Coaching Federation (ICF) is probably the most recognizable institutional body that certifies quality in the coaching industry, accrediting coaches and courses ofered by other schools or educators. In their website they thus boast being the gold standard of the industry: “Anyone can call themselves a coach. But ICF-credentialed coaches are professionals who have met stringent education and experience requirements and have demonstrated a thorough understanding of the coaching competencies that set the standard in the profession” (International Coaching Federation, 2023). Other coaching organizations can then apply for having their courses approved by ICF and use the “accredited by ICF” label as a badge of prestige (Ackerman, 2021).10 In turn, the coaching entrepreneurs, who for whatever reason are not collaborating or are competing with ICF, are profiting by the coaching industry’s deregulation. “At The Life Coach School”, Castillo and her team emphatically say, “we did not and will not apply for Certification through the International Coaching Federation (ICF)” (The Life Coach School, nd: 24–25). This field in-the-making then reflects the “rhizomatic dispersion” of expertise and authority in neoliberalism (Kaščák and Pupala, 2011: 148), according to which a semi-institutional actor can make a claim to authority and challenge the legitimacy of other actors. In coaching, there is no governmental body that holds undisputed authority over the field, it is the entrepreneurial enterprise and the market that decides which knowledge agendas are valid. In the context of these multi-platform interactions of schools and learning programs, expertise becomes efervescent as it can be seized by individual coaches or their schools via performative claiming. Such performative claiming provides to coaches like Castillo, Ramsay, and Joeel and Natalie Rivera the chance to prove their credentials via reviews, rankings, clips, interviews, and other platform material potentially leading to micro-celebritization. In the next two sections, we move from the coach’s curation in the platform economy to the strategies for self-curating that this multi-billion-dollar industry endorses and promotes. In Section 6.4, I focus on what I regard as the staple frames of self-curating, including discipline, mindset, confidence, and resilience, and in Section 6.5, I look at how these frames take shape in the heterosexual male coaching discourse around the areas of sex and intimacy.
6.4 Curating Lives of Discipline, Confidence, and Resilience
The purpose of describing the strategies of self-curating is to turn attention to the cultures, values, and meaning the curatorial imperative endorses. Similar to what was argued before, the next two sections argue that the curatorial imperative expands cultures of self-absorption, fulfillment, and inspiration. The main principle that coaching cultures endorse is that life and the self should be perceived and efectively curated as projects. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, the self in this endeavor should be both the project’s supervisor and the entity to be supervised. While this distinction is not usually made explicit by coaches themselves, let us, for the sake of analysis, call the “uncurated self” an entity with a damaging propensity toward disorganization, indulgence, conformity, and laziness, and the “curator self” as the potentially rational, organized, and prudent supervisor of this entity. It is a project then that has a particular aim to transform the uncurated self into an improved version of the self.
Curating Mindsets, Micro-Celebrities, and Intimacies
139