How To Become A Life Coach

A career in life coaching is a perfect fit for an energetic, upbeat person who enjoys the company of others, has a sincere interest in their welfare and enjoys meeting the challenges presented in resolving everyday life issues.

What Does A Life Coach Do?

The job of a life coach is to provide assistance and affirmation to individuals seeking help in realizing their full potential in specific areas of their lives. These areas can be business or social, financial or health, personal or spiritual, or any other area that warrants attention. Through regularly scheduled contact or meetings, coaches and clients interact to facilitate a focus on areas of strengths and weakness in order to initiate progress, resolution and improvement. Coaching generally tends to be goal oriented, involving a collaborative process between coach and client wherein goals are set to reinforce insure progress or resolution. Depending on the client’s desires or wishes, however, a coach may simply act as a sounding board to help the client sort through conflicting thoughts or provide motivation where needed to enact improvement and take advantage of positive change. Sessions are individually tailored to the client.
Sessions usually consist of one individual who is seen privately, but groups such as large corporations or small businesses may also be assembled and addressed together. Massive corporate coaching presentations are common and are often included with some type of employee incentive event. Executive coaching is also a thriving portion of the coaching industry.

While most coaches regularly meet face-to-face with clients, sessions may take different forms too, where clients maintain regular phone contact instead following an initial in-office session. The process is amenable to personal preference and convenience, based on the discretion of both parties. Some coaches set up in joint practices with other facilitators, but most maintain solo operations. Based on the scope of each practice, office settings can be as extensive or minimal as desired, with some practitioners working out of areas of their homes.

While experience and education are significant factors in the success of a life coach, perhaps the most important attributes of an effective facilitator are personal strengths and perspectives when interacting with other people. Desiring favorable outcomes in the lives of others while displaying sincere interest in their welfare should be a facilitator’s natural focus. Effective communication skills that also involve being a good listener are a necessity. Capable life coaches should ideally demonstrate a reasonable amount of success in their own life’s course in order to be capable of mentoring and influencing the lives of others.

Becoming A Life Coach

Sources for information, education and training in this field are numerous and widely available. As this is a relatively young area of practice that has emerged since the seventies or eighties, it is largely unregulated and there are no preset educational models in place. There are, however, two major certification entities by which the industry tends to self-regulate. The International Coach Federation, known as the ICF, and the International Association of Coaching, or IAC, are two organizations that offer credentials to candidates that demonstrate the required education or experience. There is continuing debate among the experts, however, as to whether recognition by either organization is necessary or insures any greater effectiveness in the field.

There is also debate over how much formal education is necessary. There are hundreds of schools offering instruction in the growing field of coaching. Seminars and workshops are popping up across the nation as more and more individuals, businesses and corporations avail themselves of the enhancements that life coaching can provide. Depending on background experience and existing level of education, entry into life coach training can be as extensive as enrolling in an ICF- or IAC-accredited institution and fulfilling all their requirements for accreditation, or as minimal as attending a generally informative workshop or seminar and then making yourself available to individuals who need some unbiased input on certain matters. Whether you are equipped to provide a viable service that is of benefit to others is what each practitioner attempting to enter the field must decide for himself. Then a decision can be made as to how much education or training to seek before offering services and whether or not accreditation is necessary. If you do elect to pursue an educational course, great care should be taken to avoid any institution that does not have a proven track record with a history of turning out successful practicing life coaches. Successful life coaches active in the field can provide a wealth of information and advice in this area as can contact with either of the two certifying associations.

Once an educational course, if any, is plotted, attention should be given to the maintenance of a practice. Business experience and insight into running a small business will be invaluable in this effort and all the instruction and information you can find will not be wasted. Word of mouth and sound relationships formed with clients will be your most productive mode of advertisement. Good relationships create the foundation for a solid coaching or mentoring exchange, and those strong relationships will continue to serve you in securing new clients by word of mouth and in building your practice.

For most people who actually pursue this vocation, it turns out that coaching is not so much their choice of an occupation as it is a characteristic of their personality and basic makeup. If you are someone that people seem to come to naturally for advice and support, then you have likely been someone’s life coach already. You can make a profitable and rewarding career out of providing honest feedback and motivating people to realize their full potential. Two things all successful life coaches have in common are their love for their work and their love of learning. If you are willing to invest a bit of yourself toward the success of someone else, you will find true purpose in life coaching and make a good living doing what you love at the same time.