How to Choose the Right Life Coach

A life coach provides guidance to individuals who want to accomplish specific goals, but are having difficulty doing so on their own. Choosing the right life coach involves knowing what your needs and goals are and seeking out potential coaches through referral services or personal references. Before deciding on the right coach, you should research the life coach, interview him or her and participate in a sample session.

1Assess your needs.

Life coaches base their practices on a particular subject area such as business, relationships, grief, mid-life issues, etc. Decide what you need life coaching for. If you are having problems with your spouse or children, you don’t want to choose a personal life coach whose focus is on weight loss. Understand that hiring a life coach is a personal investment that can be costly. The hourly fee for a life coach can run from $50 to $400 or more per 1 hour session.

Knowing the direction you want to take in life, and having some idea of what your goals are, will help you in choosing the life coach that can guide you in developing strategies to accomplish your goals. A life coach can help you if you feel stuck in a certain area of your life; help you stay motivated and help you to pursue a dream you have carried for a long time, but never took the steps to make it happen.

A personal life coach is not a counselor or a therapist. Life coaches work with emotionally healthy, high-functioning people who need support to achieve goals they cannot get from the people in their lives. A life coach does not treat mental illness.

2Use a referral service.

Many life coach certification programs and professional organizations, like the International Coach Federation, offer a referral service on their websites. Most referral databases can be searched by location and area of specialty. A referral service will also inform you if the life coach is certified.

3Get references.

Ask family and friends or associates for a reference. Be sure to get a reference from a person who has actually been coached by the person they are referring you to. Ask questions about the life coach’s personality, the area the coach specializes in and the emotional support the coach provides.

4Research your potential life coach.

Once you have identified a life coach you think you would like to work with, explore his or her website or blog. Find out if the coach is a certified life coach and what area of coaching he or she specializes in. Try to determine if you share the coach’s perspective on life in general and in pursuing goals. Compare the information you gather from the life coach’s online presence with any information you have gained from personal references or a referral service.

5Schedule an interview and a sample session.

Meet with the life coach and ask questions that may not have been answered during your research. Ask about the hourly fee and if the coach requires a commitment to attend a minimum number of sessions. Question the coach about his or her life coach training and the type of continued education he or she participates in. Verify the coach’s specialty and discuss the format of a regular session.

If the coach offers a free session, schedule one to determine if the coach is a good match. During the session, consider the following questions: Do you feel comfortable with the coach? Is this someone you think you can trust? Do you get the impression that the coach will hold you accountable for accomplishing your goals?

How to Choose the Right Life Coach

Undeniable Proof That Strategic Business Coaching Produces Results

I recently had the good fortune of celebrating the accomplishments of a former client. When Betty (not her real name due to confidentiality) and I first met she was overwhelmed, stressed, scattered, and didn’t know where to start to get her business back in control. As a single mom of a teenage boy, she didn’t have the luxury of taking time to put long-term strategies in place to grow her business. She needed to unravel the knots in her life and business, reduce her expenses, and generate more cash flow immediately. We started where we could have the greatest impact.

Betty felt that in order to provide excellent service for her clients she needed to meet them in their neighborhood. As a result, she was traveling all over Los Angeles, wasting valuable time caught in traffic. She also had the added expense of micro offices around the city where she could meet her clients. Although it was difficult, we combined all her offices into one that was located near her to make it more convenient for her. We also helped her realize that if she was a good fit for her clients, they wouldn’t mind the drive — especially when you consider people drive all over the city to attend sporting events, go shopping, etc. If it’s important enough to them, they’ll make the drive.

We also needed for Betty to see her value. When one is in over their head, it’s tough to see what one brings to the table that’s of value. We developed a strategy that allowed her to embrace her strengths and abilities.  This also was instrumental in helping her raise her rates to one that was much more sustainable for her business. Prior to this, she was definitely underpriced — and underearning — with her “bargain” rates.  Her lack of belief in her own value caused her to also implement a policy of providing the first hour for free. Now that she knows and embraces her personal and professional value in the equation of working with her clients, she has eliminated the first free hour. Rather than discounting her services, she now delights her clients instead!

And, she’s no longer growing her business alone. She’s learning to delegate.

What made the difference for Betty being able to make these needed changes in order to grow her business? Focus! With weekly conversations focused on developing strategies to grow her business, she could no longer sweep things under the rug and pretend they didn’t exist. We took the emotions out of the decision-making to make smart, strategic decisions. And, we stripped away the many myths she had about running a successful business.

Undeniable Proof That Strategic Business Coaching Produces Results

Wealth

Love is by far the greatest wealth. You can have anything and everything money can buy, but without love you will still be empty. How much time do you spend on the things you love…?

Wealth

Even greater than the ability to inspire

Even greater than the ability to inspire others with hope is the power to motivate them to give as much to the lives of others as they would give to their own; and to empower them to confront the worst in themselves in order to discover and claim the best in themselves.

Even greater than the ability to inspire

What is NLP ?

People who have had some sort of training in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) frequently ask me: “What is NLP”? They have a general sense of what it is, but experience it as a challenge to explain it to the uninitiated. It is a challenge that I have frequently faced myself although not always successfully. If you find this article helps you to explain NLP more successfully to others, I will know that I have done my job! NLP as a subject is bottomless because the more we learn about it, the more there is to learn. When learning about NLP it is a good idea to keep your desired outcomes in mind and let it guide you as to how much you learn about NLP and how much to ignore. You don’t have to learn everything in NLP. Most people just have to make sensible choices from the wealth of trainers and providers from whom we learn. Remember to always use your desired outcomes as criteria and then get different opinions on how best to fulfil those criteria. You will find that people are biased and therefore you will have to get lots of opinions. At its core, NLP is a method for duplicating excellence. Excellence in methodology, results and human cognition. It is needless to say that if NLP is what many supporters (me included) say is a better way of learning other/different things faster than any other methods out there – it becomes easy to say that “everything is NLP” This both true and false. Example — if you were a world-class billiards player, I could use NLP to model what you do, how you do it, and replicate your results significantly more quickly than how long it took you to achieve your level of greatness. That is, IF I had the time available to devote to this, and IF I had unfettered access to watching you perform, interviewing you in unique ways, and then, you also helped with my refinement process (feedback loop)… then I could conceivably take a year or maybe even less to reach what took you a decade to reach. (Yes, seriously). And afterwards, I might even be better skilled than you would be, at teaching your level of excellence, once I’d replicated your results. I could potentially then package observations about your skills (& optimizations to your logic) that you neither could nor would have ever concluded on your own, and then my version of your skill, would arguably then have become, an NLP-based skill. Lets take the example of a world-class billiards player. When I make use of NLP to model his actions, I can duplicate his results significantly quicker than the time it took him to achieve that level of greatness – provided that I had the time to devote myself to this and that I have unrestricted access to your performances, interview you in exclusive ways and that you also provide me with quality feedback in my refinement process. From the above example you can see that this modelling process has produced results and although it is the “results” of NLP it is also included in the skill set of NLP, which in turn are often mistaken as NLP, when they have originally only been the results of implementing NLP. I thank that most would agree that these various NLP skills include: Improved persuasiveness. • The ability to put people at ease rapidly and to make them think that they know you and vice versa • The ability to induce a trance and to evoke their imagination and hit the emotional buttons more easily. • The ability to gain a deeper understanding about how people tick and why. • The ability to using people’s own values and decision strategies to influence them. … and lots more … I have left out vast areas of what NLP comprises of and this is just a few points as to why many have undertaken at least some NLP training at some time, somewhere. I intentionally show it as an partial list of skills. The letters NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and is about using language in a more effective way to influence/redirect/program our own or other people’s minds. The programming part doesn’t mean “mind control” but rather influencing of the mind for self-improvement and other purposes like social and business influence. To encompass NLP in a nutshell is hard and I hope this contribute to a better understanding. For more information about life coaching courses in Pretoria & Johannesburg - click here.

NLP Life Coaching Courses

Action Factory offers a range of personal effectiveness and development training courses to the corporate sector as well as individuals. The NLP Life Coaching training courses for people who are interested in becoming NLP Practitioners and Professional Performance Life Coaches, are challenging, supportive practical and fun and of great value to those who want to develop their personal and business skills.

NLP Professional Performance Life Coaching.

Course 5: NLP Professional Performance Life Coaching.

Time Frame:                4 Days full time plus completion of previous 10 days of training
Costs:                          R4750.00 per person
When:                          View Course schedule

Outcome:
This course takes training to a new world of leading personal change technology to a whole new level. It opens up your entire potential, and equips you to take your clients depth of change to a whole new level.

This course is the last stage in our program. It is ultimately one of the most developed and integrated NLP Coachingprograms available today. It offers a combination of; instruction, demonstration, discussion, modeling and the chance to practice the NLP Coaching techniques.

Prerequisite:                Introduction to Life Coaching & Neuro Linguistic Programming

NLP Practitioner Skills and Techniques Diploma Course

Life Coaching Skills and Techniques Diploma Course

Who should attend:
NLP Coaches wanting to join the Action Factory brand as Action Factory Professional NLP Performance Coaches. This is the crescendo in the training program. If Coaching and NLP is your passion and profession this course is certainly the best available.

Qualification:              3 Internationally recognized Certificates in Life Coaching, NLP and Hypnotherapy.

Remember we only train small groups in limited numbers. Don’t delay, book today.

NLP Professional Performance Life Coaching.

Hypnotherapy Diploma Course

Course 4: Hypnotherapy Diploma Course

Time Frame:                4Days full time plus 2 previous days Introduction course plus 4 days NLP totalling 10 days
Costs:                          R 3800.00 per person
When:                          View Course schedule

Outcome:
Hypnotherapy is used to speak to the subconscious mind. It is a fantastic skill to add as a Life Coach and NLP Practitioner. This is not stage hypnosis as seen on TV, it is therapeutic. Hypnotherapy is used when an individual has limiting beliefs they cannot overcome. It is a fast effective method of bringing about positive change. You will be able to induce trance in individuals for therapeutic benefits and change techniques.

Prerequisite:                Completion of Introduction and NLP Practitioner course

NLP Practitioner Skills and Techniques Diploma Course.

Agreement to sign and submit to Code of Ethics

Who should attend: 

Life Coaches and Therapists wanting to add to their skills and abilities.

Qualification:              Hypnotherapy Certificate

Remember we only train small groups in limited numbers. Don’t delay, book today.

 

Hypnotherapy Diploma Course