Life Coaches and Work-Related Coaching

Life coaching is all about helping people to identify the specific life goals they wish to achieve and then working to reach them within a relatively short timeframe. Increasingly people are turning to life coaches to gain a better work life balance and to bring together all the disparate areas of their lives.

• A life coach takes an unbiased and objective view. They can spot things you may not have noticed or that never occurred to you or that you thought were out of your reach. Life coaches focus on boosting your confidence in order to help you achieve your goals.
• There is often overlap between people’s personal and professional ambitions. Life Coaching focuses in a holistic way on any aspect of life that a person wants to improve and helps people to make the most of themselves.
• At one time work-related coaching and mentoring were reserved for senior managers and company directors, now it is available to all as a professional or personal development tool. Some coaches specialise in business coaching, executive coaching, performance coaching and skills coaching.
• If signs and signals at work are indicating that you are facing problems it may be worth asking for work-related coaching as part of your professional development. If you have already lost your job it may be worth considering as a confidence boost to help you in finding new work or avoiding previous pitfalls in a new position.
• There are also specialist coaches and coaching programmes for many specific areas such as confidence building, stress relief, assertiveness, happiness and success.
• Coaching takes place on a one to one basis either face to face or over the telephone and by email support. The type, intensity and duration of sessions is entirely up to the client.
• Coaching may make use of some psychotherapy techniques such as gestalt, cognitive behavioural therapy and increasingly neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). However coaches normally work with you on practical tasks and would not expect to be able to resolve deep and underlying issues.
• A good coach would recommend that a client seek the help of a trained counsellor or psychotherapist where more in depth expertise is required.
• Choosing the right life coach for you is important. As life coaching is relatively new and is not fully regulated as yet there is no obligation for life coaches to have formal qualifications.
• It is unwise to sign up or pay for lots of sessions upfront. Most life coaches offer a complimentary session which may help to decide if this is for you. Try to talk to several on the telephone and ask questions that will help you to get a sense of their style. You have to like and respect them.
• The better coaches will be able to provide testimonials; they are likely to have more experience of life and will have done lots of different things themselves. Coaches in your localit...