Life coaching [is] the second-fastest growth area in consulting behind management consulting, according to the respected US News and World Report magazine.

"It's about helping people achieve whatever they want to achieve," ......

"It might be a person who wants to make more money, who wants to get more out of life, to find their passion, to make better decisions, to foster development, to increase leadership qualities, to find a better balance in their life."

Coaching professionals constantly make the comparison with elite athletes, who may already be good at what they do but have their coach to maximise their potential. In the same way life coaches say they can maximise the potential of their clients.

There are certain key concepts to coaching, judging by the number of times both the clients and coaches repeat them. There is balance (ie, balancing work, life and family). There is preferred reality, where clients decide what their preferred reality is and the coach helps them to achieve it. Finally there is the notion that the client already knows what he or she wants to achieve and how he/she needs to achieve it - it's just up to the coach to "evoke" the truth.

...... "People are finding their lives are getting way out of whack. People feel stretched thin."

Coaches say their clients don't come feeling they necessarily need "fixing". They are already doing well - they may be CEOs of leading corporations - it's just that they see a gap between where they are now and where they want to be.

...... "It's like when people see an elite athlete working with a coach there is no stigma at all in that?... in fact we have a lot of psychologists moving into coaching because it changes the mind-set of the client".

"It's no longer about problems; it's about where do they want to be and how are they going to get where they want."

...... a life coach will guide you through such things as life planning (values, goal, mission), your personal path, (power, love, satisfaction, vitality, fulfilment, peace, balance), your spiritual path, (strengthening one's connection with all), perfecting all you have (home, work, family, body, heart, quality of life), advanced development, (wisdom, effortlessness, magic, flow and attraction), and financial independence, (make it, enjoy it, invest it).

"[Coaching] works because the coach helps his or her clients set and reach higher and more appropriate goals, asks more of them than they would have done on their own and focuses them to produce results more quickly," ......

"Coaching is a form of consulting, but the coach stays with the client to help implement the new skills, changes and goals to make sure they really happen."

Sydney-based coach R. Gorman, formerly a financial consultant, says many people have cottoned onto the trend without having the experience to back up the title.

"The only way to check the credentials of someone you are thinking of employing is to make sure they know what they are doing, to check their background ?... ", Gorman says.

Caldwell says people should look at the results. "If it's not working, stop," he says simply. "If a client is paying $500 a month, then you have to make sure they get way more than $500 in results."

Coaching works via a weekly chat between coach and client. It might be face-to-face, but usually it's on the telephone. There may also be assignments faxed or e-mailed to the clients, who can then e-mail their homework back.

For example Fitzgerald may tell a client to name the 10 things in life that he or she is just tolerating, and then in the course of the next week to start eliminating those things.

Caldwell says: "[Sometimes] the best thing a coach can do is sit there and listen to what a person is saying. Most people know their own solutions and ideas and they are looking for a sounding board to help the ideas come out and then to say 'Well, what's something which you are going to do by next week to get things started?'"

Caldwell charges $250 to $600 per month for this, and, no, he doesn't believe that's a bit rich for a handful of phone-calls.

"It's not just the chats on the phone, it's the whole coaching relationship, the e-mails, the ideas I might have and feed to the client.

"It's that feeling of having someone on your team. I work with a coach too, and sometimes I'd be sending her e-mails every day, announcing something I'd done and the coach would celebrate that with me."

Clients may see a coach for a short time or for years. They may even have multiple coaches for different areas of their lives - and spend more time on the phone than their teenagers.

Brisbane-based C. McDougall has been coaching for three years (before that she was a chiropractor). She has 22 clients who live around the world. McDougall denies that coaching is a substitute for friendship. "I don't judge my clients, I don't have my own agenda, I want their agenda for them," she says.

And the coaches say it's not about running people's lives.

McDougall says it's a mark of the coach's skill to avoid a dependent relationship forming. "My role is to create a life for the client that they are naturally pulled towards it and then they don't need me any more," she says.

"But life happens and they may want to come back to be coached for another period of time when something comes up."

The ICF carried out its first wide-scale survey of clients early this year, polling 210 coaching clients in the US.

The survey found that half of the respondents confided in their coach as much as their best friend, spouse or therapist. Some 84.8 per cent said the main role of the coach was to be a sounding board, to listen to them and give honest feedback. Some 78.1 per cent considered the coach a motivator, while 56.7 per cent called him or her a friend and 50.5 per cent a mentor.

When it came to hot topics covered, 80.5 per cent said they turned to their coach for help on time management, 74.3 per cent for career guidance, 73.8 per cent for business advice, 58.6 per cent on relationships/family issues and 51.9 per cent on physical/wellness issues.