Life Coaching — Over, Recent, and even Potential future
When you yourself have been searching the net for something, you will most likely end up with a life coach site popping up in your results at some point. Life Coaching has evolved over time and continues to change and grow – but what is life coaching, how do you choose a life coach, and what in case you be aware of?
Niche in life coaching is the current theme – this means that a life coach ‘specializes’ in a single or even a few areas only. There are lots of life coaches though who still would be considered general life coaches and provide a much broader range of coaching services. The marketplace is pushing life coaches to have specific niche’s quite hard and explain that people prefers ‘specialists’ and are willing to pay for more for them. It’s rather just like the medical profession, you’ve generalists, generalists with an inferior focus, specialists with a broad focus and specialists with very specific focus topics. So, everyone entering coaching is told to truly 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 maybe even moreover, they do not post their educational or work experience! I don’t learn about you, but I’m not really enthusiastic about sharing my dreams and goals with someone unless they are qualified and meaning having work, life and educational experience in their ‘niche’ or coaching areas. I’ve asked a great many other coaches, and many of them are very well known and successful, and been told that education and experience aren’t important! So, I guess from that, when someone worked at the neighborhood animal shelter and didn’t graduate from senior school, they are as well qualified to offer life coaching services as everyone else. NOT in my book. We take a look at loads of information before we obtain a car, before we choose a health care provider, and even before we obtain a mattress. Why wouldn’t it mean something in what education and work/life experiences a life coach has? So, buyer beware!
Why people should try Life Coaching:
Life Coaching is an awesome way for people to stay motivated, keep their focus, gain self-insights and strive to reach their goals. Life Coaching handles the here and now and goes forward from there, it’s a motion based co-active coaching style that is in contrast to therapy which handles past life events and more psychological issues. A life coach should have the educational/work/life experiences and tools necessary to generally meet the wants of these customers and if not, then say so and refer the customer to a life coach that does. I recently tried to acquire a referral network started at the life coach school I attended, to ensure that I and others would know where to refer a customer if I felt their needs could possibly be better met by another. Only two other coaches felt secure enough to place their strengths out there – no body else!
In today’s busy, fast-paced world, it’s often filled up with stress, little personal support and difficult to reach your goals or solve problems. Life Coaching is a superb way to help a person with achieving their goals, solving problems, having the support they need to ensure that life is less difficult and overall, improved.
What to find in a Coach:
Methods for you, as a customer in selecting a life coach include: know beforehand what you want to reach with a life coach and manage to answer how a coach can best work with you and you with them. It is also helpful to have an idea on what long you’re willing to be in coaching before you anticipate to reach your results and simply how much you are able to afford; research different life coach websites and read their articles, newsletters and take a look at their education/work/life experience and training; interview 3 different coaches – include in the interview all your questions on experience, prices, types of accomplishments linked to your goal, just how long do they think it’d take to reach your goal, explain how you like to make use of a coach and ask what their type of coaching is; request two references that had goals just like yours; and most importantly, make sure the life coach you select is the one that you ‘connect’ with or that ‘feels right’ to you. Other possible questions may be asking what the life coach feels are their strengths and weaknesses. Life coach Also be aware if you receive the impression that the life coach may find yourself ‘suggesting what things to do’ or pressuring you into goals or avenues that you don’t want and they seem more the agenda of the coach than yours.
Life Coaching is supposed to be about the customer and what they wish to achieve and their type of learning/growing/achieving through the procedure of reaching their goals. It’s not about the life coach. In reality, every life coach’s goal must certanly be to place themselves out of business. If coaching were done well, then eventually, fewer people would want it. As the old saying goes, ‘guide 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 per month and some should go to $300 or even more an hour. Some coaches actually earn $18,000 hour. If the life coaches you check-out don’t publish their costs, ask.
What’s the continuing future of Life Coaching?
Where’s Life Coaching going as time goes on? While the economy and the increasing stress of everyday life is severely hurting the caliber of people’s lives, life coaching will continue to cultivate in the number of individuals it serves in addition to how many life coaches entering the field. The number of individuals using the web and becoming net based businesses will continue to increase how many coaches who provide marketing, client attraction and who start business forms of services.
One of the newer life coaching waves coming is ‘Wellness Coaching’ which resembles health coaching. Of concern if you ask me is that numerous, that are 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 what 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 possibility of harm of the customer may occur. This is my concern and opinion that is shared by some and not by others. The pressure for more specific specialization, ‘niching’, will likely increase as well.
Will social media marketing change the facial skin of coaching? That’s unknown at this time. There are lots of blogs and forums now that individuals can access for support because of their specific needs, meet and get to know other people enthusiastic about exactly the same things. The world has gotten smaller and it’s much simpler to get individuals to talk to on the net, yet we’re more isolated within our ‘real’ lives than ever before.
I envision the complexities of marketing, such as free give aways, membership groups, increased administrative time (which means less time for coaching), hard selling and heavy marketing will continue to increase, as well. I envision you will have expanded Coaching Schools that provide coaching education that provides core basics for all forms of coaching and then gives additional education in specific areas of specialty forms of coaching. These will greatly lead to better qualified service providers. I came across it amazing, exactly how many coaches actually came out from the computer field from computer programming, IT support, web design and such. I do hope that something can be carried out to make sure 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.