When you yourself have been searching the net for something, you will often get a life coach site popping up in your results at some point. Life Coaching has evolved over the years and continues to alter and grow – but what is life coaching, how do you pick a life coach, and what should you be familiar with?
Niche in life coaching is the existing theme – this means that a life coach ‘specializes’ in one or even a few areas only. There are lots of life coaches though who still would be considered general life coaches and provide a much broader array of coaching services. Industry is pushing life coaches to possess specific niche’s quite hard and explain that people prefers ‘specialists’ and are willing to cover more for them. It is rather like the medical profession, you’ve generalists, generalists with a smaller focus, specialists with a broad focus and specialists with very specific focus topics. So, everyone entering coaching is told to truly have a niche; maybe it’s life coaching, client attraction, marketing, public relations, Christian, organization, health, financial and many, additional areas that ‘coaching’ will be offered in.
Throughout my research, I was totally amazed at how few life coaches will post their prices but in addition, and perhaps even most importantly, they cannot post their educational or work experience! I don’t find out about you, but I’m not necessarily thinking about sharing my dreams and goals with someone unless they’re qualified and meaning having work, life and educational experience in their ‘niche’ or coaching areas. I’ve asked many other coaches, and many of them are perfectly known and successful, and been told that education and experience are not important! So, I suppose from that, when someone worked at the neighborhood animal shelter and didn’t graduate from senior high school, they’re equally well qualified to supply life coaching services as everyone else. NOT in my own book. We take a look at plenty of information before we obtain a car, before we choose a health care provider, and even before we buy a mattress. Why wouldn’t it mean something in what education and work/life experiences a life coach has? So, buyer beware!
Why people should try Life Coaching:
Life Coaching is an incredible method for people to keep motivated, keep their focus, gain self-insights and strive to attain their goals. Life Coaching relates to the here and now and goes forward from there, it’s an activity based co-active coaching style that’s not like therapy which relates to past life events and more psychological issues. A life coach should have the educational/work/life experiences and tools necessary to meet up the needs of the customers and or even, then say so and refer the consumer to a life coach that does. I recently tried to acquire a referral network started at the life span coach school I attended, to ensure that I and others would know where you should refer a person if I felt their needs could be better met by another. Only two other coaches felt secure enough to place their strengths out there – no-one else!
In today’s busy, fast-paced world, it’s often filled with stress, little personal support and difficult to attain your goals or solve problems. Life Coaching is a good way to help a person with achieving their goals, solving problems, getting the support they need to ensure that life is less difficult and overall, improved.
What to look for in a Coach:
Tips for you, as a person in choosing a life coach include: know in advance what you need to attain with a life coach and have the ability to answer what sort of coach can best use you and you with them. It is also helpful to have idea how long you are willing to stay coaching before you expect to attain your results and just how much you are able to afford; research different life coach websites and read their articles, newsletters and take a look at their education/work/life experience and training; interview 3 different coaches – include in the interview your entire questions on experience, prices, types of accomplishments related to your goal, the length of time do they believe it would take to attain your goal, explain how you like to utilize a coach and ask what their design of coaching is; ask for two references that had goals just like yours; and above all, ensure the life span coach you select is one which you ‘connect’ with or that ‘feels right’ to you. Other possible questions could be asking what the life span coach feels are their strengths and weaknesses. Also be cautious if you get the impression that the life span coach may wind up ‘telling you things to do’ or pressuring you into goals or avenues that you may not want and they appear more the agenda of the coach than yours. Life coach
Life Coaching is supposed to be about the consumer and what they would like to achieve and their design of learning/growing/achieving through the method of reaching their goals. It is not about the life span coach. In reality, every life coach’s goal must certanly be to place themselves out of business. If coaching were done well, then eventually, fewer people would want it. As the word goes, ‘guide them to fish as opposed to feeding them fish and they’ll never go hungry’ ;.Costs for a lifetime coaching services can typically run $300-$600 per month and some should go to $300 or more an hour. Some coaches actually earn $18,000 hour. If the life span coaches you check-out don’t publish their costs, ask.
What is the continuing future of Life Coaching?
Where’s Life Coaching going later on? Whilst the economy and the increasing stress of everyday life is severely hurting the caliber of people’s lives, life coaching will continue to develop in the amount of people it serves in addition to the amount of life coaches entering the field. The amount of people utilizing the web and becoming net based businesses will continue to improve the amount of coaches who provide marketing, client attraction and who start business kinds of services.
One of many newer life coaching waves coming is ‘Wellness Coaching’ which is comparable to health coaching. Of concern in my experience is that lots of, that are entering this ‘niche’, receive only 20 hrs of training. Many life coaches practicing health or wellness coaching haven’t checked their state’s laws about what they can and cannot coach on in this ‘niche’ ;.A life coach cannot treat, diagnose, cure, prescribe or provide counseling. As a Holistic Practitioner, Certified Life Coach and Licensed Social Worker, I fear for people receiving life coaching services on health related subjects from life coaches with so little background in health and thus the possibility of harm of the consumer may occur. This really is my concern and opinion which can be shared by some and not by others. The pressure for more specific specialization, ‘niching’, will more than likely increase as well.
Will social media change the face area of coaching? That’s unknown at this time. There are lots of blogs and forums now that individuals can access for support due to their specific needs, meet and get to understand others thinking about the exact same things. The entire world has gotten smaller and it’s much simpler to get people to speak with on the net, yet we’re more isolated within our ‘real’ lives than ever before.
I envision the complexities of marketing, such as free give aways, membership groups, increased administrative time (which means less time for coaching), hard selling and heavy marketing will continue to improve, as well. I envision you will see expanded Coaching Schools that provide coaching education that offers core basics for all kinds of coaching and then gives additional education in specific aspects of specialty kinds of coaching. These will greatly lead to higher qualified service providers. I discovered it amazing, just how many coaches actually came out of the computer field from computer programming, IT support, web design and such. I do hope that something can be done to ensure the competency, skill, education, and connection with life coaches becomes more uniform and is much less a ‘shooting in a barrel’ experience for customers to get truly skilled and dedicated coaches.
