About Life Coaching

Coaching is client-focused, goal-oriented and forward-looking. It is about where you, the client, are at, where you want to go. From there, you are guided there by having the steps broken down into smaller, more achievable goals.

While counselling is a concept familiar to many people, coaching and counselling are quite different; where coaching is more inward-looking into emotions and feelings about a past situation.

What coaching is:

• Addresses "what" about a person's state or situation
• Use the PRESENT then move them toward FUTURE outcomes
• Acknowledge the feelings but not focus on them
• Are collaborators/ team
• Participatory, interactive, dynamic
• Goals/ results driven – use action plans, may suggest possible options
• Non pathologizing/ towards wellness
• Client centered
• Personalized education
• Short term
• Empowerment-focused
• Positive awakening and transformation

As such, coaching is not about information giving, but rather more client centered, participatory and interactive. One cannot always prepare or anticipate what the client is going to say or what is to happen in a session. Hence the coach needs to be alert, be flexible and be extremely comfortable with all the available methods/ resources available.

With clients who have worked with psychologists and used to therapy, they might come to a life coach expecting to be told what is wrong with them, and how they should overcome their problem. A good life coach, however, believes that the client innately already knows the solutions and will try to encourage the clients to come up with their own solutions. This can be met with resistance with clients used to a model of help.