When you become a certified life coach, members of your community will trust you with their most sensitive problems, private thoughts, and personal dreams. To prepare for this rewarding role, it’s important to understand the precise standards of accountability, professionalism, and certified expertise that will ensure your clients receive the highest quality service and care.
At Rhodes Wellness College, all of our students learn to coach clients according to the eleven core competencies as outlined by the International Coach Federation (ICF). The ICF is the leading global organization of life coaching professionals, featuring the world’s largest network of certified coaches—all working toward forwarding high professional standards of training for life coaching hopefuls like you.
To get you started, here is a basic outline of three of the eleven ICF competencies you’ll encounter throughout your life coach training.
1. Learning to Meet Life Coach Career Standards & Ethical Guidelines
Life coaches have an ethical obligation to respect their clients’ confidentiality, support their growth, and identify any conflicts of interest if they arise. For example, life coaches must accurately state their qualifications upon accepting clientele, and conduct themselves in accordance with the industry’s code of ethics.
Life coaches coexist with wellness consultants, psychotherapists, and other support professionals, referring clients to their peers in associated support professions as needed.
As a professional life coach, it is important to pursue every opportunity to improve and develop your professional skills. By reading this blog, you’ve already demonstrated a willingness to invest in your ongoing growth and development as a wellness professional!
2. Mastering a Trustworthy Coaching Presence in Life Coach Courses
According to the ICF, having a good coaching presence means “to be fully conscious and create a spontaneous relationship with the client, employing a style that is open, flexible and confident.”
Trust and confidence are essential to any successful life coach
In your life coach courses, you’ll develop a few key strategies for fostering this kind of engaged and open professional presence. These involve:
- Accessing your own intuition and instincts (what the ICF calls “trusting your gut”)
- Using humour to create lightness and energy
- Working with strong emotions without becoming ‘enmeshed’
- Being open to growing by taking risks
- Demonstrating a genuine interest in the thoughts and feelings of each client
You will learn to be prepared to take on each client’s trust, with a presence that’s open, personable, and confident.
3. Participating in Powerful Questioning Throughout Your Life Coach Career
In your life coach career, you will find yourself expertly assisting clients through strategic questioning and listening techniques. In this way, you become a powerful asset in guiding others through meaningful transformations. That’s why coaching bodies like Rhodes Wellness College and the ICF place high value on training students to conductive effective client interviews and consultations.
ICF defines powerful questioning as the “ability to ask questions that reveal the information needed for maximum benefit to the coaching relationship and the client.” This involves active listening, challenging client assumptions, and understanding client perspectives. Powerful questions do this by encouraging insight, commitment, or action. For example, open-ended questions like “what does this mean to you?” can facilitate greater clarity in a direction led by the client. Questions like “how can this help you move forward?” can encourage clients to think positively about the future.
Good life coaches understand the power of strategic questioning, and develop their own interview strategies in life coaching school.
The right interview techniques help life coaches encourage clients to set meaningful goals
Are you interested in enrolling in life coach school to develop techniques that make a difference?
Visit Rhodes Wellness College to learn more about getting started.
