Life coaches tend to be individuals, often with college degrees, who wish to do something more personal with their careers. Working in life coaching requires close relationships with clients during which the coach leads their clients toward their greater purpose in life. Life coaches help craft plans of action for clients to get where they want in life and encourage them to take the necessary steps.
The most experienced coaches know how to listen to what their clients say and understand the deeper meaning behind it. By hearing their client’s intentions and recognizing their clients’ strengths and weaknesses and teaching their clients a better sense of self-awareness, life coaches lead and coach their clients toward discovering their higher purposes,
Life coaches often work in person, but it is not unusual to have client meetings through video or phone calls.
Responsibilities as a Life Coach
Life coaches have several responsibilities to attend as part of their position. The most common responsibilities centralize on helping clients achieve their goals through continued and sustainable progress. This requires life coaches to be capable of gauging their clients’ requirements and how coaching can help satisfy them. Through discussions about those requirements, life coaches pinpoint and define goals while guiding their clients to identify and remedy both internal and contextual roadblocks. Through collaboration, life coaches teach emotional and behavioral regulation techniques that will assist their clients in developing and achieving their action plans.
Part of being a life coach includes holding your client accountable for inaction in a way that is supportive and direct. Clients count on their life coaches to help point out missteps and guide them back on track. This is done by keeping track of progress and regularly meeting clients. When clients reach their goals, life coaches often celebrate with them, applauding their successes and encouraging them to keep improving.
Qualifications for Life Coaches
Successful life coaches often have a bachelor’s degree in psychology, social development, or other similar fields. It is highly recommended for aspiring life coaches to complete an advanced degree in a relevant field.
Beyond that, life coaches need pertinent coaching qualifications, ideally given by the International Coach Federation. This accreditation shows that the individual has completed training in what will be necessary to complete their role as a life coach.
This job requires strict and complete adherence to all ethical guidelines in a non-judgmental manner. Life coaches must be reflexive and empathic, with an ability to communicate clearly and concisely verbally. They should be decisive, but flexible when change is needed.
Essential Skills for Life Coaches
Life coaches need a certain skillset under their belts in order to successfully lead their clients to success. These skills include:
- The ability to facilitate a client’s self-awareness, granting them recognition of their ability to create change in their own lives.
- The ability to foster strong, trust-based relationships with others.
- Charisma and the ability to facilitate and inspire change in others.
- The ability to listen actively while also resisting the urge to solve problems for your clients yourself, even when you see the obvious solution.
- NThe ability to be mindfully present with your client in the moment during coaching sessions.
Where Life Coaches Work
Often, life coaches attempt to work on their own. However, for those uninterested in or unable to run their own business, there are plenty of job opportunities in a wide range of workplaces.
Coaching businesses are becoming more popular. Life coaches oten work with senior corporate leaders and managers, teaching them new leadership skills that will help them in future endeavors. Because leaders and managers are in positions of influence and power over their employees, they need to have many of the skills that life coaches teach their clients, such as emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and more.
Corporations and companies may hire life coaches to work as in-house coaches to their leaders or high-performing teams to keep the individuals on track. to success.
Rehabilitation centers, residential care centers, and other medical practices often employ life coaches to help people who need to make changes to their lifestyles to lead healthier lives. This may include patients or people with disabilities struggling to live independently.
Insurance companies sometimes hire life coaches to work with members of insurance plans in wellness coaching.
Life Coach Specialties
Many life coaches choose to specialize, creating a specific focus to their practice. This is particularly true for self-employed coaches who set the ground rules for themselves. Many companies employ generalist life coaches.
Some of the most common specialities in life coaching include the following:
- Academic life coaches: These coaches emphasize guiding new students during their adjustment to university life as they grapple with the massive changes associated with moving away from home and living independently for the first time and maintaining good grades.
- Executive leadership coaches: These coaches focus on teaching executives and managers to hone their leadership skills.
- Health and wellness coaches: These coaches tend to focus on helping clients trying to make healthy changes in their lives.
- Internal and organizational coaches: These coaches focus on creating positive, systemic transformation within organizations to boost performance.
- Life balance coaches: These coaches emphasize teaching clients to clarify their goals and to define clear steps to take toward them.
- Life transition coaches: These coaches help clients through periods of major change and transition in their lives, such as facing divorce, death, parenthood, or other family issues.
- Relationship coaches: These coaches focus on helping couples and individuals foster healthy relationships to better connect with each other. The end goal is to foster a sense of fulfillment in the relationship.
- Spirituality and mindfulness coaches: These coaches help guide their clients toward mindfulness so they can make conscious, mindful decisions and live an intentional life.