LIFE COACHING

What is it?

Life coaching is the practice of helping individuals achieve personal and professional goals. Life coaches use a variety of techniques to help clients clarify their goals, identify their strengths, evaluate their opportunities, and focus their energies on achieving their goals. The life coach listens, provides honest feedback, motivates, and disciplines.

Life coaches are not licensed counselors or psychotherapists. They are not required to have professional training or credentials and are not subject to any regulatory authority, although they may be certified by any one of a number accreditation bodies. Life coaches do not diagnose psychological pathologies; they work primarily with "healthy" individuals.

What makes a good life coach?

Results Oriented

Good life coaches get results. Clients recognize the value of their coaches because their coaches help them to accomplish their goals. A good life coach doesn't just validate your thinking; a good life coach helps you transform your thinking into reality. The coach compels you to face reality by forcing you to translate your dreams into steps and your steps into measurable achievements.

Action Oriented

Good life coaching is always about action. If you leave a coaching session without an action plan, you don't have the right coach. If your next session doesn't refer back to that plan, you don't have the right coach. If you find that you are moving measurably toward your goals when previously you were unfocused and floundering, then your coach is likely a good match for you.

Life Experience

Life coaches generally are good at what they do because their life experiences have equipped them with exceptional people skills. They are good listeners, cheerleaders, and disciplinarians. The best ones have an instinct that allows them to discern when you are facing reality and when you're just making excuses. They may have experience in human resources, corporate management, a service industry, public service, or faith-based ministry.

Industry-specific experience does not necessarily make a life coach more qualified for persons in his or her respective field. In life coaching, the client sets the goals and develops the plan. The coach helps the client to work his own plan and to discover for himself whether or not the plan works.  The coach does not attempt to critique the client’s plan based on his own experience.  The coach encourages the client to critique his own plan based on his own experience.  The coach assumes that each person’s experience with be different because no two people are alike.

Qualified Profile Administer

Many life coaches are trained in the administration of personality profiles such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), the DiSC® profile, and the Strong Interest Inventory®. Such instruments can provide clients with valuable feedback regarding their own behavioral preferences. They can help clients to pursue opportunities that they will find satisfying over the long haul.  Administration and interpretation of these tests, however, is generally only the first step in a coaching relationship.

Interested in finding the right life coach?

Contact Team Momentum. We'll connect you with one of our coaches or recommend one that could be a good fit for you.

© 2009 Team Momentum