Posted on February 23, 2010 by Stephan Wiedner

Bridgette Boudreau is a Martha Beck certified coach, Master weight coach and head coach of her weight loss coaching group, ‘Weight Shift Coaching’. Bridgette also serves as Program Coordinator for Martha Beck’s Life Coaching Training Program. Despite her demanding schedule, I was fortunate enough to have the chance to speak with Bridgette about Martha, the Martha Beck Life Coach Training Program and her role as coordinator.

Noomii: Can you tell me a little about Martha Beck and the background of her life coach training program?

Bridgette: Martha was a professor at Thunderbird School for International Business about 10 years ago…While she was teaching at the school, students kept coming to her office and asking her what to do with their lives. She found that she was able to speak with the students in a different way than most people would. The students kept coming in and even started referring her. Eventually a magazine article referred to her as a “life coach”, but the title did not concern Martha, she just genuinely enjoyed helping, guiding and coaching her students.

At the same time Martha began a writing career and wrote books including “Finding Your Own North Star”. She enjoyed working with other coaches and people interested in helping others so much that she started training coaches on her methodology. She ran intensive weekend courses that left she and the students exhausted. Martha knew that there had to be a better way to deliver the course material.

In the end she worked with some of her Master Certified Coaches and developed a comprehensive 8 month training program that is mostly delivered over the phone with people all over the world. Apart from the schooling, there are opportunities to get together with the other students and do a meet and greet to spend organized time with Martha in person.

Noomii: Is there a typical student that you are looking for?

Bridgette: There is not a typical student at all. We have people with and without college educations. We are starting to see more men entering the program. There is certainly not a model student.

In terms of Introvert vs. Extrovert, generally speaking coaches tend be extroverts, however there are certain types of coaching such as writing coaching, and methods of coaching, like email vs. phone, that lend themselves to more introverted personalities.

In addition, although no formal education is required before entering the program, we have found that our students like to read and have a passion for educating themselves.

I will tell you this – the people that have the most success with our program are the people that are naturally drawn to helping others. If you are a person that others consistently seek out for advice, they always want to bounce ideas off of you and most importantly, you enjoy being that person, then coaching is a career path your should consider. That is the person that we are looking for and the person who will benefit the most from Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training Program.

Noomii: Is there a set amount of experience (business, career or personal) that a student must have before entering the program?

Bridgette: As I mentioned earlier, there is no set amount of experiences, education or employment background that a person must have before entering the program. People should begin the training when they feel called to come and are hungry to do it. Most importantly, they should be the kind of person that has a strong desire to help other people in the first place.

Noomii: What distinguishes this school from any others that offer life coach training?

Bridgette: The difference really lies in the process. With Martha’s School, the focus is on doing your own internal work before taking action. For me, it was looking internally before taking the leap from marketer to coach. The training helps pave the way by finding what feels right for each student client. Part of this process works on dissolving the “fears” or “should haves” that get in the way of their path or dreams. Once these fears are dissolved, our student clients can tap into their own intrinsic fears and motivations. They can start making moves and decisions that are bigger or riskier, but are pointing them in the path of their career right life.

We believe that people inherently know what is right for them and we help them access that. Ultimately, we help people “fail forward”. We recognize that you are going to have failures along the journey, but we help you continue forward. All of this is built on Martha Beck’s research and experiences.

Martha is just an incredible person; at the same time a rigorously trained Harvard researcher and also a Mystic – It is a unique blend. She blends her background as a rigorously trained Harvard researcher with the understanding that we are emotional beings seeking to satisfy our souls. Our educational base is in science and we use tools to help quantify the coaching process. This is blended with the idea that people truly do know what’s right for them—our job as Martha Beck coaches is to help people reach inside themselves and discover what they truly want from life access this information.

Noomii: What is your role at Martha Beck?

Bridgette: When I am working with Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training Program, I am the program coordinator. I basically run Martha’s life coach training program. I take all questions from the “Coaching Cadets” as Martha likes to call our incoming students and am the go to point person during training sessions for people in the program. It is a temporary one-year position as Martha is really conscious of the fact that she wants all of her coaches to have careers outside of her training programs. She doesn’t want to become a large corporation so every year there is a new person in my role.

Bridgette Boudreau is a Seattle-based life coach and the Program Coordinator for Martha Beck’s Life Coach Training Program, a Master Certified Weight Coach and Head Coach at Weight Shift Coaching, a weight loss coaching group “for smart women sick of crappy diets”.

If you are interested in being interviewed on behalf of a coaching school please contact jesse@noomii.com