life coaching and personal coaching
life coaching and personal coaching
life coaching tips for business coaching, personal coaching - techniques for coaching success, performance, career and life-change
Coaching is a modern and rapidly growing method for helping others to improve, develop, learn new skills, find personal success, achieve aims and manage life change and personal challenges. Life coaching, or personal coaching - different terms are used - is effective for all situations, whether in personal life, career, sales or corporate and business life. Life coaching, personal coaching and similar coaching of this type is different to training. Coaching draws out rather than puts in. It develops rather than imposes. It reflects rather than directs. Coaching is is reactive, flexible and enabling, not prescriptive or instructional. Coaching is non-judgemental, not judgemental. Coaching helps people to develop and grow in a variety of areas, and this is leading to the development of separate coaching specialisms that are becoming new coaching disciplines in their own right, covering: personal coaching and life coaching, coaching for life-change, parenting; self-fulfillment and self-discovery; career coaching for advancement and job choices; leadership and management coaching; coaching for sales and business success; executive coaching for corporate performance and director development.
According to The Coaching Academy, whose contribution of this free coaching guide article is gratefully acknowledged, coaching is the world's second-fastest growing business skill. Coaching is now a profession, and one that is seeing rapid growth, primarily because for many people it is a uniquely satisfying career. All coaches have something in common - they are people that want to help others be the very best that they can be.
The Coaching Academy, Europe's largest coach training organisation has compiled this report on coaching to provide helpful information about coaching as a career, and to describe the principles and requirements of coaching as a personal development method.
Much of the factual content of this article has been gathered from the people who know best about this - coaches themselves. Look at coaching from their perspective to see what coaching is, and what coaching means.
personal coaching, life coaching - new and different to anything else
Coaching is about getting the very best out of someone and enabling them to make decisions that will improve their life. Coaches are hired for very many different and diverse reasons, for example: to climb the career ladder faster; to feel more fulfilled at work; to improve relationships with family and partners; to learn parenting skills that benefit both the child and parent; to gain a spiritual meaning to life, or a desire to 'get sorted'.
The profession is growing and coaching is becoming widely acknowledged also because people realise just how effective coaching is. Coaching is a relatively new and different profession - different to psychology, counselling or therapy. The big difference between coaching and these professions is that coaching doesn't claim to have the answers. A coach's job is not to go over old ground, be past-orientated or to force-feed information, but to work with clients to help them find the answers themselves.
Also, when a person experiences being coached, their motivation comes from working with a coach who is him/herself an upbeat, positive role model. In this way coaching is a unique way of developing people. Coaches agree that helping clients to reach their full potential through this approach produces great satisfaction.
reasons why people become a coaches
Whatever the reasons for people deciding to work with coaches; whatever the type of coaching given, and whatever results clients seek from coaching, a common feature in all coaching relationship is that coaching is a two-way process.
The two-way partnership is a main attraction for people to coaching. Both coach and client benefit. Personal development for the coach is a huge aspect of learning coaching and all coaches find that they themselves grow yourself, before starting to help others to do the same.
An excellent coach finds out new things about themselves and is on a continuous learning journey. Indeed, becoming a coach means a lifelong quest for personal excellence. For many this quest is the motivation to become a coach in the first place.
Helping clients discover where they want to go and helping them to get there is now a proven methodology, which is fuelling the increasing popularity of professional coaching.
Significantly, good coaches are never motivated entirely by money. The very nature of coaching means that it's a profession that is centered around 'making a difference' and helping people. Focusing mainly on making money generally leads to a lack of concern for the client, with the result that the client exits the relationship, not surprisingly. Happily, coaches who enter the profession chiefly for financial gain leave coaching quickly - which helps to maintain the integrity of the coaching professional reputation.
Common factors and reasons for coaches entering the profession:
they like people and want to bring out the best in them
they want to do something more fulfilling in their lives
they want personal and financial freedom
their family, friends and colleagues previously turned to them for advice and help - they have natural 'people' skills.
Coaching entails helping yourself grow and become more self aware, at the same time, helping others to overcome problems in their lives.
how life coaching and personal coaching typically operates
Interestingly, most life coaching and personal coaching is conducted on the telephone. Many coaches never actually meet their clients. For several reasons coaching is just as effective over the telephone as it is face-to-face. In fact, many clients prefer to speak over the telephone. This makes the process very convenient for both coach and client, and it offers greater flexibility for people with a busy lifestyle. Coaching using the telephone offers other obvious advantages:
coaching can be conducted wherever coach and client happen to be - anywhere in the world
there's no travelling time or cost involved
since little preparation needs to be done, telephone coaching sessions can be arranged with minimum prior notice
coaches do not need offices, meeting rooms, staff or other expensive overheads
A coaching session is typically thirty minutes and rarely longer than an hour.
life coaching and personal coaching profession attractions
Being self-employed has its advantages in any area of business. Having the luxury to choose the hours you work, where you work and how much to charge for your service is a huge motivation for anyone considering joining the profession.
Coaches can choose how many clients they want - one client, or twenty.
And there are no overheads involved - working from home is a big incentive for people who want to enter the coaching profession.
The flexibility of the coaching role, along with the rewarding aspects of the job, is likely to ensure that coaching and the number of practising coaches grows considerably in coming years.
Coaching, as well as being hugely satisfying, a means of personal development and very flexible, is also financially rewarding. Clients value and benefit from the support and are therefore happy to pay for it.
Coaches are attracted into the profession because it gives them:
accelerated personal growth and understanding of self
a lifelong journey of personal excellence and knowledge
the ability to enhance any job-role in any organization and industry - coaching brings out the best in people and motivates them to be the very best in whatever they do - in all manner of jobs and careers
more options in life - important and rare choices of when to work and with whom
a right and good purpose and meaning in life, measured in real value terms of effort and reward, not lost in a corporate fog
Little can compare to really making a difference in another person's life.
The ability to help people make lasting, positive changes in their lives is very special. Good coaches have this very special ability, and it is therefore no wonder that people are attracted to the coaching role.
Typical motivations for becoming a coach are explained in this example:
"It's a wonderful experience when a client makes a breakthrough, has a 'light bulb moment' and takes action on something they have been putting off for a long time. It's a fantastic feeling for both me and them." (Pam Lidford, a UK-based qualified coach and trainer)
challenges coaches face and how coaching overcomes them
On a day-to-day basis, coaches face many challenges. Coaching is an ongoing process, a method of continuous development and a significant learning experience for coaches and clients, so it's important to learn from 'mistakes'
The key to this is realising that these aren't 'mistakes' or failings in the first place.
What many people regard as mistakes are lessons, experiences, and opportunities to learn and develop.
Cherie Carter-Scott in her book 'If Life Is Game, These Are The Rules' has some helpful things to say about mistakes and learning. So does Don Miguel Ruiz in his book 'The Four Agreements'. See also the inspirational quotes, many of which help to approach mistakes and learning experiences positively. Perhaps one of the most powerful examples is "What does not kill us makes us stronger." (attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, probably based on his words: "Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." from The Twilight of the Idols, 1899).
A coach must demonstrate resourcefulness and help people to see that if they think they have failed in the past, this bears no bearing to what they can do in the future.
John Cassidy-Rice is a qualified coach who has been working in personal development for over 12 years. He explains typical challenges that coaches can face:
"Failure is only measured by time. If you look at the bigger picture, it's the 'failures' in our life that can actually turn out to be our greatest successes. What we learn from failure is invaluable. To give an example, when a football team loses an important match, they may regard themselves as failures; it's a natural thought process to go through. However, if they take it one match at a time, and look at where they went wrong in the game, and indeed, how they can improve for the next one, it means that these mistakes won't be made again - and they'll be successful in the future games they play. It can be a challenge to remove the 'failure' thought from clients. And showing them that it doesn't mean they can't achieve success in the future."
Listening skills, and resisting the urge to give advice are key attributes and methods of successful coaching, and central to truly helping people find their own direction and solutions.
Listening is the most important ability and behaviour of a coach. This takes patience, tolerance and practice, especially in order to develop real empathic listening techniques. See the section on empathy, which explains more about the different types of listening.
Communicating fully and expertly is
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