What it Takes to Become a Life Coach

Do you have what it takes to fight through the rapids and become a successful life coach?

Becoming a life coach can be a very rewarding career.  Since there aren’t a bunch of restrictions in the licensing and certification of a life coach there is often a misconception that anyone can do it. This is just not true.

There are many skills that are necessary to being a successful life coach. These are people skills, but there is also a need for some “business sense.” Let’s take a look at some of these skills in more depth.

A LIFE COACH NEEDS PEOPLE SKILLS

• Good listener: A life coach needs to be a good listener.  This will not only help you to get the information, but if you are a skilled listener you will be able to understand the feelings and the non-verbal communication from your client and will be able to do a better job of coaching them.
• Good communicator: It is important for a life coach to be able to express themselves in a compassionate and sympathetic way, yet turn around and be tough when they need to be to help their client get the results that they are looking for. Coaching is all about helping the client to recognize the issues and formulate a plan to deal with these issues.
• Creative thinker: Sometimes when a coach is helping a client formulate a plan it will require some “out of the box” thinking.  The more creative and flexible a coach is willing to be the better coach that he will be.
• Motivator: It is also important for the life coach to be a cheerleader of sorts.  A coach needs to be able to motivate his client through the hard times of change and champion them when they are successful in their goals.

A LIFE COACH NEEDS BUSINESS SKILLS

• Record keeping: It is important to be able to keep track of the client. The plan and progress, challenges and changes are all important information to have.  It is also important as a life coach to be able to keep track of the appointments and the payments.  These are an important part of your coaching business.  While it may not be directly related to coaching, it will definitely be the end of your business if you fail to keep accurate records.
• Advertising:  Especially when you are first starting your coaching business it is important that you use creativity in getting new clients.  There are many different modes of advertising: internet, fliers, print media, radio, TV, networking, and word of mouth.  It is important to do a little research and see which forms of advertising will give you the greatest returns on your money. One way to accomplish this is to talk to other coaches and see what advertising they have had the best success with.
• Scheduling: Scheduling is a skill that can help you to build your coaching business or can kill it.  It is important that you remember that just as you are paid for the hours that you work, your client is not getting paid for the hours that they are with you, including waiting time.  If you fail to schedule your clients appropriately and others are forced to wait, either because you have overbooked or because you have gotten off task and gone over time with another client, they are losing valuable time and money.  This makes clients unhappy and frustrated.  No matter how good of a coach you might be there are many people who want good “customer service” and this means not having to wait for a long time.

These are just a few of the skills required to have a successful coaching business.  You may not need a coaching license, or a life coach certificate, but you do need to have some skills to be able to have a vibrant and fulfilling coaching business.