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Life's His Game
December 19, 2008
by John Long
Yes, Chuck Franks is a coach, but he’s in a non-athletic field. Franks is a life coach and he runs his own coaching company, Inner Strength Quest.
“People confuse us with consultants, with therapy,” Franks said. “Consultants are someone you hire as an expert in a specific field, and they tell you exactly what you need to go and do. A coach is someone that you hire to come in as a partner to help you focus on specific goals.
“It’s a very action-oriented plan, where you decide, ‘This is the goal that I want, this is where I want to go,’ and then together you explore what your strengths are, what the obstacles might be and you come up with a plan of action to take the necessary steps to reach that goal.”
Franks has a master’s degree in counseling psychology and a license in clinical social work, and he has lived in Kansas City with his partner, named Frank, for 12 years. He went to massage school to learn massage therapy, which adds another dimension to his coaching of other massage therapists, as he helps them build their businesses.
Franks said his clients range from small businesses to individuals. He coaches a lot of executives, he said, “to hone their leadership skills.”
One client, he said, was a nurse with whom he had previously worked. She came back to him when she was assigned a new job with more leadership skills required.
“I guess a lot of the basis of coaching is about some sort of transition, whether it’s about changing jobs or changing mindsets or changing just the way you’re interacting with someone else. A central theme is change, a very good topic this year,” he said, with a laugh.
“My main focus these days is more on relationship coaching, working with either couples or helping people understand that they’re in relationships with everyone around them. If they’re a business owner, their relationship with their customers and PR and marketing is very key.”
Franks said that in this electronic age, it’s still very important to focus on personal relationships and human interaction.
“The Internet is really giving people a false sense of relationship,” he said. “I think that people are starting to rely on emails and text messages much more than is healthy. You cannot get the inflection and tone of humor and sarcasm in the written word, and then when you start doing text messaging, when you’re cutting words down into syllables and letters, you’re just getting a very basic message across, you’re not really connecting. So it’s removing that human connection.”
Two years ago, he said, he joined the Heartland Coaches Association, a nonprofit professional development group and a division of the International Coach Federation (ICF). He’s now president.
“It was about eight to 10 people getting together once a month informally with a topic of discussion, sort of doing a bit of networking and getting together and talking about the profession. They were looking for some new leadership and they asked me if I was interested -- well, they ask anyone if they were interested -- and I naively said yes,” he said, with a laugh. “In those two years, we’ve gone from eight to 10 people to 60 paid members with an email list of about 140 coaches in the Kansas City area.”
Franks recently attended the 2008 ICF conference in Montreal, where he accepted an award for the Heartland Coaches, one of seven associations honored by the ICF. The Local Spirit, Global Presence–Community Activism Award was given to the Heartland Coaches for their pro bono work for Kansas City’s Good Samaritan Project, which provides care, advocacy and education for those affected by HIV/AIDS.
In his acceptance speech, Franks stated: “I see the passion and professionalism in our local coaching community all year long, as chapter president. This Local Spirit, Global Presence-Community Activism Award publicly acknowledges the time, effort, passion and commitment of the coaches I have the esteemed honor to work with and know personally. It allows our chapter to reflect on and rejoice in our spirit, passion and commitment to giving back to our community. We have plans to continue giving back to our local community by awarding a service grant annually. We had more coaches volunteer to work on this grant than we could utilize, which only brings excitement and promise about future possibilities. We look to the future with high hopes about our capacity to be a presence in and continue to give back to our local community.”
Franks explained, “Part of our mission statement is to give back to the community. So for International Coach Week in February, we decided we would award a grant to another nonprofit. We considered several nonprofits and came up with Good Samaritan Project.”
Franks led the nine-person team that spent six months delivering the service grant to GSP.
“We gave them $5,000 worth of professional services,” Franks said. “We went in and did some assessments of the directoral team and we also did some training with the board of directors and did some individual coaching with each one of the directors.”
He said that the group plans to offer the service grant annually and will develop an application process for other nonprofits that would like to apply.
For others seeking coaching help, he suggested that when people interview potential coaches, they should ask what type of specific training a coach may have.
The coaching profession, Franks said, is self-regulated at this point, “so the big issue is that the profession is moving toward credentialing.”
“There are a lot of coaches that don’t have a specific credential, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a great coach. There are some credentials put out by the ICF, and I actually just earned one of those credentials this year. There are several credentialed coaches in Kansas City through the ICF.”
“I’m a PCC, professional certified coach,” he said. “That was a 128-hour program through the College of Executive Coaching.”
Fees vary by coaches and schedules -- some charge by the hour, or week or month, Franks said.
He has coached people individually, he said, who were dealing with coming out as something important to their personal and professional development.
“Whether it be coaching them to come out because they’re married and they’re coming out because they’re gay, or coaching them to more fully identify being HIV-positive because that’s kind of another coming-out process that people have to go through and create those support networks for themselves,” he said. “That really is what gets us through life … having those friends and family that are supportive of us as we’re struggling with these issues. It’s all about facing the fear of rejection and the barriers we put in front of ourselves.”
Coach, Psychiatrist to Lead Men’s Group
Chuck Franks and Arnaldo A. Berges, a psychiatrist in Kansas City, will be starting a men’s personal development group in February.
“It’s going to be about focusing on men’s issues – masculinity, how we show up in the world, how community plays a role in our life,” Franks said.
“I have a feeling that there might be a higher preponderance of gay men in it,” he said, with a laugh, “but we’re not limiting it and we’re not promoting it as a gay group. We’re promoting it as a man’s group. Sexuality is a component of being a man, but it’s only one part of it.”
Information on the group will be available on his website (innerstrengthquest.com) in the next few weeks. He can also be reached by email at chuck@innerstrengthquest.com.
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