A business coach does for corporate executives what a sports coach does for athletes: offers advice, strategies, encouragement -- and a little psychotherapy.

Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Chris Posti is president of Posti & Associates, which offers coaching, outplacement, and human resource counseling. Business coaching gained national prominence a decade ago, but is "just hitting its stride," in Pittsburgh, Posti said. Click photo for larger image.

David H. Goldman of Pittsburgh, who has been coaching for 16 years, said that companies increasingly are offering coaching as a perk for top executives.

"It's lonely at the top, and sometimes it's great to have someone to talk to, [without] the stigma of therapy . . . especially the CEO. The head of an organization really has very few people to talk to," Goldman said.

Even Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, had a coach, Goldman noted.

Personal coaching, also called life coaching, business coaching or executive coaching, gained national prominence a decade ago, but in Pittsburgh, "coaching is really just hitting its stride," said Chris Posti, president of the Greater Pittsburgh Coaches Association.

Tomorrow, the association will host "A Time for Change - Coaching Works," from 11 a.m.to 2:30 p.m. on the 31st floor of the Regional Enterprise Tower, 425 Sixth Ave.

The mini-expo will provide 16 coaches who, for free, will conduct 20-minute one-on-one coaching sessions to heighten awareness of the profession.

"Big companies are beginning to divert money from their training budgets and are putting it into coaching," Posti said.

"It used to be that companies would go through their employee rolls and say, 'this guy needs to go to negotiation skills class,' and 'this guy needs to go to communication skills class,' 'this one needs to know more about general management style,'" Posti said. "Now they're not providing a laundry list of classes for people to attend anymore."

Instead, they are hiring coaches for them.

One big company investing in coaching is Highmark. It has developed a handbook to guide managers, as well as their human resources department, in the use of coaches. In the last year, Highmark has arranged for about half a dozen of its executives to receive coaching.

"In the past there were a number of situations where coaches were engaged, and we didn't really track the results," said Chris Skerlong, director of training and development and chief learning officer at Highmark.

Now, "We've put a lot more structure and discipline around the identification of the coach and the match with the executive."

Noting that not every executive requires a coach, Skerlong described the typical candidate: "It's usually a high-potential executive who's worth the investment who needs development in a very particular area, frequently in communications skill or relational skills."

Cynthia Scott, president of Choice Counsel, a Downtown legal staffing firm, turned to Alyson Lyon for coaching when her company, which had been a franchise, separated from its franchisor in June 2003.

"The first thing I had her do was a group retreat," Scott said.

At that retreat, Lyon not only helped Scott and her staff to get clear about the company's direction, but she did it in a way consistent with Scott's Christian faith.

"It was very important to me that as we proceeded in this, that we do it along the principles of God," she said. "I know that probably not something that all coaches do, but I was extremely comfortable with her."

More than that, Scott said she "absolutely" would credit Lyon with improving her company's bottom line.

"We serve a very demanding clientele. They're smart, they're wise, they have a job to get done and they bill by the hour. So we really need to be on the ball if we're going to serve them well."

Anne Fleming, senior marketing director at Atlantic Luggage in Ellwood City, decided to seek out a personal coach a year ago to help her define her personal goals for retirement.She picked coach Barbara Schwarck."We were together for something like 40 minutes, and I was saying, 'sign me up,' " Fleming said.

A big reason for that -- a "wow" factor, as Fleming called it -- was that Schwarck uses an approach called NET, which stands for neurological-emotional technique. According to NET, a person's belief that he or she cannot achieve a stated goal manifests itself physiologically and prevents effective action.

Fleming and Schwarck made an initial three-month commitment and during that time, Schwarck helped her to identify and eliminate beliefs that were not in sync with her goals "The process was amazing to me, that I had a belief system or a memory that was not consistent with what I was saying I was going to do. So at the end of the day that means that I'm not going to do it."

Now she visits Schwarck once or twice a month.

"I was so thrilled and tickled with the results that I've remained a client of hers," Fleming said.

"I've been able to move obstacles that I never knew I had."