If you’ve found this informative article from the Google search, I suppose that you’re already familiar with what a life coach is. Even although you are, reading my article “What is a Life Coach” will provide you with valuable info on what exactly a life coach does, how coaching contracts work, what typical coaching formats appear to be and the manner in which you may want to focus your organization as you see becoming a coach.
At the risk of turning people off to life coaching in this informative article, I’m planning to supply you with the facts about people which are calling themselves coaches. Truth be told – there are NO job requirements to become coach. Sounds scary huh? Put a sign up, print some business cards, call yourself a life coach and you are good to go. Pretty easy business to create eh?
Lets take a tiny closer look here. What I’m really saying is that by law, no professional certification is needed for anyone to call him or herself a life coach – or coach (often the term ‘life’ is either omitted or replaced with a different word such as for instance ‘executive’, ‘wellness’, ‘lifestyle management’ or ‘business’). So unlike a psychiatrist, a physical therapist, registered dietician, a company, or perhaps a lawyer, the state and country (USA) does not recognize a life coach as a credentialed profession. Therefore, no license is required to call yourself an instructor (at least at the time of the date this informative article is posted).
Lets look at various other types of similar professions that might belong to the same category. Think about that big among ‘consultant’ ;.There are plenty of consultants on the market consulting on everything you can think of – typically a consultant needs no license to be a consultant, just experience doing so. Much like an instructor, a consultant without experience at all can draft up a company card and start doing business. Obviously the big question is whether or not you’d manage to sell anyone on your services given that background. Some type of computer consultant could possibly have trouble selling themselves if they knew nothing about computers!
Before Calling Yourself a Coach…
If you are planning to call yourself an instructor, please know what it means to give yourself that title. Without government regulations, I admit you can stake your claim at coachhood with relative ease, however its a discredit to the professionals with years of experience and training if you simply utilize the word as an allure for clients and at all you are misrepresenting what the coaching profession is all about. I’d suggest reading a coaches code of ethics to see if that which you are offering could truly be looked at coaching.
One problem that I see is that many folks who are misrepresenting the profession do not even recognize what this means to be a coach. I’ve seen MLM (multi-level marketing) companies give their marketers buttons to hold their shirt stating ‘Wellness Coach’ – when all they know is a few herbal supplements that the company sells. I’ve seen Real Estate Agents call themselves ‘Real Estate Coaches’ since they wished to differentiate themselves from the crowd of agents. Oussama life coach Clearly this type of person marketing themselves as coaches with little knowledge of what a coach really does. If you’ve read this far it shows you’ve got a genuine curiosity about becoming an ethical coach and I’ve undoubtedly that you’re doing your homework!
What Background do I want?
This really is an appealing question. Coaches come from all backgrounds. As stated there are coaches in the and wellness world, in the executive development world, relationship coaches, coaches for families with children which have special needs, stress management coaches – the list continues on and on. Obviously there are lots of coaches that cross pollinate and have several areas they focus on.
If you choose to target your coaching on a specific area – lets say ‘parenting troubled teens’, then its recommended that you’ve got a background of working with troubled teens so you can best understand your client. Now a pure life coach is devoted to recognizing a client has their very own answers and that the coaches job is always to empower the client such they see this clearly for themselves. Therefore, an instructor is a generalist – their training and skill is actually in communicating with people such that they’ll identify and build appropriate goals and actions that fulfill their dreams. In the event that you naturally have this skill, you’ve got the maximum asset a life coach needs. Some folks have an innate tendency to ‘be coach’ ;.In the event that you don’t naturally have this skill, rest assured that wish practice you can develop it.
What Education if any Should I Get?
If you are considering becoming an instructor, I definitely recommend that you get training. An instructor training program often has coaching and mentorship not just on how to be described as a better coach, but additionally on how to build your business. If you choose to go through a full coach training certification program is a big decision since it will typically involve a commitment of 1-3 years, as much as $15,000, and will require that you obtain between one and two hundred client hours to become certified. Prices, times to certification, and program depth and intensity vary greatly dependent on the program you choose.
Typically after an introductory class, you are encouraged to begin enrolling coaching clients. Therefore, you can charge that which you are comfortable charging while you are going right through the certification process (remember, you don’t require a license to be a coach). I wish I knew the percentage of professional’s on the market calling themselves ‘coaches’ which have gone through a certification program. I’m certain that someone’s put an estimate on the market but I’ve yet to locate it. My suspicion is that it is significantly less than 1/3 of coaches. So being fully a ‘certified’ coach differentiates you for certain, however at the moment a typical coaching client probably would not know the difference.
In the event that you elected to not become certified, my recommendation would be that you take some introductory courses, become familiar and comfortable using what coaching is, then try your hand on clients willing to work with you. If these classes are very costly, go through this whole blog, read as numerous books as you can find on coaching and develop a toolset which you can stake claim to and comfortably use to team with clients to advertise their advancement and self discovery. Make yourself a specialist coach based on the familiarity with what a coach is and what they do.
I recall having a conversation with one woman a friend described me. She wanted to alter careers, she was very enthusiastic about life coaching and she felt she had been coaching friends and co-workers for years. She did have a good knowledge of what life coaching was. Furthermore she said she new a amount of people that would be willing to pay her for coaching! As I coached her, all she needed to hear was herself confirming that it was OK to get started – even when she had doubts and worries as to what an official coaching session would look like. She’d a fantastic motivation to understand aside from whether or not that would be in the framework of a credential program (and I don’t know if she elected to enroll in one).