Choosing Your Life Coach

2015-03-222015-03-17 ~ adminlife

“Success is simply never giving in to failure – either in mind or body.” ― Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

You want to have a personal life coach but don’t really know how to make sure that you select the right one.

The article below gives some advice to ensure that you select the right life coach to give you the best results in your life.

How to Choose a Personal Life Coach – By Bill Burridge

With increasing regularity nowadays, I find myself getting enquiries from people asking how they should go about choosing a life coach.

Of course, being in the business of training people to be great life coaches, I find it very gratifying to know that the demand for personal coaching services is growing rapidly in my native South Africa. But it’s hardly surprising, given the unquestionable power that coaching has to transform lives.

A few years ago, while I was still in corporate life, the concept of executive coaching was gaining in popularity. Companies felt it entirely appropriate to hire coaches for their most senior executives and even some of their middle managers in important roles. After all, the benefits of even a small improvement in divisional performance would render the cost of coaching quite trivial.

The rise of personal coaching

Until comparatively recently, personal coaching – or life coaching – was largely the domain of wealthy celebrities in the US. Nowadays, many people around the world are enjoying the benefits of having their own personal coach to assist them in achieving what might otherwise remain poorly defined and elusive goals and dreams.

How to choose?

The law of supply and demand dictates that as the demand for personal coaching services rises, so will the supply. The key question, then, for many individuals already convinced of the benefits of coaching, is: “How do I choose the coach that’s just right for me?”

My advice would be to make your choice in four simple steps, applying four ‘filters’ to ensure you get the best match for you.

1. Demographic matching

The first and relatively easy step is what I call “matching the demographics”.

If you’re set on face-to-face coaching then you’ll need someone who you can reach within a reasonable traveling distance. Now, before I move on, let me assure you that being coached by telephone (Skype is very popular for those with broadband internet because it is a free service) is an option that you should not discount lightly. Believe it or not there are actually a number of benefits to being coached by ‘phone – but that’s a topic for a separate article.

If you work best with people of your own – or the opposite – gender, then this too will influence your choice.

There are many excellent, vibrant and surprisingly wise young coaches around, but you may feel uncomfortable with having a coach who is half your age. Alternatively, as a young person, you might prefer to have a coach that has extensive life experience to draw on; someone who’s ‘been there and done that’!

Coaching fees come into the equation too, of course. But if possible, I would encourage you not to restrict the field by applying this filter right up front.

Look past the advertised fees, if you can. Find the ideal match using the steps I have outlined and then negotiate with your preferred coach if you need to, to fit your budget.

Many coaches are negotiable and some will offer substantial discounts if the client is prepared to pay for the entire coaching program in advance. My advice is to look at what you will pay over, say six months, and then consider how worthwhile that will be if you achieve one or two of your most desired goals.

2. Niche matching

The next step is more difficult. I call it “matching the niche”.

Let me ask you this: If you own a house that is built out of timber on the side of a steep hill and you decide to add an extension with an overhanging deck, who would you be more likely to contract with; a general builder – or a builder who specializes in timber homes and cantilevered decking?

When you hire a life coach, you generally do so with a knowledge of the key issues or areas of your life you specifically want to focus on improving. And it may well be that you’ll find a life coach whose specialist niche matches perfectly.

I recommend to all coaches who want to build substantial and self-sustaining practices that they choose a niche market based on their underlying skills and passionate interests.

I know of life coaches who have been very successful focusing on niches like ‘personal empowerment’, ‘intimate relationships’, ‘self-confidence’, ‘youth development’, ‘career building’, ‘retirement’, ‘financial freedom’, ‘childbirth’, and so on.

3. Skills matching

OK, so once you’ve decided on a rough demographic profile of your ideal coach and the niche (if any) that you fall into, you can move on to step 3. I call this “matching the skills”, although this is about more than just skills.

Remember that there is, at least currently, no form of regulation governing the coaching ‘profession’ in South Africa, or, for that matter, most developed countries.

To my mind this is a good thing in that there are no barriers to entry into an industry where having a passion for people and a gift for helping others achieve their dreams is far more important than a raft of high-falluting academic qualifications.

On the other hand it is also a bad thing in that any ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ or ‘Harriet’ can write ‘coach’ on his or her business card and set up in practice without necessarily having the skills, techniques, experience and structure required to back up their coaching.

Now, I firmly believe that good quality life coaches are self-selecting. As a life coach you won’t survive long in business without good word-of-mouth endorsements and client testimonials. You’re either really effective at helping people transform their lives – or you’re not!

And this is my point. Always ask any prospective coach for testimonials or references – and check them out. Ask the coach where and in what method they have been trained. Ask to see their certification and do some research on the coach training provider to check their reputation.

How passionate are the coaches you are considering about the calling they have chosen? Are they registered with any body that promotes ongoing coach development? Do they subscribe to any relevant code of ethics?

4. Vibrational matching

The final step is, I think, the most important of all. I call it “matching the vibration”.

Choosing the ‘right’ (as opposed to ‘good’) coach is, arguably, a more important decision than choosing the ‘right’ doctor or dentist. Whereas a ‘good’ doctor will make the correct diagnosis and prescribe effective medication without necessarily doing it in a way that has you warming to him or her, a ‘good’ coach (i.e. a well trained, equipped and ethical coach) with whom you are unable to build a great rapport, will be unlikely to do much for you.

Rapport is vital to the coaching relationship. Establishing an emotional bond with your coach based on mutual liking and respect, trust, and belief in each other, is the foundation for the achievement of great things through coaching.

Great coaches will have that something special that allows them to empower their clients to go well beyond the normal and yet still be compassionate and caring in their approach.

How do you establish whether there’s a ‘vibrational match’ with your coach? Great coaches worth their salt will offer a free first session that may range from a basic introduction to a client assessment to a full blown goal-setting session in some cases. This is a great opportunity to see if you and your coach are an ideal match.

Coaches need coaches

A final thought. If you’ve ever doubted the power of coaching, think about this. Every great coach will tell you that the one thing crucial to their success is having their own personal coach!

So there you have it.

Bill Burridge is a South African entrepreneur with 27 years of corporate experience. His company, New Insights Africa, is dedicated to developing a network of high quality, independent life coaches, inspired to bring personal freedom, confidence and growth to people from all walks of life in South Africa. The company’s core product is a unique, high quality, home study certification program in life coaching. http://www.life-coach-training-sa.com

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Michael

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and your motivation, and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Why is Life Coaching Successful?

2014-06-092014-06-08 ~ adminlife

“Share your aspirations only with those who will support you, not those who will respond with doubt or lack of interest.” ― Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

Can you measure the success of life coaching? Why does life coaching work for a client? These and other questions are answered in the article below.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

Understanding Why Life Coaching Is Successful – by Feroce

Accounts of the effectiveness of executive coaching have proven returns on investments of more than 500%. No like studies have been done regarding life coaching and quite honestly, a human life has fewer valued metrics than business so that anyone could measure coaching. However coaching executives have little more to do with business than coaching people on their lives does – even executive coaching in essence comes down to life coaching – so there’s no reason to imagine the ROI in life coaching, if it were calculable, would be any different. In truth when it comes to coaching, clients’ lives change impressively. I have seen it over and over again. How does is it possible? One could compose novels on the topic, but here I will expand on a few high-level reasons.

Life coaching essentially works for one reason: because the client desires it to work. Life coaching is firstly about the intent and goals of the client. This is one huge contrast between coaching on the one hand and advising on the other: your consultant can succeed in large part without your dedication to what he or she is doing, because he or she is the one doing it. Coaching is carried out by you- with a difference.

Coaching works in an impressive way because a good coach meets several human basic needs:

The overpowering power of commitment and accountability, like when a person wanting something works harder for it because of a promise to another.
The aching for a friend or partner on one’s path, particularly during difficult times.
The odd but true need for authorization to change, especially when you know doing so will mean a loss of understanding by, or even growing away from, old friends.
The desire to be and feel understood.

Coaches use many tools and methods in order to assist in the client’s desire for change. Coaching is a career built on a foundation of layers. Methods can be acquired from psychological development, business strategy and motivational theory, for instance. Yet life coaches and business coaches collectively have a few tools that the professions from which we’ve adopted do not.

Personal Life Combines Diverse Methods and Professions

Personal life coaching is a job that utilizes the most effective techniques of its forerunners, which include:

Sport’s psychology
A psychoanalyst’s position of unconditional positive respect and a mediator’s listening skills of non-judgmental awareness
Mentoring
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
Organizational growth
Spirituality
Marketing
Philosophy
Self-starting skills
Personal development and change
Motivational theory
Existential Philosophy and Psychology
Leadership
Strong business coaching skills including planning, setting goals, reverse-energy strategy and maneuvers based on the goal, analysis, follow-up and accountability
Holistic healing and the like
Cognitive behavioral therapy

The Strong Points of Coaching is in Its Dedication to Your Expanded “Knowingness.”

Once the client’s intentions are already strong, there is one reason for the effectiveness of life coaching- as it does seem to be more effective in generating measurable results than similar person (centered fields such as psychotherapy)- it could possibly be from the power of commitment. In this case, a client’s commitment to the coach through him or herself is, to work with the coach to thrive through awareness. It is the awareness of her “self”, her self-limiting thinking, her relationships, her career and her situation. Personal power is attained through greater awareness.

The strength of commitment is planted from social support of people adapting to who they say they are and doing what they say they’re going to do. Plainly speaking, personal coaching takes your own natural honesty and good will to embellish it for your benefit.

Tightly related to devotion in the success rate of coaching, is this fact- coaching is a united effort. Coaching is two people united and working towards the same goal. Just imagine the strength that can be reigned in with two or more wills trained on the same object! Also, the other person’s will is what keeps you accountable to your own.

Coaching succeeds because it’s Supported by Responsibility

Even though therapy and coaching may use exchangeable skills at times, they hold to different means and goals – including the setting of goals in the first place. When you see a therapist, you probably won’t set any measurable goals (often with legitimate reasons). At the most specific, you may say you desire something such as comprehension of who you are, to feel better, or to have more “balance” and quality in your lifestyle. You don’t usually go to a therapist when you are healthy and want personal growth or to be more successful.

All the same, without the presence of goals you will be missing any vision of where you are going, you will have no way to measure and hold yourself accountable. In addition, the easygoing nature of the psychotherapeutic relationship calls on most therapists to try not to hold you to any goals. However sociologists and business experts who work in goal theory know that all of this is a concoction that allows one to be unable to meet one’s goals. If you’re seeking a coach, being unsuccessful isn’t one part of your plan.

But then if you pay for the services of a personal trainer, the difference between sitting at home doing nothing and sporting a new figure, washboard stomach, or cardiovascular fitness is simple. You already know that you should be at the gym every day and your trainer is already there preparing your workout for you. You hire a personal coach or a trainer because you realize that you may not have the conditioning or tools to get there by yourself. However you do know you have the persona and sense of honor that will not allow you to let others down – nor yourself, once you have made a commitment “publicly” to your coach or trainer.

Coaching can give you that power that can virtually guarantee results you just can’t get any other way. Or, if you can get the results somewhere else you’re likely have a long, drawn out wait (and experience a great deal more frustration).

Coaching Offers Clearness and Visibility in Transformations

Coaching aid clients in being able to see and then realizing what they really want to do in their lives and careers, professions and businesses.

Most people find that that is the hardest part and many of us don’t even have an idea of what we want to do or we don’t know how to get there. We may even demand a little help in bringing out the fearlessness we already have. Yet if it’s anxiety that keeps us from seeing that we already know where we want to be, a coach is a loyal friend and confidant in facing and overcoming the fears that we conceal.

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To know more please visit Life coach and coaches

Looking For A Life Coach

2014-05-04 ~ adminlife

“These are the people who will encourage you to go after your dreams and will inspire you to succeed. Stick to them like a barnacle to a rock.” – by Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

Finding a Life Coach is not always easy. There are many coaches out there and not all of hem may be suitable for your specific needs.

The article below gives some advice on finding the right coach for you.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

What To Look For In A Life Coach – by Artistik inc

Hiring a Life Coach can be a real issue for a great many people. They have heard about Life Coaching and the astounding results many people are gaining, but have no idea how to spot a good Life Coach from a bad one. Especially as the Life Coaching industry is unregulated. Whereas most Life Coaches will offer prospective clients a free consultation, a great many people don’t take them up on this offer. They simply like the look of their website or impressive credentials and decide even before they make the call that this is the Coach for them.

I highly recommend against this approach and instead suggest speaking with at least 3 different Life Coaches to see which one you gel with the most. Life Coaching is a partnership and if you don’t like your Life Coach then it doesn’t matter how good he or she is, you will not get the results you want.

I would also suggest you ask to speak with a handful of their clients. Most competent coaches will have no issue in doing this because they will have a long list of eager clients happy to extol their virtues. If a Life Coach you contact cannot supply you with testimonials then that is a something you should be concerned about.

If you have never worked with a Life Coach before, I also wouldn’t be afraid to ask if they offer money back guarantee, so that if you are dissatisfied after your first full session you can get a total refund. There are some excellent coaches that won’t agree to this, but when they do it demonstrates confidence in their own ability to deliver value for money and make you want to move on with the process.

In the final analysis though I would say goes with your gut instinct. If you are chatting with a coach and it’s like talking to a long lost friend then that is a great sign. On the other hand if you feel you’re being herded through their sales process then that tells you the coach is more transactional. The latter doesn’t mean they won’t be a great Life Coach, but it may well suggest they aren’t right for you if you have any level of discomfort. In the final analysis do you due diligence by reading up on coaching, researching different Life Coaches and refusing to say yes until you feel 100 % comfortable with the person you are talking to.

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About the Author

Are you looking for a life coach to help you get clear about the life you really want? Be sure to visit my site to learn more about life coaching .

A Life Coach? – What is That?

2014-05-01 ~ adminlife

“Act like a champion, and then become one.” – Steve Backley, The Champion in all of Us: 12 Rules for Success

At some point in our lives we need to help to break through our limiting beliefs that are holding us back. A life coach can help.

The article below gives some advice about life coaches and why we need them as well as how to go about selecting a coach who is right for you.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Michael Wilkovesky

What is a Life Coach? – LaWanda Hill

A life coach is not a consultant, mentor, cheerleader, friend or advice-giver. A coach helps you access ‘your own’ wisdom, and act upon it. A coaching relationship is not about information flowing downhill…It is a partnership between peers, where the focus is on you and your life. A coach is an expert in helping clients create lives that are successful and fulfilling, based on the clients own values. Life coaching is one of the most powerful technologies we have for creating positive change in ourselves, and in the world. Life coaching helps you to discover what is really most important to you in your life. Life coaching will help you to design a plan to achieve those goals. A life coach will work with you to eliminate any obstacles or blocks that stand in your way, will partner with you all the ways to success and will celebrate your success with you.

Life Coaching is a designed alliance between coach and client where the coaching relationship continually gives all the power back to you, the client. A certified life coach believe that you know the answers to every question or challenge you may have in your life, even if those answers appear to be obscured, concealed or hidden inside. Every day we make choices to do or not do many things. These choices may range from profound to trivial and each one has an effect that makes our lives more fulfilling or less fulfilling, more balanced or less balanced, that makes our process of living more effective or less effective. A life coach helps you learn how to make choices that create an effective, balanced and fulfilling life.

Life coaching is a powerful partnership that can empower, shift, and change your life and business. If you are ready to take your life, goals, dreams, and desires to the next level, then it is time to explore a life coaching partnership, as a strategy to get from where you are to where you want to be. Life coaching acts as an incubator for your wildest dreams and the strategies.

Life coaching aims to help you achieve clarity and confidence to work through issues that are holding you back from enjoying a challenging and harmonious life. Life coaching is not about making simplistic judgments about someone’s life and telling that person how they ought to live it. Personal experience and social science research have shown that people are the sum of their genes, their cumulative experiences and the circumstances in which they live their lives. Therefore, successful coaching has to be based on an understanding of all these factors and not just focus on superficial behaviors.

When it comes to selecting a coach, it’s important to shop around to find someone compatible. You want a coach you like and respect. You want a coach that is knowledgeable and experienced. And you especially want a coach that will help you achieve the results you desire. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a coach who’s just like you, only better. It may mean hiring someone who’s very different from you. Understand that a coach is your helper, not your boss. You must be the one to decide what you want out of each session. If you aren’t clear about what you want to work on, a good coach can help you gain clarity and set new goals. Just be sure that the emerging goals are your goals, not your coach’s goals for you.

The main reason coaching works is that you\’re hiring someone with greater experience than you in a certain area. Your coach can quickly identify patterns that may not be clear to you. Then your coach can help you devise and implement solutions. When this works well, it’s a very high-leverage relationship. It’s one of the fastest ways to solve challenging problems. Businesses often hire outside consultants to help solve important problems, and life coaching is basically the individual equivalent of business consulting.

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About the Author

With a BS in Psychology as well as an Associate\’s Degree in Divinity, LaWanda Hill is a public speaker and life coach that helps people find a better balance in their life and coaches them in how to clear their own personal path to prosperity. Also a certified Belief Therapist, LaWanda uses her education and life experiences to help adults cope with life\’s often overwhelming circumstances.

Teaching simple but effective personal development strategies, her coaching programs focus on relationships, health [both physical and mental], finances, time management, stress, self esteem and overall life balance.

Choosing The Right Life Coach

2014-04-25 ~ adminlife

“You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.” Lou Holtz

If you are going to use a life coach, then you need to make sure that the person you connect with is right for you. Not all life coaches can help in every area of your life.

The article below gives some advice on selecting the right life coach for you.

To discuss what a life coach can do for you and to schedule a session with Michael, use the contact form below.

Michael is a certified Life Optimization coach as well as a Law of Attraction and Law of Attraction Wealth coach.

Life coaching and choosing a life coach for success – by Jonathan Logan

Life coaching can be incredibly beneficial for someone looking for various types of assistance or advice. Coaches vary in their specialties and areas of interest, but typically you can expect a life coach to help you make life more enjoyable across multiple different spectrums. The first steps to making that happen however, is deciding that you need a life coach and then selecting the right life coach.

Choosing a life coach is like going to the grocery store and seeing the many varieties of cereal available and then grabbing a box of cereal off the shelf. All life coaches are not the same. Like cereal, some may seem metaphorically delicious but lack the substance to keep you healthy. A good coach will be someone who can combine a welcoming exterior with an inner substance that will help you in the long run. The best life coach for you will depend on your life situation and the experience and specialty of the coach. For that reason, it’s important to get as much information about a coach as possible before making any monetary commitments. Nearly every legitimate coach will offer some sort of free consultation that you should definitely take advantage of. Using this free consultation will allow you to see if your personality meshes with your coach and will allow your coach to get a feel of how they may be able to help you. A good coaching relationship requires both the coach and the client to be comfortable with each other.

It’s important to enter a coaching relationship with realistic expectations for yourself and the entire experience. Expecting a life coach to have a magic button that will automatically improve every aspect of your life is obviously misguided. Having an idea of what success would look like for you is a great idea and sharing it with your coach can help give both of you a target to aim for. However, the coaching process is rarely completely straightforward and sometimes new goals arise during the process. A certain tolerance for the unknown and a willingness to work through difficult questions is important for you to get the most out of your coaching arrangement.

In today’s challenging world environment, many more people are looking to a life coach to provide perspective and value added coaching that promotes results and sustainable change. Even if you do not have a challenge right now in your life, a great coach will help you get to the next level, so you don\’t really need to wait for a problem to hire a coach!

Below are some additional tips to help you with your selection;

Are you ready to commit to Coaching?
Prepare a list of questions for your selection process
Do your research on the coach before choosing them i.e.: look for success stories that they have had with other clients
Look for a life coach that is going to challenge you
Before committing, ensure you connect with them
See life coaching as an investment verses an expense and with all investments you need to get a return

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About the Author

Simon Boutros is a Life & Business Coach, Neuro Strategist & Consultant at Success International Consulting. Simon Specialises in helping people with life & Business strategies by working with them to get great results in any area of life and or business. Simon is certified as a master practitioner NLP, Neuro Strategies Framework, Hypnotherapy & TimeLine Therapy and has extensive experience in business and has worked many small medium & large corporations. For more resources and articles and to subscribe to the blog go to http://www.successinc.com.au.