Let us take a look at some of the most important qualities or traits that you need to master while being a life coach.

Learn to Listen:

One of the most important abilities that you must work on is the ability to listen to your clients. Life coaching is all about helping people get to where they want or need to be. Whether it’s a personal goal that your client is trying to achieve or a professional or business related goal, first step in you understanding them, understanding their problem or current situation, through listening carefully to what it said and left unsaid.

It is not just about listening to what they are saying but in many cases you have to learn to listen to what they are not saying. What is missing from their words? That could be the key to you helping them succeed in achieving their goals. For example, a client may share that they want to succeed, but you hear the doubt in their voice.

The art of listening to someone can be practiced with your friends, family or anyone who you interact with. Listen carefully to everything that is being said during your interactions with people.

Don’t be judgmental:

As you interact with various people from all walks of life, you will encounter or experience a complete diverse range of views and ideas, how people live their lives, what is more important to them and what their priorities in life are. You may or may not agree with everything that your clients feel or think but remember – everyone is different from one another and as a coach we cannot be judgmental about views and ideas expressed by the person you are interacting with.

Remember you are there to help the person out. The main reason they have come to you is they want objective, impartial and un-emotional views. As a life coach you must learn to accept that everyone is different and what they want in life is different from one another. You need to do what is best for your client and keeping an open mind will help you in this regard.

Goal setting skills:

One of the most important skills that you require in order to grow and achieve your own goals as a life coach is the ability to set goals with your clients. You must not only listen to them very carefully but learn to recognise why they haven’t reached their goals as yet, what type of a person you are dealing with and what works best for them so they can achieve their goals. You must develop a plan of action for your clients to achieve what they are looking for and while the plan is being implemented or followed, you must again learn to assess the achievements, whether everything is according to plan or decide whether your client needs to re-think or change certain aspects of the plan that you have created together.

Life Coaches guide you to come to terms with your own shortcomings and improve them. They urge you to follow your instincts and do what is good for you as well as for those around you. They teach you to be at peace with yourself and to deal with your internal chaos. They can also help you get rid of your mental blocks that are holding you back from succeeding. They help you to realize how to tap your full potential and to pick the best possible opportunity, from the many that you have.

Life coaching is about introspecting and finding answers for your own questions. Coaches make you see your own situation objectively and help you to try and find the solutions for the same. The various queries may be – What exactly do I want from my life? What is that one thing that will make me feel satisfied and happy? What more can I do to bring out the best possible results? What is it that is actually holding me back? Which talents that I possess are under-utilized? What are the things that need to be changed about my life? What will be my next step in these circumstances? Such and many more questions help to extract the answers from within yourself.

Life Coaches believe that from every experience there is something to learn and benefit from, and it’s our setbacks that assist us to become the person we were meant to be. It’s from our setbacks that we learn courage, persistence, resilience and determination. We learn to forgive ourselves when we give ourselves permission to keep having a go.

And be assured that whatever your problems, they will always be kept confidential by the coaches. You do no have to worry about the entire office, or the world, knowing all about your problems because Life Coaches exercise confidentiality, tremendous empathy and common sense in dealing with people, and that is what makes them so special.

And never once should you think that the Life Coach will handle all the nitty-gritty of your life for you. They simply hold your hand until you have learnt to walk or lead you until the blindfold has been removed. From there on, it is your journey. But undoubtedly, whatever you do will always be the best choice for you because that’s what life coaching does -it trains you for life. The results will be ever lasting and you will be grateful to your Coach for equipping you with such valuable skills for life. What more can one ask for than the ability to know how to achieve what you truly want?

As reported by the British Journal of Administrative Management, coaching ‘takes a holistic view of the individual’ ensuring that work, corporate values, personal needs and career-development are made to work in synergy and not against each other.

However, what started as a corporate client service has now become a valuable tool for any individual wanting to improve their life. It is quite feasible to imagine that having a personal coach will become an accepted norm.

Borne out of the competitive pressures of today’s economy, as well as the struggle to find balance in the frantic pace of modern life, personal life coaching is now rapidly attracting devotees worldwide. CEO’s, entrepreneurs, professionals, people in career transition and many others grappling with life issues are all turning to this new tool to guide them through life’s difficulties and help raise them above the ‘fog’ to the clear heights of peace and self-satisfaction.

Whilst Coaching supports all aspects of life, its ultimate aim is to achieve harmony and balance within the individual. For career women this means establishing a work-life balance that satisfies all the levels of emotional and professional needs. It’s about working to live, not living to work.

Work-life balance is a self-defined, self-determined state of well-being that a person can reach, or can set as a goal, that allows them to manage effectively multiple responsibilities at work, at home, and in their community; it supports physical, emotional, family, and community health, and does so without grief, stress or negative impact. For those striving to enjoy this type of life, coaching is an indispensable tool.

Women at work can recognise when they are suffering from an imbalance. Symptoms such as constantly being tired, feeling like you’re running uphill all the time and getting nowhere, feeling like you have no choices, no control; when life seems to be happening to you instead of you feeling that you’re managing it; when you can think of more things that aren’t getting done than are; when you see more negative in your life than positive.

Coaching is a powerful, collaborative relationship between the coach and a willing individual, which helps that individual through the process of discovery, goal setting and strategic action-planning to help realise an extraordinary result. It is also a body of knowledge, a technology and a style of relating that focuses on the development of that person’s potential.

Most people spend considerable time planning their annual holiday but how much time is spent planning a far more crucial journey, one you don’t get a chance to revisit if things don’t work out the way you hope? How much time do you spend mapping out where you want to go in life?

Just as Olympic sports men and women rely on their talent, determination and coach to give them the best chance of reaching Gold, your Coach can make you a medallist in life.

In the security of this collaborative alliance with your coach you will reach clarity of purpose, identify goals and develop a plan of action. You will establish an understanding of what is really important to you in life, take charge and realise your priorities. Put simply, coaching is about helping you to create and work towards the grandest version of the greatest personal vision you have; to achieve success – success being the continuous realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.

Written by Gerard O’Donovan Founder of Noble Manhattan coaching Ltd

DOWNLOAD 5 Free Coaching Reports at

www.coaching-reports.com

http://www.noble-manhattan.com

CEO of the European coaching Institute

http://www.europeancoachinginstitute.com

Europe’s leading executive coach

http://www.gerardodonovan.com

Life coaching is for those people who do not fear change and are willing to go that extra mile to lead a harmonious life. The client should be ready to learn from the past and accept it. Denial has never, and will never, work for anyone. One should be flexible enough to change ones lifestyle if the current one is not producing any worthwhile results. Life needs to be looked at as something precious and to be worked upon, to bear fruitful results. Only clients with such an attitude can take full advantage of life coaching.

All this brings us to that all-important question-What do I look for in a life coach? To find a good coach the client needs to be very instinctive, as all the information put on the Internet or made available to the client, though it’s a lot, isn’t enough. You can schedule an appointment with a coach and then judge for yourself whether you will be comfortable with the them or not. Look for a coach who is able to connect with you, who listens to you without passing judgements, to whom you feel like letting your heart out, and someone you feel will not let you down. This works for the coaches too, for they too enjoy working when the client is comfortable and only then can they extract the best out of them. Of course word of mouth about a particular coach will give you a personal opinion about the coach.

There are several coaches who believe in focussing only on the problem areas and try to work on them. But there are the others who strongly believe that the overall personality of an individual gives rise to the fears and inhibitions they have. For example, a person who is unable to achieve more despite being capable must be having deeper and less-obvious insecurities. Like, maybe the person does not get motivated easily, is scared of success, or is simply lazy. For this, just dealing with the problem brought up by the client is not enough. It requires dedicated penetration into the client’s general behavior on part of the coach. At the same time the client should be willing to give his/her 100% to the coach and understand that the coach is trying to improve his/her life. Hence the client must be sincere in whatever he/she is told to do. This holistic approach not only does away with ones weaknesses but also reinforces the strengths. The client then stands to achieve a lot more than what they did before.

Do not think that consulting a life coach will let the world know that you cannot solve your own problems or be so rigid to think that you can set all things right in your life all by yourself. We assure you that once you experience the changes that you can make to your life, you will realize its worth and not hesitate in recommending life coaching to others; for, who does not wish to lead a good life?

People confuse life coaching with counseling. It should be noted that counseling deals with a certain calamity in your life like accidents, breakups, divorces, etc. Hence counselors try to find answers from your past but life coaches focus on your current and future situations. Coaches make one aware of their situation but counselors try to dig out answers to your problems from your past. Also counseling is needed when the person is almost unaware of what is exactly wrong with him/her or is not even in a position to fathom the gravity of the situation and the need to set it right. On the other hand people who come for coaching are fairly happy in their lives and want to seek a betterment of it or realize that the barrier they have is actually not too big to be unmanageable. Another thing confused with life coaching is therapy. Therapy in reality is some sort of treatment that one needs to overcome some kind of trauma. But people seeking life coaching are in perfect health and just have to realize, that there are certain things in their life that need some attention on their part. Therapy sets the problems correct but life coaching aims at finding new ways to move ahead and be successful.

Life coaches help you to find for you where exactly your heart lies, what you are really good at, what motivates you, what angers you and how you can deal efficiently with it, what holds you back and how you can work on it, what is it that is not letting you progress in your business, what new strategies, planning, time-management, people management skills you need to employ to achieve greater heights, what you can do to maintain healthy relationships, what your secret desires are and how you can tap your potential to the fullest and aim for better and newer avenues. These and many more things are what the coaches help you in. Coaching is very common in the IT sector where the pressures are sky high with deadlines, work-pressure, bad eating and sitting habits, irregular timings taking a toll on performance in work and everyday lives. The life coaches help young people to find a reason and purpose in their lives. They help people to overcome stage fear and social anxiety, leave smoking, drinking, and so on, do away with their hidden fears and guilt, depression, etc. Life coaching makes one come to terms with the fact that it is we, who are refusing to move ahead in life. It gives a new outlook about yourself and instills confidence in you, that you can achieve anything that you set your sight upon. Life coaches help to get some discipline in our lives to extract better from every opportunity. And also to find opportunities that lie hidden in front of you –be it in personal or in professional life.

So it is never too late to go in for life coaching. If you think you want the maximum out of life-go find a life coach and fill your life with a sweet fragrance of success, bliss and contentment.

It basically requires an initiative on the part of the client to make an appointment with a life coach. The coach then makes a detailed observation of the client’s behavior, stress, relationships, current work nature and culture, and gives the client a detailed report of the same. This report serves as the basis of the future sessions, as now the coach identifies the things hindering the client and can find constructive ways to deal with it. The client too becomes more aware of his/her situation and thus does not remain shrouded in mystery, which in itself is a great relief. It gives the client hope that the difficult circumstances that they are stuck in can, if recognised, certainly be resolved. Next, the client is given exercises and other tasks to perform which the client should do diligently to gain maximum profits. As the difficulties are solved one by one the process progresses to a fruitful completion. The life coach helps the client to chart out a plan of action to follow, so that the client can work even without the help of the coach in future. The aim of life coaching is not to make the client dependent on the coach, but to make the client independent to tackle and deal with every situation in life or work and to become happy and successful even without the help of a coach. Life coaching can be about anything- relationships, business-related, career-related, etc.

Work or business related coaching targets boss-employee relationship, work and life balance, leadership skills, management skills, conflict resolution skills, peer relationship skills, better communication skills etc.

Just as every other profession follows some unconventional rules, so does this. By this we mean that there is no hard and fast rule that life coaching should always be conducted in person. Telephones, e-mails, instant messages are also being used to solve the real world problems by life coaches. In fact some coaching institutes offer a provision for a mixed sort of counseling, that is, in case of emergency clients can contact them by phone and at other times attend the regular sessions as arranged. This facilitates to build a strong trust between the client and the coach. Many coaching places offer training to their clients for a fixed period of time, so that the clients can enroll for these and try to solve their problems by themselves too.

The client should bear in mind that an open-minded approach towards this new concept is a must. A skeptical mind not only hinders the client from making any progress but also burdens the coach with an additional problem -that of convincing the client of the benefits of life coaching as well as their actual current dilemma! Nevertheless, all coaching institutes have a policy that allows the client to discontinue the coach’s services if they do not foresee any gains from them. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that these programs do not function within a given time frame. It is obvious that if the situation took so long to build up to where it became problematic to the client, then it will probably take as much time for them to get rid of it completely. All that is needed is the full co-operation of the clients in the tasks they are assigned and to listen to the coach trustfully and follow their instructions with dedication. For if the coaches strive so hard to help, the clients might as well make it easier for them by co-operating! In this process the duration becomes secondary, as the gains are everybody’s foremost concern.

So if you have the patience, service-oriented mind, perseverance and empathy in you to become a successful life coach, all you have to do is to enroll for the best coaching schools in town. Have a look around and you are sure to find plenty of them. Go ahead and enrich someone’s life and give yourself a highly satisfying and successful career, both at the same time.

The institute that you choose will actually shape your career and will be an important part of your life. Hence it is really vital that you carefully think of what are the qualities required in a life coaching institute before you enroll in one.

Experience

One of the key criteria for choosing a life coaching institute is experience. Life Coaching is much more than just a career. It is something that cannot be taught by simply following a model or a technique. Only well experienced life coaches who already have hours of actual life coaching experience behind them can understand and guide a budding life coach. Also from experience comes thorough knowledge of the industry, the support that is required and the ability to fully demonstrate how to actually conduct a life coaching session.

Courses Offered

When you enroll in a life coaching institute you sign up for a particular course. The type of courses offered by any institute speaks volumes about them. Certain life coach training institutes offer certificate courses as well as diploma courses, so as to cater for different levels of life coaches depending upon your experience. Also courses offered should be in consultation with various industry professionals like educators, coaches, NLP trainers, business leaders etc.

Success Stories

Nothing speaks more of a life coaching institute than its success stories. You need to research and find out about what others are saying about where you are about to enroll. The best way to research on this is to go to the website of the life coaching institute and check if they have listed their success stories. If a number of past students are ready to submit their success stories to the coaching institute, then it does give a lot of credibility to the life coaching institute.

From the success stories you can find out not only whether people were happy at the institute but what kind of course gave them success and get an overall idea on the nature of the training sessions at the life coaching institute.

After course support

Another extremely important aspect of a life coaching institute is what happens after your course has been completed. Like we mentioned before, the life coaching institute that you choose becomes a part of your life and a good institute provide excellent support even after you complete your course. Certain institutes allow you to join them as a member for ongoing support and development. They also promote their graduates through their website which makes it easier for clients to find out about you as a life coach.

The Life Coaching Institute of Australia provides comprehensive information and training courses for people wanting to become a life coach. Training courses at both certificate and diploma levels are available for enrolment for those interested in a career in life coaching.

Speaking with one of the life coach counselors or consultants at The Institute is a great way for those interested in life coaching to find out more about what it entails. This allows potential students to gain a greater understanding of life coaching before enrolling in a course. These course consultants are students and graduates of The Life Coaching Institute and are therefore well informed to answer any questions potential students may have and guide them in choosing the most suitable course for their needs. General information on course duration and fees is also available.

The Life Coaching Institute offers two programs in life coaching:

- The Certificate IV in Life Coaching

- The Diploma of Life Coaching

The Certificate IV in Life Coaching is five to six months in duration depending on the chosen path of the applicant. There are two main study paths available:

- Practitioner of Coaching

- Advanced Practitioner of Coaching

The advanced study path is a more intensive course, offering greater scope for advanced learning and face to face training. Both courses come with a ‘pre-learning pack’ which provides information on coaching, what you need to be a successful life coach and important information on how the coaching sessions are conducted. The pack also contains various exercises to help students in understanding the essential characteristics of a life coach, such as decisions making, communications skills, an influential spirit, awareness of one’s self and beliefs, and an appreciation of the beliefs of others.

On successful completion of the Certificate IV, the Diploma of Life Coaching can be taken as further study, progressing students’ life coaching training to a higher level. The Certificate and Diploma courses can be taken both together or sequentially. If taken together, studies for the Diploma course are introduced to a student’s timetable after the completion of a couple of months of the Certificate course, ensuring that students have both the required knowledge for participating in the Diploma course and the ability to keep up with both levels of study.

The Diploma of Life Coaching takes about twelve months to complete on a part-time basis and consists of five main areas:

- Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Training

- Trainer’s & Public Speaking Skills Training

- Executive Coaching

- Your Successful Coaching Practice

- Developing a Coaching Product & Marketing it

Those serious about a career as a life coach and keen to establish a significant home based practice for themselves must complete the Diploma course as it not only provides essential information on life coaching but also gives you hands on experience in running a life coaching agency. It also helps interested individuals to develop their own life coaching products in the form of CDs, articles, and books etc.

As the demand for life coaching grows so too does the need for well trained and skilled professional in the field. Comprehensive information and accredited training courses are available for those interested in starting a career as a life coach from The Life Coaching Institute of Australia.