  Imagine a public familiar enough with what wellness and health coaching can do that they can recommend it to friends, ask for it from their healthcare provider, and even expect it when, for example, their diabetes education or cardiac rehabilitation is finished.

As I flew to Orlando to be a keynote panelist at the Health Coaching Executive Forum I found an article in the Southwest Airlines on board magazine entitled “Rebrand Nurses”.  The author, Jay Heinrichs, put forth the problem of how what we call a “nurse” can be anyone from a person with a two-year degree to someone with their doctorate in nursing.  Most men don’t even consider becoming nurses because of how “nurses” are viewed.  Highly qualified nurses are fast filling vital roles in the healthcare world and yet we have no way to distinguish them by title.  I found this interesting article also relevant to wellness coaching field. We have all sorts of people with highly diverse backgrounds and training calling themselves and being called “wellness coaches” or “health coaches”.  Some have completed training from ICF accredited training programs and have added specific training in wellness coaching to their preparation (such as that offered through Real Balance Global Wellness Services).  Others have listened to a CD and read a book, or simply been told by their supervisor that they are no longer only a nurse, health educator or dietician, they have been magically transformed into a “wellness coach”!

So I wondered how the author would pursue this problem?

His route was a bit surprising. Right away he went to one of the world’s biggest branding agencies, Landor Associates.  Hayes Roth, Landor’s chief marketing officer worked with Heinrichs, and immediately remarked that “Naming is one of the toughest things that firms like ours do, and everybody thinks they can.”

Like the nurses, our profession of wellness and health coaching suffers from lack of clarity about who we really are, what we do and how one becomes a wellness coach.  Roth said his crew would conduct extensive interviews and would ask what we need to be asking ourselves about wellness coaches:

Imagine medical practices seeing enough patient improvement through medical compliance and lifestyle improvement adherence that they find it cost-effective to hire a wellness coach.  Imagine an insurance payment system that sees the benefits of prevention and the improved course of illnesses that successful lifestyle improvement brings and therefore pays for wellness coaching.

To bring those images into reality we need to be able to answer our branding expert’s three questions, and do it soon! We are curious how you would answer these three questions?

What is the promise of wellness and health coaching?
What do wellness and health coaches have to achieve to get the title?
What does the consumer get?