Personal coaches help clients weather the storm of too many questions and too little time.

Personal Coach Jennie England helps her clients effectively juggle their priorities.Hypnotherapist Kathy Howley doesn''t really use a pendulum--but she keeps one on hand, just in case.

The telephone rings, someone picks up, and right away personal coach Jennie England''s voice says, "Hello, Traci." That''s how England answers the phone when she''s expecting a client''s call--with a personal touch.

Like a lot of self-improvement endeavors, personal coaching defies easy definitions. It''s not therapy, career counseling or friendship, but resides at the intersection of all three. It''s designed to help clients who need something less than dream analysis but more than the counsel of friends to change careers or in other ways improve their lives.

"It''s about being introspective," muses Kristan Grace, a Carmel Valley coach who comes to the profession from a career as a nurse and, of all things, an electrician. "It''s really about change and listening to your own soul and what it is you want to do, regardless of what your co-workers want or your spouse wants or your children want. I can help people explore that."

Most personal coaches will tell you that much of what they do is listening. Not just any kind of listening, but laser listening, engineered to pierce smoke screens and identify desires--one half hour of it every week at about $200 an hour, typically over the phone.

"The telephone is very convenient," notes England, who has clients in Denver and in other locales as well as on the Peninsula. "You don''t have to go through traffic to get to an appointment. You really can support people no matter where they are."

Coaching seems custom-tailored to raise suspicions. Thomas Leonard, one of the pioneers of the coaching profession, was a devotee of Werner Erhard''s est (now called Landmark), an intense personal growth organization famous for suing anyone who calls it a cult. Coaching is steeped in self-help lingo: "accountability," "integrity," "balance," "fulfillment." The method many coaches use is "co-active coaching," consisting of "powerful questions" and "clarification."

And yet coaching is a rapidly growing field with its own certification system and several institutes that train its practitioners. The International Coaching Federation has more than 4,000 member coaches worldwide. The Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael has been around since 1992, offering classes to some 2,500 students. Coach U, a virtual facility founded by Leonard that trains coaches via teleclasses, has had 3,000 students and 500 graduates since its inception in 1992.

In this world of decentralized workplaces, blueprintless careers and isolation, there may indeed be a place for an impartial agent who can help individuals make important life choices. As coaches will tell you, friends, by definition, cannot provide a disinterested viewpoint, and therapy is not always what''s needed.

"Friends and family members usually have an agenda for you, so it''s not an objective perspective," explains England. "The other thing is, how many people in your life truly listen to you without relating everything back to themselves? So your friends want to support you, but often it''s not the best way for you to step into your own greatness."

Stepping into Jane Deuber''s own greatness meant the Peninsula marketing consultant figuring out how to spend fewer hours working and more hours playing with her young son. When Deuber started working with England last spring, one of the first things they did was establish Deuber''s notion of an ideal day. By systematically setting up tasks and goals to accomplish, Deuber managed to "design my business around my life rather than my life around business." By November, she says, "there wasn''t a whole lot of difference between my ideal day and what my day was really like." England, she says, acted as a sounding board and a check on backsliding or evasive behavior.

"How I look at coaching is it''s a way of setting up accountability," Deuber theorizes. "If you know you''re going to check in with someone in two weeks, you have a tendency to be more proactive. I can''t stand whiners, so I won''t be one myself."

Sometimes, Grace and England agree, what clients are seeking is balance. They may be wealthy, they may be happily married, but they feel something is missing. Often the feeling is related to a hectic pace of life that tramples introspection.

"It''s like a correction of the overly automated society we''ve found ourselves in," says England. "Coaching focuses back to the goodness of people''s life and potential, so they can stop and say, ''Am I doing what I really want to do?'' It''s amazing what they''ll accomplish with the help of a coach."

February 5-11 is International Coaches Week, and coaches from the Monterey chapter of the International Coaching Federation are celebrating with free introductory sessions. For info, call Jennie England at 624-2525 or 625-2042.