Professional Life Coach for Construction Professionals

Posted on June 08, 2023 by Christelle Soto-Suarez, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

Well, in this article, I’m highlighting the importance of the life coach’s overall experience being relatable to the client – in particular when the client is a woman in construction (as this is my background prior to entering the field of life coaching…).

What’s a Professional Life Coach?
We’ve all heard of sport coaches, of business coaches, and many of us have also heard of life coaches too… a “profession” that is trending. Why do I say a “profession”? Because life coaching is not a regulated profession (think engineers, architects, lawyers, doctors) in many, if not most, countries, and therefore anyone can call themselves a “life coach”.
However, there are institutions that provide guidance, standards and code of ethics to their members, together with accredited trainings and credentials for Professional Life Coaches. One of these institution is the International Coaching Federation (“ICF”).
And the ICF defines life coaching as a
“Thought-provoking, creative partnership process between the client and the coach that inspires the client to maximize their personal and professional potential”.
What does that mean? In short, it means that the overall end goal of life coaching is for us, as clients, to:
• Gain a fresh perspective on our challenges and opportunities;
• Remind us of who we are, deep down;
• Close the gap between who we are now and who we really want to be;
• Improve our satisfaction with life, reaching for our personal / professional goals;
• Tap into our inner resources;
• Support us in leading our life at its full potential; and
• Many more!
But life coaching is not about:
• Telling us how to fix whatever is “wrong” in our life;
• Giving advice on how to deal with issues or making decisions;
• Helping us to deal with mental or psychological issues (many life coaches, including professional life coaches, have no medical, therapeutic, psychological credentials);
• Confirming our views and opinions; and
• Being a shoulder to cry on and be comforted by.

Why Life Coaching Is for Everyone, not just Executives
It’s easy to think that life coaching is a “luxury” for well-off people and high-level executives. But we’re all entitled to enjoy a high level of satisfaction with our life, feeling that the different parts of our personal and professional lives are interconnected and fulfilled.
But we tend to think that life coaching is an expensive service… But is it really?
First, we can always start our exploration journey into what it is we really want in life using free resources provided by life coaches, such as articles, videos and webinars.
Second, with more and more accredited professional life coaches on the market, there is now a wider price range for this type of service.
Third, one on one sessions are not our only option – think group coaching but also seminars and webinars, or even courses on how to discover who we really want to be, or on the questions to ask ourselves to brainstorm a way forward… If only to start our exploration journey…
Finally, let’s think about how much our happiness is worth… We’re happy to spend money on activities giving us immediate (but short-term) pleasure, on our physical appearance, on how we want others to see us, even sometimes on spending several years studying for the sake of getting recognized credentials… but we worry about spending money on better understanding ourselves and on identifying how to get what we really, really, really want in our life… despite the impact this would have on our well-being (mental, spiritual and physical), on our careers and on our spending habits?

The Importance of a Relatable Background
Like for any other services or products, we ought to consider a number of criteria before selecting a professional life coach, such as: credentials, specialization, experience, cost and duration of the program or package, proposed methodology. Another set of important criteria refers to how we “feel” about the life coach: feeling comfortable speaking openly, feeling trust, feeling safe… and feeling that the life coach can understand us and our circumstances – which we can start to establish through what is generally called a “complementary discovery call” that most life coaches offer before starting any life coaching program.
And I believe that “feeling that the life coach can understand us and our circumstances” is very much critical to getting the best results out of life coaching – even if the life coach is not there to provide advice based their own experience.
When I was researching life coaches for myself, I noticed that most professional life coaches have a therapy, HR, executive, leadership or business background… but, as a woman with an international construction career, I did not relate to any of these backgrounds (not that there is any wrong with life coaches with such backgrounds, of course!)… In the state of mind I was in at the time, this looked like a big obstacle… But I think that, even if I had been in a more positive state of mind, it would still have been a challenge. Why?
Because we, construction professionals, tend to see the construction industry as being unique. As the “end product” (the actual construction) is “fixed” to the ground, it is dependent on the ground’s characteristics for its design, construction and even potentially maintenance and finally demolition, therefore making each and every “end product” unique. Construction projects also involved a very wide range of professions, which vary depending on the stage of the project, working on or off site, in very diverse geographical environments… and teams working on large / specialized projects often include professional from different countries, with different professional and life experiences, working together for a few months or a few years…
And, based on my own experience, this is not an “atmosphere” that is easily understood by people from outside the industry… even more so when we’re part of a minority group (in my case, being a woman in a male-dominated environment).
That is why I believe that, for a service that is very personal and intimate as life coaching, selecting a life coach that can understand me, as a woman with an international construction career, is critical to start my exploration journey…
What do you think?