5 Keys to Success for Life Coaches

1. Know your stuff!

I recently met an old friend from university days whom I hadn’t seem in many years. As is generally the case talk soon turned to “What do you do?”

I was surprised and excited when my friend told me he was a life coach. “Oh wow, we have a lot in common then, “ I thought excitedly.

However, as we delved deeper into the discussion, I began to feel uncomfortable, as my friend started describing how he ran what sounded a lot more like a consultancy than a life coaching practice.

It turned out that he had recently been made redundant and decided to fall back on his significant life and work experience to provide advice and mentoring services to others.

Curious about how he could have such a badly warped understanding of life coaching, I asked him which institute he had trained with. “The school of life,” he answered, somewhat dismissively.

Whereas I don\’t doubt my friend’s ability to be a great advisor and mentor, what he is doing is certainly not life coaching. Life coaches are facilitators, not consultants, advisors or mentors.

Becoming a successful life coach requires a deep understanding and appreciation for how life coaching differs from counselling, mentoring or consulting. It also requires an intimate understanding of the various tools, techniques and concepts that life coaches employ to help their clients to be, do and have more in life.

In short, becoming a successful life coach requires comprehensive, broad based skills training and substantial practical experience in applying the many concepts and learnings.

Life coaches play a vital role in helping their clients break free of self imposed limitations and soar.

They have to know their stuff!

2. Treat your clients the way you would like to be treated

“She is such a difficult client. I feel totally exhausted after a session with her. She just doesn’t get it.”

Some time ago, one of our inexperienced trainee coaches reached out to me to share her frustration, after a coaching session with a practice client that left her disillusioned.

After some discussion it became clear to me that the trainee had fallen into the trap of what we call ‘projection’, or applying her own values to the task of helping her client resolve that client’s unique set of challenges.

Successful life coaches know how to detach from their own worldview when coaching. Each client has a unique set of values and beliefs, and these need to be appreciated, respected and understood, if the coach is to be truly effective in helping the client.

Those life coaches who have the ability to temporarily exit their own ‘internal maps’ and start navigating the ‘internal maps’ of their clients, are those who will deliver the very best results for their clients.

And it is client results, above all else, that will determine how successful a life coach will be.

If the concepts of ‘projection’, ‘worldview’ and ‘internal map’ sound too much like coaching jargon, think of it this way:

Understand and work with your clients the way you would like to be understood and worked with.

3. Acknowledge your head but follow your heart

I spent 27 years in corporate life. I had always had a passion for working with people and could clearly see how excellent staff management and inspired leadership were the hallmarks of truly great organisations.

However, inside many corporations, possessing so called ‘soft skills’ is secondary in importance to possessing the so called ‘hard skills’.

In my opinion, whomever originally coined the terms ‘soft skills’ and ‘hard skills’ needs to take serious responsibility for the damage they have caused to the careers of those wonderful assets – the people who are genuinely passionate about people.

Life coaching is a career that is all about people. It empowers, inspires, motivates and honours people. It represents the ultimate in ‘soft skills’ and those of us in the industry should stand proud – not in any way feel diminished – by that fact.

As I often say, life coaching is primarily a career of the heart, not the head.

This takes me back to the previous point.

Life coaching success comes from delivering results for one’s clients.

Degrees, qualifications, accreditations and fancy titles – head based stuff – are not what deliver results in life coaching. Results come from the ability to relate to your client, the ability to communicate effectively, the ability to feel compassion and yet still challenge your client, the ability to enter your client’s world and work within their framework and perspective to help them grow, develop and flourish!

In life coaching the head has an important supporting role to play, but the heart should take front and centre stage.

4. Refine your niche

Shortly before writing this article, I read another article, sponsored by a competing training institute, titled “5 biggest mistakes new life coaches make.” I’ll freely admit that it provided much of the inspiration for this post.

One of the ‘mistakes’ listed was “Start with a niche,” and this caught my eye because it runs directly contrary to my own view.

The article goes on to say that starting with a niche is wrong because, although you may have a desired niche, the reality might prove you wrong.

I disagree.

As life coaches, we spend a great deal of time and attention on helping our clients create their own realities.

Read the previous post, “The amazing power of perspective” if you want to go into more detail, but to cut a long story short, life is very much what you make of it. And if you choose not to make anything much of it, it will end up dictating the reality you experience.

This is why so many people feel that their lives are out of their control.

So, at New Insights, the advice we give new life coaches is to take control. Research, develop and fine tune your desired niche (or target market for your services).

The more detailed and specific you can get about exactly the types of people you would like to coach, the more likely you are to attract such people, partly thanks to the law of attraction and partly because your marketing will be laser focused.

Having a well define niche is key to your success.

5. Get creative

This point is made in reference to how life coaches sell, market and promote their services.

In my experience, most life coaches recoil when they hear the word “sell”, and feel only marginally less comfortable when confronted with the words “marketing” and “promotion”.

And yet, as Robert Louis Stevenson once famously said: “Everybody lives by selling something,” so we might as well try and enjoy it!

As a life coach, once you understand your target market really well (see the previous point), then finding prospective customers in that niche becomes a whole lot easier to do. just as achieving a goal becomes much easier when you have described that goal in crystal clear terms.

Getting clarity on a niche can also help fire up your creative juices.

And if you struggle with getting creative, get help!

Ask a friend: “How can I go about finding married women in their forties whose kids have recently left home and who are really keen to do something new and exciting with their lives.” Believe me you’ll get plenty of ideas to spur you on.

Creativity is one of the keys to your success and enjoyment as a life coach!