Chapters
A football coach has playbooks to refer to when pondering strategies to bring his team to victory.
A dance coach has a wide selection of choreography books and manuals to choose from, and may even invent a few moves, perhaps eventually penning a book himself.
A life coach, on the other hand...
You’ll note that the other two types of coaches mentioned have specific actions and goals: the former one should lead his team to a win; the latter should cause dance students to execute flawless moves and sequences.
A life coach’s mission is to guide you in becoming your best self so that you can achieve your life’s goals.
Which begs the question: what is best?
Some with a meretricious bent might argue that appearance is everything, and may aim for only the illusion of best.
Others with a penchant for usury may seek coaching sessions with the sole intent to make more profit at the expense of needy clients, considering those rewards an indication of being their best selves.
The very definition of one’s best self being subjective, how is a life coach Glasgow supposed to assess the most effective way to help whoever engages him?
And how can s/he tell the difference between an earnest client desiring an all-encompassing personal evolution and one whose goals could best be described as self-serving?
In short: what manuals, playbooks and resources are there for life coaches?
Your Superprof now endeavours to gather, into one convenient checklist, any failsafes a life coach London might need to help people in their transformational journey.
Training for Life Coaches
Although no certification or accreditation is required to become a life coach in our country, it serves your better interests to undergo life coach training.
For one, successfully completing an accredited coaching training course will give you the education you need to fulfil your obligations to your clients.
While you’re taking part in those seminars and workshops, you will be encouraged to network, both with other participants in your training program and with your instructors.
Those connections will prove invaluable to you later when you set up your coaching business.
You may consult with your mentor or fellow coaches over a particularly recalcitrant client – someone who has expressed a desire to succeed but is unwilling or unable to define his life purpose, for example.
For two, becoming a certified life coach will give you International Coach Federation credentialing.
The IFC is an organisation dedicated to the support of coaches everywhere in the world. To that end, they offer continuing professional development that includes skills enhancement and building on coaches’ core competencies.
Like so many professions, such as teaching and medicine, the ICF requires continuing further education in order to maintain valid, up-to-date coaching certification.
You may attend professional development events to learn about the latest coaching tools and how to use them. You might even benefit from mentoring by a Continuing Coach Education specialist.
Further resources on the ICF website include self-study programmes and other self-paced courses, either online or through correspondence.
You can find these resources and more on the ICF website.
Discover what skills you'll need to train to become a life coach.
Coaching Tools and Resources Online
The Internet is a vast treasure trove of anything you might think to look for.
Thus it stands to reason that anyone looking for new coaching techniques or to further see to their own personal development could find all types of materials just by typing a few keywords in their favourite search engine.
Unfortunately, shouting ‘Open, Sesame!’ as you sit in front of your computer with the expectation of appearing treasure will leave you gravely disappointed.
You have to ask the right question in order to get the answers you seek, and then winnow your search results down to those qualified for your particular situation.
In the interest of promoting self-help, your Superprof has undertaken that task for you!
Life Coach on the Go could be a particularly valuable resource for you because they specialise in short articles and activities that are nevertheless packed with information and insight.
They have an entire page dedicated to free worksheets and exercises that you may use for yourself or challenge your clients to complete.
As with every profession and progression, one does not become a life coach Bristol and then rest on one’s laurels; you would hardly be credible to your clients if you did that!
As we pointed out earlier in this text: personal development is a continuous, lifelong pursuit.
To that end, this website strives to provide you with daily nuggets of wisdom, in articles that take about one minute to read.
The wealth of topics include these titles:
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Coaching questions to get unstuck: how to get around clients’ defences
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Identify what you’re tolerating – for clients (and coaches!) who often feel overwhelmed, scattered or anxious
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Where does all my time go? Ever feel like the day rushes away while you’re moving in slow motion?
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What do you need to let go of? - be it emotional baggage or a misplaced sense of responsibility...
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Are you stuck in a rut?
Except for the first title, all of these exercises would be suitable for you and your client.
Wait! Do coaches need guidance too?
Just because you earn your living in the field of professional coaching doesn’t mean that you have your life set or manage to keep it together better than anyone else when unforeseen events occur.
Furthermore, having such tools at your disposal provides you with a variety of approaches you could take; surely, among them, you would find a way to connect with each client after having tested each one out!
Imagine meeting with a prospective client for their intake interview...
You would need to ask all the right questions, help them identify what they’re accepting and need to relinquish, and help them see how they can manage their time better.
Another way to overcome that barrier would be to use a Life Wheel, which is also freely available on their site!
Some say less is more and some believe that more must be better.
In this case, we take both approaches: listing a number of websites that offer tools and resources for life coaching in this table, for you to pick and choose those pages that best suit your operation.
| Page Name | What's on Offer | Web Address |
|---|---|---|
| Life Coach on the Go | worksheets, planners, motivational phrases and articles | https://lifecoachonthego.com |
| The Coaching Tools Company | exercises, newsletters, assorted templates, intake questionnaires | https://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com |
| Life Coach Hub | Setting up your coaching practice, attracting clients to your business, how to grow your business | https://www.lifecoachhub.com/coaching-business/coaching-resources |
| Circle of Life | readiness for change, blueprint for success, vision to reality flowchart, personal values exercises | http://www.healthandwellnesscoaching.org/tools/02Notes/index.htm |
| Paradigms | a Life Wheel, assorted worksheets, conflict tools, porcupine problem solver | http://www.life-coach-tools.com/free-tools/ |
How Lean Six Sigma Relates to Life Skills Coaching
Lean Six Sigma is an approach to manufacturing intended to reduce waste and maximise efficiency.
If you think about it, isn’t that what life coaching is all about?
We could equate waste in manufacturing with unproductive, and even counterproductive actions and emotions in our lives.
Production efficiency in manufacturing would correlate to the confidence we exhibit in our everyday dealings.
The function of Lean Six Sigma, and that of life coaching programs, is to provide a framework for overall change.
The Six Sigma concept dates back to just after World War II when allied troops were helping to rebuild Japan.
Their teaching programme included a short video, titled Improvement in Four Steps.
So impactful was this narrative that the Japanese industrial standard of kaizen emerged; that word that literally translates to improvement.
Those same standards are still in place in manufacturing, today!
Isn’t it interesting that the fundamentals of life coaching involve Zen principles, a concept incorporated into the basis of, and indeed the very word kaizen!
The psychology behind the principles of personal coaching and industry is the fundamentally the same: get rid of counter-production and excessive ballast in order to become the leanest and most efficient.
If it works for manufacturing, why wouldn’t it work for people, too?
Making that Paradigm Shift
Whether you are a business coach, an executive coach, a leadership coach, a wellness coach or a Six Sigma specialist, your job is the same.
A coach’s job is to bring about a paradigm shift: to guide their clients away from limiting beliefs and into the world of endless possibilities.
This transformation that you help bring about is not meant to lead to happiness, but to a new level of self-awareness – through which happiness may result.
Whether it does or not is your clients’ choice.
Once you’ve done everything you can to motivate your client to make positive changes in his life, once you’ve ensured they are passionate about living a more holistic life and will pursue a healthy life balance, your job is done!
On the other hand, they may perhaps declare that they wish to take a turn at helping others, in which case you may motivate them to take steps to become a life coach themselves: talk about fulfilment!
Isn’t that idea empowering?
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