Martin The Life Coaching Handbook

Everything You Need to be an effective life coach
1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-1-84590-334-3
Verlag: Crown House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

This complete guide to life coaching reveals what life coaching IS, how to coach yourself and others effectively and how to create and sustain a successful coaching practice. Leading you through a comprehensive programme of Advanced Life Coaching Skill The Life Coaching Handbook is the essential guide for life coaches, and a key sourcebook for NLP practitioners, human resources managers, training professionals, counsellors and the curious. Curly Martin is a professional life coach, author, trainer and internationally qualified NLP Master Practitioner. Coaching for more than twenty years, her clients include celebrities, CEOs, directors and doctors.

Curly Martin is the trail blazing author of the international ground-breaking bestseller The Life Coaching Handbook, a world first life coaching book written specifically for life coaches on how to build a life coaching business. This means that she is the pioneer for Life Coach Training. She has written The Business Coaching Handbook and The Personal Success Handbook which complete this handbook series.She has also written or co-written over 30 books and articles on coaching. Curly is a Fellow member of The International Authority of Professional Coaching and Mentoring, which means she has met their highest robust criteria. 'Curly Martin... an inspirational trainer, an un-equalled coach and one of the most impressive human beings I've ever met.' - Simon Cheung LCH Dip. Curly is the forerunner of life coach training, a pioneer and ground breaking author, top ten life coach (Observer Magazine) and has one of the top 5% most viewed LinkedIn profiles.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Martin, Curly

Leseproben

Chapter One

Life Coaching Defined

‘The first step towards success is knowing what it is that you aim to do’

Synopsis

Life coaching is a career and an ethical profession. The life coach uses the power of commitment to enable their clients to achieve beneficial and measurable results in all areas of their lives. Life coaching is a holistic process that has the power to balance and harmonise life.

Coaching. Is it a new phenomenon or an old profession dressed up to look exciting? Life coaching is one and both at the same time. It uses some of the skills of the old coaching styles combined with innovation. It concentrates on the person’s whole life instead of just one area.

Conventional coaching tends to be specific in its approach. This means that the coach specialises in one profession or a single specialised area of expertise. Physical or sports coaches, for example, usually come from within that profession. They have proved their success as a professionally-paid player or athlete. In tennis, the best coaches of the top-ranking players have themselves been tennis professionals.

Football also follows this pattern. In the major leagues the coaches have come from the field of football, literally. These, then, are examples of the traditional types of coach. They design the physical training programmes and coach their clients accordingly. They have expertise and experience in the skill required. Then they endeavour to advise and coach their protégés in this skill.

During the 1980s the business coaches arrived in the guise of management or financial consultants. They are specialists in the business world who are usually hired when profits are going down. They have a role when companies have been through re-engineering, or a new product is to be launched. They are retained on a temporary basis, for instance, when a company identifies some missing skills that may not justify a permanent addition to staff. Consultants usually spend their time establishing facts, preparing reports, designing the new process or procedure and helping the client to implement approved proposals.

Management consultants contribute at least 75 per cent of the plan of action. The same contribution levels of 75 per cent, or more, are found in the sports-coaching role.

Life coaching is the converse of this: at least 75 per cent of the action plan comes from the client. An expert in a particular field can do life coaching but someone who has no specific knowledge of the skills required can just as effectively perform it. Indeed, some of the most successful life coaches do not have the expertise in the specialist fields of their clients.

Expertise in many trades or professions is not the role of the life coach. Laura Berman Fortgang, life coach and author of Take Yourself to the Top, writes, “I am your partner,” and adds, “coaching is holistic.” Another life coach, Eileen Mulligan, wrote in Life Coaching – change your life in seven days, “Life coaches are there to push you to change your life for the better.” There is no mention in either book about the need for qualifications or expertise in any given field beyond that of life coaching itself.

So what is a life coach? Some life coaches believe that it is about advising clients. Some believe that it involves guiding clients to find their own answers. A few claim that you must have expertise within the fields where you coach. Spiritually focused life coaches say that it is all about “connection.” Life coaches with therapy backgrounds believe that the process includes counselling or therapy.

In reality, life coaching can be all of the above. It depends on the needs of each individual client and the skills of the coach. When you use the techniques offered here, you can develop your own style and proficiencies to become a highly sought-after life coach.

Despite this diversity of approach, most life coaches agree that it is about achieving results. Most people, if asked, “Is there something you’ve been thinking about doing but have yet to start or complete?” will answer, “Yes.” Then they will tell you exactly what it is and how long they have wanted to do it. They may even give you all the reasons why they have not done it. The life coach closes the gap between thinking about doing and actually doing.

Clients tend to underperform because there is conflict between their desires and their value systems. They depend on these values and belief systems for guidance, although many, developed in their childhood, may no longer serve them in adulthood. Nevertheless, people still judge and act by these obsolete principles.

Some life coaches seek to address these barriers before working with the client’s desired outcomes. In the long term, any conflict between desires and beliefs should be investigated but, initially, the job of the life coach is to get results – results, results and nothing but results!

A life coach who spends initial time with clients on anything other than results will diminish the impact of the coaching process by converting it from a client-and-coach relationship to a client-and-therapist situation. This is not on the life coaching agenda.

When the life coach focuses on results or outcomes and enables their clients to define and achieve these with ease, then the clients can eventually be guided to examine their beliefs and values. It is not a primary function of the life coach to change the client’s beliefs and values. Although changes in negative or undesirable values and beliefs can accelerate the achievement of outcomes, such changes should be addressed only with care and after a solid working relationship has been developed.

The main role of the life coach is to enable and empower the client. This is achieved using the “power of commitment” as leverage. Once clients agree to an activity they are committed to do it. This commitment is powerfully linked with the client’s identity. The life coach taps into this power.

The power of commitment relies on the social reinforcement of people conforming to who they say they are. It uses the power of honesty. Clients become dishonest if they do not fulfil their commitment to the coach. Humans are conditioned to believe that people who do not fulfil their commitments are not to be trusted. They are seen as shifty, unreliable and devious, as liars and cheats. Clients do not want their life coach to think they are any of these so they will move heaven and earth to achieve the actions, goals and targets that they have agreed.

Guilt is another factor in the power of commitment. When clients do not achieve the goal, they punish themselves with guilt. This self-flagellation gives them far more pain than anything the coach can inflict. Humans usually have a driving need for pleasure and a driving need to avoid pain. The pain-and-pleasure continuum used as a powerful leveraging tool can ensure that clients achieve results. It is a simple process but a highly effective one in getting breakthroughs for the client.

Life coaching helps clients in every aspect of their lives. Unlike sports coaching or business consultancy, it is holistic and considers every dimension of a client’s life. This includes business, career, health, social relationships, wealth and worth in contribution. If life coaching concentrates on just one area in isolation, and develops only that area, then the client’s life can become unbalanced. When clients overachieve at work but underachieve in personal relationships, the negative effects of their personal relationships can adversely affect their performance at work.

When clients exceed in business success, but ignore their health, they can develop ulcers or serious illnesses. In the cyclical pattern of life, this means that they must take time away from the business and the business may suffer as a consequence. The life coach can advantageously use this effect when persuading high achievers to look to their health and the contribution areas of their lives.

Conversely, if clients focus on their physical body to the extent that they miss or skip work in order to maintain the body beautiful, they may end up with financial problems. Financial problems will cause them to worry and lose sleep. Loss of sleep will have an adverse impact on their body beautiful and this angle can be the coach’s leverage to encourage these clients to focus on financial matters. Life is wonderfully cyclical, which gives the life coach great areas of persuasion when finding compelling reasons for clients to follow through on actions that will lead to achievement of goals in all areas of their lives.

Bringing balance and achievement into the lives of their clients produces rewards for the life coach, too. Helping clients to define goals in each life area and then working to help them to achieve results also brings an awareness of the importance of balance and harmony into the coach’s life.

Life coaching is a relationship of interdependency between coach and client. It is a relationship based on honesty, respect and the life coach’s unwavering beliefs in the client’s unlimited potential.

Summary

• The physical or sports coach specialises in the body and a specific sport
• The business consultant defines problems, provides answers and helps to implement them within the business environment
• Life coaching focuses on results, results and nothing but...