By Lee Siew Hua

IT COULD have come out of an executive coaching manual: Professional winds down career, looks for a change, learns new skills, sets up firm on his own and thrives.

Meet Mr Foo See Luan, 72, who reinvented himself as a coach 12 years ago after retiring as human resources director of British industrial gas company BOC North Pacific.

He cites personal and financial reasons for his late-life launch of FSL Coaching: 'Keep an active mind, continue with professional and social networking. And earn another stream of income.'

Coaching lets him share his experience and wisdom with the community, adds Mr Foo, who works from his Queen Astrid Gardens luxury apartment, off Sixth Avenue. His retired manager wife, Madam Anna Foo, 71, provides administrative support.

He likes to use a Socratic style of questioning with his clients, who are mostly senior executives from Fortune's 50 Most Admired Companies list, including Microsoft and Nike.

The job looks easy for a retiree - quizzing a captive executive from a comfortable chair - but Mr Foo is keen to point out that coaching is 'high-intensity listening' that requires sensitivity to non-verbal cues such as slouched shoulders and facial expressions.

Of late, he has branched into coaching high net-worth families on succession issues.

Mr Chua Chen Tong, 64, and his eldest son Cai Zhuo Han, 35, run Singapore Valve & Fitting, a distributor of industrial fittings, and have been Mr Foo's clients for 16 months.

Mr Foo works with them together for 11/2 hours twice a month on preparing the son for succession and rallying the firm's 100 employees.

Mr Cai, who graduated with an electrical engineering degree from America's Carnegie Mellon University and who has an MBA from China's Tsinghua University, says that being coached has made him 'more aware' of his strengths and 'the importance of motivating people'.

And being coached alongside his dad has not been awkward. 'Having a third party as a coach removes any natural bias and we get another opinion,' he says.

If the trends evident in the United States are anything to go by, many more well-qualified retirees like Mr Foo will be moving into coaching as a second career.

A 2009 report by the Washington think-tank Urban Institute found that the shift in the US economy from manufacturing to services has created a mini-boom in jobs defined by lower entry barriers and less demanding physical work, such as coaching.

Indeed, US government career surveys indicate that career coaching ranks highly as a second career for professionals and is fairly recession-proof. Other top second careers include psychology, auditing and consulting.

In Singapore, Mr Foo is still unique as a retiree-turned-coach though he believes the numbers will grow. 'Many retirees have broad corporate experience, insight and wisdom that is prized in the Asian context,' he says.

Currently, most prevalent among the ranks of coaches are former bankers, lawyers, IT engineers or industrial psychologists.

One such career switcher is American Don Huse, 66, a banker for 35 years with Citigroup, Standard Chartered, Bank of New York and Bank of Hawaii. He spent over 20 years on the road in countries including Japan and South Korea.

In 2001, when he heard Bank of Hawaii was closing its office here, he started looking for a new role. He met representatives of some outplacement firms who asked him if he was a coach.

That planted the seed of an idea in his mind. So at 56, when he was laid off from his regional manager job, he signed up for coaching classes by Florida-based Coach U in 2001. It cost about $4,000 and involved weekend classes and teleconferences over five months.

During the course, Mr Huse met three Singaporeans and a German, all with senior management backgrounds, who subsequently teamed up with him to form Coaching Associates. They worked out of an office at SIM Management House in Namly Avenue, but now work separately.

Then, coaching was so new to Singapore that they had to knock on doors and call up friends working in human resources to drum up business.

Seven-plus years on, Mr Huse's firm has an established blue-chip clientele here and in Asia. He works primarily on performance feedback and leadership, charging $8,000 to $10,000 for 12 one-on-one sessions. He says he brings experience and 'informed listening' to the job.

Ms Dolly Yeo, 56, is another middle-aged corporate escapee, who set up Mindset Coaching in 2003 to 'create my new self'.

She worked 12-hour days as managing director of her family's antique business for 17 years, and spent some time as a life insurance agent. But by her late 40s, she felt that her personal growth had 'plateaued'.

Then a friend introduced her to the programmes of American motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. In 2002, she attended 24 teleconference classes with international coaching firm Results Coaching. In all, she spent more than $50,000 on self-development and 'inner work' courses here and in Australia.

The coaching convert, who works from her Housing Board flat in Bishan, decided to become a life coach seven years ago.

Tapping her small- and medium-sized enterprise background, she attracts mostly self-employed clients.

As a life coach, Ms Yeo makes less money than executive coaches, who typically earn $500 to $1,000 an hour. She charges between $250 and $300 an hour for 'inner work' and her client's weight reduction or revenue expansion goals.

Ms Yeo has also created a new niche as a parenting coach. She aims to shift traditional parental mindsets here from demanding academic excellence, to helping children acquire important life skills.

'I never pictured myself in this line at this age,' she admits. 'It takes a lot of courage to get out of your comfort zone.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.