By Sarah Godfrey
In takes more than a short course to develop the skills and ability to guide someone towards personal success and deeper understanding of their own behaviour, patterns, and attitudes. Let’s be frank from the get go. Life Coaching is a highly unregulated industry that has a reputation of overcharging and under delivering. Essentially anyone, without any formal training or being held accountable to a board monitoring ethical practice, can call themselves a life coach. This means, generally, they can coach you any way they want with very little accountability, can cross professional boundaries and steer you down pathways they may not have the skill base and experience to take you. Often you may have paid out exorbitant amounts of money before you find out your coach has less real experience and ability than you already had.
To help you decide who is best for you here are some tips that can give you a staring point on what to look for.
Ask your coach how they will demonstrate progress, accountability, motivation and goal success.
What are the range of ways they will help you stay on task, reflect, grow and monitor your development.
Ask your coach their background experience and educational-academic achievements.
A lot of letters behind a name is irrelevant if you don’t know what they mean or they are a series of online or short courses without anything substantial behind them.
Ask how long they have worked in the industry.
Everyone will tell you they have excellent listening and questioning skills. In realty these skills take years of practice and skill levels to master. There is a huge difference between listening and hearing. Between questions for the sake of asking and intuitively driven questions to drive your energy forward.
Define what you really want.
A coach? A mentor? A lot of direction and accountability or a place to reflect and discuss? Find the life coach that will provide the style and skill set you need.
A Life Coach should not be your best friend.
The difference between the two is a Life Coach will challenge you and tell you things a friend will not. Be wary of Life Coaches that shift the relationship into a friendship, it is unethical and unhelpful.
Be wary of the hype.
Life Coaching can promise a lot but people are people and no professional can give you instant results. Change is about steady growth, built on the new knowledge you are learning, solidifying into concepts and tested against entrenched beliefs and attitudes. Sometimes we have epiphany moments. Things become clearer and sharper and we see a path forward or a resolution to a problem. These moments come from hard work, excellent guidance and careful challenges to old notions of self. All of which you have done, not your coach.
“Your coach is like the river and you are the boat. We will move you forward but you are doing the hard work staying afloat and steering the boat.”
They cannot tell you when the process of learning will be finished. There are no levels or time frames that they can promise you will reach your goals by. If anyone promises they can do this, they are misleading you. You are the master of your progress.
Don’t be dazzled by computer generated data.
Watch out for Life Coaches who rely on assessments. Basic personality profiling can be done by anyone with a bank account large enough to pay for the training. Assessments tell you interesting and worthwhile information but cannot predict how you will cope in real world situations with real people. They are statistics based on norms and those norms are based on cultures and age groups upon which the assessment was trialled. Only a highly skilled professional can teach you how your profile and characteristics really translate into your life, past and present. Anyone can read a computer generated summary and graph. Your Life Coach should have far more skills than the analysis of personality profiles to help you develop successfully.
Don’t let your Life Coach let you avoid emotional awareness.
None of us gets out of looking in the mirror if we really want to grow and find true motivation and purpose. Spreadsheets, homework, tables and questionnaires are tools to keep you focused but let’s get real, accountability is not the same as inspiration, passion, having courageous conversations and unblocking those emotional walls. Reflection, acknowledgment and observation are just as, if not more important than, tracking and completing your to-do-list.
Be wary of fads and your need for them.
Choose evidence based effective styles of coaching rather than latching on to the latest fad or assessment. Most people who have seen a lot of life coaches and mentors or completed a range of profiles are missing the point. Avoidance strategies to be truly challenged push some to keep swopping coaches and seeking the new assessments or faddish approaches. The answer is not “out there” but within you. The right Life Coach will commit to developing this insight and internal knowledge so your sense of reward and achievement will grow at a steady and healthy rate.
Be inspired, motivated and challenged with our expert team of Life Coaches. Drawing on years of professional experience across a wide range of influences, including psychological, spiritual and humanistic, let us work with you to energise your life, excel in your workplace, motivate your need for self awareness and grow your skill base.
Invest in yourself and reap the rewards of healthy communication and support.
Have fun finding out what you are truly capable of achieving, personally and professionally.
Drive your need for growth, insight and self awareness further than ever before.
Develop highly effective strategies to maneuverer through our increasingly complex world and relationships.
You can learn better ways to mange tricky situations.
You can focus on your real time needs and accomplishments
You can experience the skills of impartial observation and mentorship.
Explore non-judgment feedback on your performance across all areas of your life.
Most of all let us build an environment of trust, professionalism and support to assist your own growth.
To take advantage of all opportunities make an appointment now with
Sarah Godfrey
Olivia Sack