Everyday life for most adults means more challenges come along the way, together with fear and obstructions as they carry along with their activities. Such setbacks tend to lead people to the wrong directions in life through poor decision making. As a result, many fail to reach their goals and satisfy their long-term desires. When individuals make ineffective choices, the results that they get afterward are most times substandard, therefore creating self-doubt and desperation. This paper is going to take us through the step by step life coaching solutions and skills the coach needs to effectively apply the coaching strategy to a client.
There are various steps for a life coach to follow when helping a client in building a road map for the achievement of goals. To begin with, there is goal clarification (Whitley, Wright & Gould, 2016). This is the phase where the coach is under the obligation of making the client’s goal specific, measurable, and achievable. No matter the difficulty, a life coach, together with his or her clients, should be able to know the kind of feedback that they want. On top of that, they should be able to measure the progress that they are making qualitatively. When the objective is clear, and the client is in agreement with the coach, the goal begins to make more sense.
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Second, there is the realization of the goal (Theeboom, Van Vianen & Beersma, 2017). In this step, the client should explain to the coach the picture that he or she paints in the clouds when the client imagines the realization of the desired goal since imagination creates a significant impact in the achievement of dreams. The coach, through interrogations, should make the client reveal the feeling, surrounding, the activity that he or she would be doing and whether the client would be alone or with the company. From there henceforth, it would be the life coach’s obligation to make the client’s imagination into reality.
The third phase is planning (Farver & Holt, 2015). After ensuring that the client’s dreams are correctly identified, a life coach should work together with the customer to come up with a strategy for obtaining results. Some of the crucial factors to be considered in this phase are the amount of time and resources availed to them. Also, the life trainer needs to identify the essential parts that have to be given priority during execution. The strategy might involve working from the end towards the beginning of the client’s imaginative description to make the identification of actions to be taken easier ( Payne, 2007) . Just like any planning activity, there are bound to be setbacks, which the coach should be ready to overcome.
The fourth step is accountability. As a life coach, one of the duties is to hold a client accountable for every action that is taken along the way. The coach should follow up on the pledges that the client makes and ensure that they keep their promises without changes. Accountability of the coaches tends to motivate the clients to do better since they feel empowered by the progress that they make (Theeboom, Van Vianen & Beersma, 2017). As a result, clients gain more confidence in their abilities, a quality that is crucial for their quest of achieving their goals with every phase that they complete fruitfully.
The last step is appreciation (Dulagil, Green & Ahern, 2016). The life coach should recognize and celebrate the steps that his or her client makes towards the realization of his or her goals. This step is essential and should not be ignored by either party because it inspires the client into achieving more. Despite some steps being more complicated to follow than others, they all together contribute to making the client achieve goals that were initially deemed impossible.
For a life coach to commendably apply the above strategies with any client, he or she needs to have specialized skills for communicating to a customer in a way that will not undermine the consumer or his dreams. First, a life coach will need to be a keen listener ( Payne, 2007) . He or she should show interest in the goals of a client and also displaying curiosity. The life coach should not be impatient nor lack attentiveness since this would hinder proper communication between himself and his customers. In addition to that, he or she should not do all the talking, but also give customers equal chances of bringing forth ideas with minimal unnecessary interruptions.
Next, a life coach should be professional ( Payne, 2007) . He or she should pay as much attention to understanding as listening. He should be able to take in what is being said by the client as well as note them down instead of contributing to the conversation blindly. He should also focus on the non-verbal communications of the client, such as their facial expressions and body movement patterns (Theeboom, Van Vianen & Beersma, 2017). Third, a coach needs to mirror with high levels of accuracy. It shows that the coach is a good listener and had taken in the information given to him or her. A coach can reflect through paraphrasing, repetition of essential words, and summarizing.
Lastly, a coach should have outstanding interrogative skills, with the asking of open-ended questions which would provide the platform for more information to be dug out. In addition to that, open questions help clients to find out more about their dreams. After interrogating, a coach ought to give back results to a client. Prosperous coaches know how to deliver results, keeping in mind that sick deliverance would make the whole process of coaching meaningless since the customers would feel their goals are inadequate.
References
Dulagil, A., Green, S., & Ahern, M. (2016). Evidence-based coaching to enhance senior students’ wellbeing and academic striving. International Journal of Wellbeing , 6 (3).
Farver, A. R., & Holt, C. R. (2015). Value of Coaching in Building Leadership Capacity of Principals in Urban Schools. Education Leadership Review of Doctoral Research , 2 (2)
Payne, V. (2007). Coaching for high performance . AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.
Theeboom, T., Van Vianen, A. E., & Beersma, B. (2017). A temporal map of coaching. Frontiers in psychology , 8 , 1352.
Whitley, M. A., Wright, E. M., & Gould, D. (2016). Coaches’ perspectives on teaching life skills to underserved South African children and youth. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching , 11 (3)
