Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute of Life Coach Training

Book excerpt: An updated version of the best-selling therapist-to-coach transition text. With his bestselling Therapist As Life Coach, Pat Williams introduced the therapeutic community to the career of life coach, and in Becoming a Professional Life Coach he and Diane Menendez covered all the basic principles and strategies for effective coaching. Now Williams, founder of the Institute for Life Coach Training (ILCT), and Menendez, former faculty at ILCT—both master certified coaches—bring back the book that has taught thousands of coaches over the past eight years with all-new information on coaching competencies, ethics, somatic coaching, wellness coaching, and how positive psychology and neuroscience are informing the profession today. Moving seamlessly from coaching fundamentals—listening skills, effective language, session preparation—to more advanced ideas such as helping clients to identify life purpose, recognize and combat obstacles, align values and actions, maintain a positive mind-set, and live with integrity, this new edition is one-stop-shopping for beginner and advanced coaches alike. Beginning with a brief history of the foundations of coaching and its future trajectory, Becoming a Professional Life Coach takes readers step-by-step through the coaching process, covering all the crucial ideas and techniques for being a successful life coach, including: • Listening to, versus listening for, versus listening with • Establishing a client’s focus • Giving honest feedback and observation • Formulating first coaching conversations • Asking powerful, eliciting questions • Understanding human developmental issues • Reframing a client’s perspective • Enacting change with clients • Helping clients to identify and fulfill core values, and much, much more. All the major skillsets for empowering and “stretching” clients are covered. By filling the pages with client exercises, worksheets, sample dialogues, and self-assessments, Williams and Menendez give readers a hands-on coaching manual to expertly guide their clients to purposeful, transformative lives. Today, with more and more therapists incorporating coaching into their practices, and the number of master certified coaches, many with niche expertise, growing every year, Becoming a Professional Life Coach fills a greater need than ever. By tackling the nuts and bolts of coaching, Williams and Menendez equip readers with the tools and techniques they need to make a difference in their clients’ lives.