Is Coaching for You?
Posted on July 09, 2021 by Tom Moore, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
A short article that defines coaching explains why you need a coach and outlines things to consider when choosing a coach.
What is Life Coaching?
Life Coaching is simply the art of helping you find solutions to the challenges you face right now and co-developing a plan to meet the challenges and create the life you want. There’s no real mystery to the process. As the expert of your life, you have all the resources you need to be successful. I’m an expert in helping you uncover and align those resources to make the changes that ensure your success. Simple to say, but hard to do, of course.
From a technical view, life coaching is a basic operating system designed to provide sustained cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes facilitating goal achievement and success, either in one’s work or in one’s personal life.
Types of Coaching
There are many types of life coaching and coaches. Indeed, there are the most recognized types of life coaching, e.g., Business Coaching, Career Coaching, Executive Coaching, and Success Coaching. There are also more colorful types of life coaching, e.g., Dating Coaching, Marketing Coaching, Nutrition Coaching, and Relationship Coaching. To best choose the life coaching approach appropriate to your need, you must understand what you want to accomplish.
My coaching approach is strengths-based. I help my clients feeling stuck to create a clear vision of success and then help them create a positive mindset and an executable plan to overcome obstacles by leveraging their existing strengths. My clients tend to be leaders and professionals concerned with unlocking their potential, making significant life changes, and maximizing their performance.
Why You Need a Coach
Whether pursuing a corporate career, paving a path as an entrepreneur, or just feeling stuck, one thing is sure: Everyone needs a little support now and again because even at your best, you have blind spots preventing a holistic picture of your life and the thoughts, habits, and behaviors that hinder your growth. Unfortunately, the same holds for your boss, friends, and family. While those close to you may have the best intentions, they often lack the sensitivity to analyze a given situation and deliver practical, actionable advice. So, who do you turn to for unbiased evaluation and expertise? Enter the life coach.
Successful people are not comfortable leaving success to chance. Engaging a life coach is an excellent example of how those seeking personal and professional growth take charge of their vision for their lives. And there is no face lost in seeking support in the form of a life coach. Some very high achievers vouch for the value of coaching, e.g., both Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates have commented on their favorable experiences with life coaching.
Ambition alone is no guarantee for success. You can undoubtedly draft a plan for success by yourself, but working with a coach can help you create a practical plan that works for you. A good life coach will help you dream big and stretch your horizons to create a compelling and positive vision for your life and enable you to chart the course to get there. All the while holding you accountable.
Whether you need a life coach or not boils down to this: If you want to move out of a situation you’re unhappy with and not sure how you need a life coach. If you’re going to move yourself to a better place than the one you’re in now and unsure about what to do next, you need a life coach. In short, everyone needs a life coach sometimes in their life.
Choosing a Life Coach
The first thing to consider in choosing a life coach is the severity or importance of the issue prompting you to consider life coaching. Not all challenges require a life coach. Suppose you rate the challenge on its impact on your life; it really needs to be a 7 or above on a scale, with 10 being the highest.
The first thing to look for in a coach is their ability to connect with you personally. It’s essential that you feel comfortable talking with your coach. Luckily you’re probably pretty good at sizing people up, and many coaches (including me) offer pro bono discovery sessions for that purpose.
Something else to consider is accreditation. Accreditation does not guarantee someone is a quality coach. While it does indicate a coach has undergone some sort of training (and that’s good to know), I’ve seen plenty of coaches that look good on paper but are terrible. I’ve also seen non-accredited coaches that are very, very good.
Finally, it’s best to talk with more than one coach before deciding, even if you really connect with the first coach you meet. The time spent having a couple of discovery meetings is well worth it. Not only do discovery sessions provide an opportunity to evaluate the coach. Many coaches see discovery meetings as an opportunity to begin coaching. In a discovery session, you are homing in on what you want to work on and, consequently, the coach that can best support you. So, the coaching begins even before you have chosen a coach.
