Coaching in sport is par for the course, but mention life coaching and we run for cover. Are we losing out, asks Róisín Ingle

Parricia Anne Todd is explaining what her life-coaching organisation has to offer Irish people who have been slower than most in signing up for what's known as therapy for the 21st century. "Let me buddy you, let me champion you, let me be there for you," she says on the phone from Dorset, in England. "Irish people love a good story. I have a wonderful story to tell."

The problem for this country's small number of practising life coaches, estimated by Todd at just under 100, is that the rest of us haven't been listening. While in the US, France, the UK and Australia customers have been shelling out to hear how they can "maximise their potential", "redress the work-life balance" and "be the best they can be", Irish people have been missing out on a phenomenon that began 15 years ago.

PaTricia Anne Todd - she spells it that way to make her "unique" - is determined to change all that. Tomorrow evening she will give a lecture at the RDS in Dublin on her 25 years as a life coach, hoping to convince people to train with her and "unlock the full potential" of the Irish life-coaching market. Her long-term goal is for everyone in this country to have a life coach of their own. "I think it will happen," she says.

Asked why life coaching has become such an acceptable service in some countries, as unremarkable as employing a tennis coach to improve your backhand, Todd points to the fact that people are desperate for change. "They want fast food, they want to get places fast, so they want their lives to change fast. And life coaching helps accelerate that process," she says. "You have wonderful life coaches here - in fact I have trained some of them - but I am only coming along to put more pepper into people's dreams. To wake them up to the possibilities."

One Irish life coach, Larry McMahon from Co Kerry, explains his craft on the Internet: "You pull in from the racetrack, get any necessary repairs, have your engine revamped, then hit the track again with your motor revving and your car pointing in the right direction." Such laboured analogies are thought to be just one of the reasons why the service has not taken off in Ireland on the scale seen in other countries.

Life coaching hasn't been embraced here, says Todd, because the message isn't getting out in the right way. "You just have to give them the right story," she says. "A lot of people are very sceptical, so the best thing to do is to speak to them on their level. We need to explain that they themselves, not the life coach, are the ones who are going to implement change. They are always in control, they are captains of their own boat, masters of their own destiny."

According to John Raftery, a Galway-based life coach who concentrates on helping clients seeking a career change, the relatively low interest in such programmes can be blamed partly on cultural differences.

"In America, where the life-coaching model began, there is very much a culture of people wanting other people to succeed, to be the best they can be in whatever field they choose," he says. "In adapting this to Irish culture you have to be a little less brash and more subtle or else it won't work."

That there is little regulation of life coaching here - anyone can stick a sign on their door and call themselves a life coach - is also thought to put people off. Some organisations, such as the Life and Business Coaching Association of Ireland, are attempting to regularise the industry. Pat Bisset of the association, who runs a practice alongside his full-time job as an electrician, says life coaching can be misinterpreted as therapy when in fact it deals with the present and the future rather than the past.

But, he adds, awareness is one of biggest hindrances to growth. "There is everything we need in this country to operate widespread life coaching, but there isn't an awful lot of clients who know about it and what it can do for them."

There has been some progress. Ultan Hayes of AIB's training and development department in Dublin has observed how staff in the bank are more comfortable with business-coaching methods since they were introduced in the company some years ago.

"At the beginning people would say they were popping out to the dentist when really they were going to see one of our panel of coaches. Now they say: 'I have a coach.' There is less embarrassment; they see it as getting help now, where before it might have been viewed as them getting fixed," he says.

Those in the industry say life or business coaching is easier to sell to Irish people when it is based on achieving tangible goals, such as a change of job or learning how to lead a fulfilling life after retirement. But when it comes to more ephemeral life coaching, in which the spiritual dimension is key, there is more resistance.

Ali Fisher, who is based in Dublin, began life coaching in the mid-1990s but grew disillusioned with the process. "The way I was taught was based very much on the American model. It was male-oriented and driven by the head and not the heart," she says.

More recently she advertised workshops focusing on creativity and spirituality. "I hung up a few signs but nobody came back to me . . . . I had the words 'discover your own unique divine plan' in the ad, and that might have been off-putting for people, even though I believe we need those kinds of insights more than ever these days."

Although the image consultant Celia Larkin is involved in a more superficial kind of coaching, advising clients on everything from the colour of their lipstick to the clothes that best suit them, she says people often look for help with implementing positive change when they reach a milestone such as a 40th birthday or when their work situation alters.

"The view that this kind of interest in ourselves is somehow conceited or vain is outmoded," she says. Larkin believes that as a small country Ireland generates closer bonds between people and that this may be one reason why we are not all rushing out to employ coaches.

"We keep in constant touch even with people who move away; the social network is tighter. Perhaps we are less inclined to go for life coaching because we aren't as isolated as people in other countries, such as the US, might be," she says.

When you suggest that friends or family can offer equally valid guidance and advice on life issues, however, Todd says: "Sometimes we tell our friends what he or she wants to hear. As a life coach I am constantly moving the goalposts. Just as you are getting to one point I move them again, so that you are constantly developing.

"People want the gaps filled in their lives," she adds. "They want to stop sabotaging themselves . . . . I will offer them a process where I will change their attitude to the problems, so that they will see them as a challenge and take full responsibility for their lives. The client is in control. He or she turns on their own light."

With clients all over the world, including the Prince's Trust in England, for which she coaches young entrepreneurs, Todd has built a solid career from life coaching and hopes to train others to do the same here. "I think within a year we are going to see big changes in the life coaching industry in Ireland."

PaTricia Anne Todd's talk, entitled Coaching Leads to Success, is in the Merrion Room of the RDS at 6 p.m. tomorrow

Six life-coaching questions

• What do you want?

• Why do you want it?

• When do you want it?

• Who says you need to have or accomplish it?

• Where do you have to go to make it happen?

• How will you achieve it?