If you have been searching the web for something, you will often end up with a life coach site popping up in your results at some point. Life Coaching has evolved over the years and continues to improve and grow – but what is life coaching, how will you choose a life coach, and what in case you be familiar with?
Niche in life coaching is the present theme – which means a life coach ‘specializes’ in one single or perhaps a few areas only. There are lots of life coaches though who still would be considered general life coaches and give you a much broader array of coaching services. Industry is pushing life coaches to have specific niche’s quite hard and explain that the public prefers ‘specialists’ and are willing to pay more for them. It’s rather just like the medical profession, you have 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 really have a niche; it could be life coaching, client attraction, marketing, public relations, Christian, organization, health, financial and many, many more areas that ‘coaching’ has been offered in.
Throughout my research, I was totally amazed at how few life coaches will post their prices but also, and possibly even moreover, they cannot post their educational or work experience! I don’t know about you, but I’m not really thinking about sharing my dreams and goals with someone unless they are qualified and which means having work, life and educational experience in their ‘niche’ or coaching areas. I’ve asked a number of other coaches, and many of them are well known and successful, and been told that education and experience are not important! So, I guess from that, if someone worked at the neighborhood animal shelter and didn’t graduate from high school, they are just as well qualified to provide life coaching services as everyone else. NOT in my own book. We check out plenty of information before we purchase a car, before we choose a health care provider, and even before we buy a mattress. Why wouldn’t it mean something about what education and work/life experiences a life coach has? So, buyer beware!
Why people should try Life Coaching:
Life Coaching is an awesome method for people to remain motivated, keep their focus, gain self-insights and strive to attain their goals. Life Coaching deals with the here and now and goes forward from there, it’s an action based co-active coaching style that’s nothing like therapy which deals with past life events and more psychological issues. A life coach must have the educational/work/life experiences and tools necessary to meet the wants of these customers and or even, then say so and refer the customer to a life coach that does. I recently tried to obtain a referral network started at living coach school I attended, so that I and others would know where to refer an individual if I felt their needs could be better met by another. Only two other coaches felt secure enough to put their strengths out there – no-one else!
In today’s busy, fast-paced world, it’s often filled up with stress, little personal support and difficult to attain your goals or solve problems. Oussama life coach Life Coaching is a great methods to help an individual with achieving their goals, solving problems, having the support they need so that life is less difficult and overall, improved.
What to consider in a Coach:
Strategies for you, as an individual in selecting a life coach include: know ahead of time what you need to attain with a life coach and manage to answer how a coach can best use you and you with them. It can be helpful with an idea on how long you’re willing to stay coaching before you anticipate to attain your results and simply how much you are able; research different life coach websites and read their articles, newsletters and check out their education/work/life experience and training; interview 3 different coaches – include in the interview all of your questions on experience, prices, samples of accomplishments linked to your goal, just how long do they think it’d take to attain your goal, explain how you like to utilize a coach and ask what their style of coaching is; look for two references that had goals similar to yours; and above all, make certain living coach you decide on is one which you ‘connect’ with or that ‘feels right’ to you. Other possible questions may be asking what living coach feels are their strengths and weaknesses. Also be aware if you get the impression that living 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 Coaching is supposed to be about the customer and what they want to achieve and their style of learning/growing/achieving through the method of reaching their goals. It’s not about living coach. In fact, every life coach’s goal should really be to put themselves out of business. If coaching were done well, then eventually, fewer people would want it. As the word goes, ‘teach them to fish as opposed to feeding them fish and they will never go hungry’ ;.Costs for life coaching services can typically run $300-$600 a month and some should go to $300 or more an hour. Some coaches actually earn $18,000 hour. If living coaches you check-out don’t publish their costs, ask.
What is the continuing future of Life Coaching?
Where’s Life Coaching going as time goes on? Whilst the economy and the increasing stress of every day life is severely hurting the quality of people’s lives, life coaching will continue to grow in the number of individuals it serves as well as how many life coaches entering the field. The number of individuals using the web and becoming net based businesses will continue to improve how many 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 resembles health coaching. Of concern in my experience is that lots of, who’re entering this ‘niche’, receive only 20 hrs of training. Many life coaches practicing health or wellness coaching have not checked their state’s laws on which they could 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 folks receiving life coaching services on health related subjects from life coaches with so little background in health and thus the potential for harm of the customer may occur. That is my concern and opinion which is shared by some and not by others. The pressure for more specific specialization, ‘niching’, will probably increase as well.
Will social media change the face of coaching? That’s unknown only at that time. There are lots of blogs and forums now that people can access for support due to their specific needs, meet and get to understand other folks thinking about exactly the same things. The planet has gotten smaller and it’s much simpler to get individuals to speak to on the internet, yet we are more isolated within our ‘real’ lives than ever before.
I envision the complexities of marketing, including 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 offer coaching education that provides core basics for many kinds of coaching and then gives additional education in specific aspects of specialty kinds of coaching. These will greatly lead to better qualified service providers. I came across it amazing, how many coaches actually came from 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 not as much a ‘shooting in a barrel’ experience for customers to get truly skilled and dedicated coaches.