Life Coaching Essentials

It seems a lot of people are looking to become good life coaches.

I’ve discovered that really great coaches are not hard to find, they’re just hard to develop. They are a special breed of people who want to do the right thing for a noble (sometimes lofty or idealistic) purpose.

So what exactly is coaching in the first place? As a good coach, you need (i) experience connecting with people you can help, (ii) looking for patterns of behavior that can help them move toward the direction of their choice, and (iii) resolve limiting patterns of behavior by looking for resources they already have, which they could missed.

Here are some competencies of a good life coach.

1. Identifying desired outcome of a client.

A good number of clients have absolutely no idea what they want. Either that or they are confused with the choices before them. A good coach must be able to understand their clients well enough to open up possibilities to them.

2. Uncovering the limiting patterns in a client.

Everyone has limitations. In the case of your client, they may face limitations in various areas including emotional, knowledge, strategy, behaviors and even communication. To be able to identify these patterns, a coach must be prepared to detect similarities across contexts.

I was listening to one of my clients who had told me that his dream was to become a wealthy business owner. The interesting thing is that when asked to describe his immediate environment, he said that the place was disorganized and messy. In parallel, I asked if the immediate environment reflected that of a wealthy business owner, and he said “no”. Instead, he recognized that his state of mind was messy, just like his environment.

It is cases like this when you can see the pattern of something being “just like the other” where you can draw a parallel and discover new patterns of behavior and understanding.

3. Dealing with resistances.

There will be clients who pose a conscious or unconscious resistance when working with them. Coaches need to find the best possible way to connect and handle the resistances that are presented to them. Conscious resistances may indicate that there could be unconscious agreement, and unconscious resistances may give way to unconscious disagreement.

I find that sometimes, the more a person resists consciously, that energy is moving in one direction that can be utilized. As an example, saying “I’m not stubborn” in a determined or stubborn manner may be useful to reveal resources that are not in their conscious awareness.

So I would be naive to believe that I can fill up all the life coaching essentials in such a short post. I’ll definitely add more as I continue to groom more life coaches to support the growth of people in the world today.