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Life Coach
What is a Life Coaching?
The concept of a Life Coach (a professionally trained personal performance coach) originated in the USA.
Although the concept of having a personal coach is commonplace in the sports, health and fitness arenas, the practice is now becoming widespread in Business (executive coaching, business coaching), and also in Life coaching.
A coach is someone who gathers together a body of knowledge, techniques and style of delivery, and uses them enable the client to achieve the levels of performance, success and achievement that they are targeting, in whatever field.
Many personal development techniques can be traced back to a few individuals - the first books on the subject were published in the 1930's, with a boom is publications and sales in the post-war years. Despite there still being perhaps a negative view of 'self help', coaching has evolved gently, owing a lot to these personal development techniques.
At the same time, the number of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts expanded, most of whom focused upon specific medical or mental conditions. However, from the 1980's, therapists began to recognise that many life situations required a more holistic approach, and therapists started to become coaches;
Coaching is a two way conversation between the coach and the client. Its a powerful partnership, where the coach uses questioning to enable the client to find their own solutions for the problems they have, and enable them to develop and achieve their goals for life. The coach is not a mentor, not an adviser, nor a teacher. The coach is an enabler, a facilitator.
Coaching is about achieving measurable results for the future.
In coaching, the onus of responsibility rests with the client, which in turn empowers the client to new awareness and choices in life.
One well known model (not a technique) used widely in Life Coaching is the GROW model:
G - Goals - What outcome / result does the client want to achieve?
R - Reality - what is the client's reality now, what is the current situation?
O - Options - What Options are there for achieving the Goals?
W - Will - The Clients Will, What Will they do to achieve their goals?
Whilst the GROW model is a simple way to describe the process to the client, the techniques employed by the coach, the style of the coach, the beliefs and intentions of the coach as well as those of the client will affect the outcomes.
Which techniques does a Life Coach employ to enable the client to become empowered to take control of every aspect of their life?
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) holds the secrets for successful coaching, because it has within it a wide range of tools, techniques and presuppositions that ensure successful outcomes. NLP studies in detail how a client codes and processes experience in order to decide on behaviour, which determines their results. This has moved human change intervention from a psychological approach (why we do the things we do), to a neurological approach (what we do, and how we get there). This neurological approach is the key to enabling rapid and lasting change and performance enhancement.
Specific techniques used by the NLP Life Coach are:
- Presuppositions of NLP - setting a positive framework
- Rapport - a deep rapport enable the intuitive communication and understanding between coach and client
- Reframing - loosening the clients previously held beliefs and thought patterns
- Strategies - identifying and if necessary changing unresourceful strategies that have led to poor results
- Language Patterns - enabling the client to consider possibilities and new solutions by careful and precise use of language
- Values - Elicitation, clean up and change of values in relevant areas of life, career, relationships, etc.
- Belief change - removing limiting beliefs that persistently have held the client back
- Releasing Negative Emotions - removing unwarranted negative emotional responses to situations
- Resource anchoring - providing the client with positive resourceful states and mindsets to achieve results
- Key to Achievable Outcomes - setting goals that will be achieved
