Institute For Career Research - Careers in Life Coaching

HELP PEOPLE TO PUT THEIR CAREERS AND FUTURES ON THE PATH TO SUCCESS

• Starting Salary: $40,000-$50,000/annually
  
• Median Salary: $85,000/annually
• High End Salary: $100,000+/annually

• Excellent listening skills
  
• Must be calm, organized and focused
  
• Good communication and conversation skills
  
• Be honest and straightforward
  
• Be supportive
  
• Excited about solving problems

• Establish what people want from their life/career
  
• Set Goals
  
• Create a plan to achieve those goals
  
• Advise on major life decisions

• Large corporations
  
• Offices
  
• Remotely via the internet

• No formal education currently require, though thats likely to change
  
• Accreditation does improve hiring prospects

• Help people reach their full potential
  
• Energizing
  
• Introduces you to interesting people
  
• Flexible schedule

• Need to spend time managing the business aspects of your coaching practice
  
• Some clients can be difficult/slow to progress
  
• Have to prove yourself repeatedly
  
• Some clients can become dependent or needy

Neither is knowing the next move to make to steer yourself in the right direction. If you are skilled at navigating your own way through life, have the ability to evaluate your choices wisely, and are adept at making good decisions, you have a gift that you could turn into a successful career.

There is a growing call for life coaches, as more people seek to put their lives on a course for success. For many people, life can become so overwhelming that they can get mired in the quicksand of indecision. They are not treading water; they are drowning. They need someone who can bring a new perspective, a clarity to the situation someone who can point them in a positive direction when they themselves can see no clear way forward.

Life coaches are dedicated professionals who have a knack for ferreting out the true potential in people. A life coach can bring objectivity to a seemingly hopeless dilemma and assist with removing stumbling blocks that can hinder a persons future growth.

Life coaches are not psychologists or psychotherapists. Your work does not center around past issues. It is all about moving forward, making progress, reaching future goals, and improving peoples lives by helping them muster the courage to make changes that will aid them in getting the most out of life.

You work with clients to develop them to be the best they can be. You draw a variety of untapped talent out of them and show them how to accomplish goals they never thought possible. You help people balance their lives, break through artificial barriers that are holding them back, and see strengths in themselves that have always been there but have never been used to their fullest.

You can share in the excitement when a client breaks a vicious cycle of going nowhere. A life coach can awaken new passions in clients, give them guidance as to how to gain more control over their lives, and help them take some risks that reap life-changing rewards.

As a life coach, you walk a thin line. You are an adviser, a mentor, even a confidant, and while you develop a bond with your clients, you are not a friend. Friends may not always tell another friend the truth. They do not want to lose a friendship or hurt someones feelings. Your job as a life coach is to always tell the truth. That is why you were hired. You are an expert on life and all its twist and turns. You are also a professional who has gained respect in field.

ASK YOURSELF SOME KEY QUESTIONS to determine if becoming a life coach is right for you. Are you a decisive person? Do you weigh the pros and cons of a situation and take action, or are you stumped when life throws you a curve and you never know what to do? Are the decisions you make for yourself so good that other people come to you for advice and insight? Is the counsel you give others valued, and does your guidance help them make the right choices?

Think about how you respond to others when you are asked for advice. Do you tailor the ideas you give people to their specific situation or problem or do you just speak in generalizations? Good life coaches always keep the conversation focused on the person they are trying to help and what is best for that particular individual, regardless of what everyone else might be doing at the time.

Consult with life coaches in your area and talk to them about the job they are doing. Some life coaches post videos. Watch those videos and study the techniques these coaches use to motivate people.

It is never too early to learn how to be a good listener. To help people, you have to really hear what they are saying and understand it. Ask some probing questions and listen to the answers you receive. That will give you insight and help you get to the crux of the problem.

When you are trying to help someone, it is not about you. It is about the other person.

WORDS OF WISDOM, SAGE ADVICE, Keen insights people have been sharing these with each other for centuries, but not until recently on a professional basis. It was always friend to friend, parent to child, neighbor to neighbor. Over the past 50 years or so, providing people with guidance, a direction in life, and helping them reach their goals has become a career for people with the rare talent to manage lifes ups and downs.

Life coaching as a profession started in the 1980s, but the term coach goes back much further. The word coach was initially a slang term, first used in 1830 by students at Oxford University in England to describe a tutor hired to help a student prepare for an exam. Soon after, amateur athletes started using tutors, but in a different sense to instruct them on ways of taking their game to the next level. By 1861, professional sports teams in England and around the world began hiring coaches to guide teams, as well as individual players, and lead them to victory. The job of a sports coach expanded through the years from that of instruction to developing strategy, direction, and objectives for a team and its players.

A sports coach became the person players turned to for guidance and advice about reaching team as well as personal athletic goals. If this could be done in sports, why not for life in general, thought Thomas J. Leonard.

A financial planner in Salt Lake City, Leonard found that people often had an array of other life concerns when they came to him for fiscal advice. So he started addressing those other issues in addition to money matters. He found that his clients were emotionally stable and did not need psychological assistance. They just wanted to achieve certain life goals and needed someone who could guide them in the steps they needed to get them where they wanted to go. Sometimes his clients sought advice about retiring early, changing professions, starting their own business, buying a summer home, turning a harried life into a calmer existence, or just having a life plan for the future.

Leonards advice, guidance, and the way he coached people to achieve greater accomplishments in life and be happier overall, made him so successful that he started to shift his focus from financial planning to life planning. He began calling himself a life coach.

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