What is Life Coaching?
When I first excitedly shared with my friends and family that I was working towards becoming a life coach, I received a variety of responses. Luckily all of the people in my life are incredibly supportive, but there was a wide variance among them regarding what they knew about this career path. They asked:
What does a life coach do?
Is that like a therapist?
What do people go to life coaches to get help with?
Can you make a career out of that?
This is why I’ve chosen for my first blog post to discuss:
What is a life coach?
To answer this question I explored what it means to me and how I show up in this role as well as took a look at what some experts and media hubs have to say on the subject.
International Coaching Federation (ICF), one of top life coach certification providers, defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.”
Leaders.com defines it as “someone who’s job it is to teach the relevant skills, strategies, and approaches required for achieving maximum potential. Coaches analyze how to motivate a client to consistently play to their strengths. Additionally, they educate and develop people in areas that can increase success in life.“
VeryWellMind defines it as “a type of wellness professional who helps people make progress in their lives in order to attain greater fulfillment. Life coaches aid their clients in improving their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives.”
To sum it up, I would say: A life coach is someone who meets their client where they are at, to support and guide them while they explore ways to overcome a challenge, navigate a transition, or achieve a goal. Furthermore, using a valuable third-party lens, they apply self-assessment, creative ideation, communication, and solution exploration exercises for the client to mindfully choose their path forward.
Life coaches typically meet with clients, as individuals or in group workshops that can be in-person or virtually, for a number of sessions, with the length of time together determined by the client’s goals. It is a client driven and professionally facilitated process. We are not meant to give advice, provide psychological diagnosis, or tell the client what to do. We offer a safe and effective space to explore, thereby lifting the client up so that they can achieve what they have decided on as their end result.
Some life coaches have specialties, like they work with a certain demographic or focus on a certain set of goals, like career, wellness, or life transitions. There are many (and I mean many!) programs that train someone in how to be a life coach and even institutions like the ICF that accredit a life coach after they have gone through a certain level of training. But you do not need to have a certification or accreditation to practice.
Living with Gusto will soon (September 2023!) be certified by the ICF at a Level 2 (there are three levels) accreditation because we take our work with clients very seriously and want to deliver the best life coaching experience out there. Our clients deserve the best kind of support in this moment where they are driven to grow, learn and achieve.
If you’d like to learn more about Living with Gusto, check out our About Us page, or follow us on Facebook or Instagram. Or contact us to set up a consultation, or share with us a challenge you are facing that you might want coaching support with. We’ll respond with a couple ideas for free.