How to Become a Life Coach

Becoming a life coach is an increasingly popular choice for people making a career change. It’s a job that’s interesting, flexible, well paid and gives you the freedom to Work From Home.

That also means, however, that the world and his wife are doing it, not to mention the large numbers of unscrupulous courses promising to ‘make you a life coach for just £500’ popping up all over the place!

As an overview, a life coach is usually a self-employed person who works with a small number of individuals, helping them through challenging periods in their lives, either through face-to-face contact or telephone conversations. Life coaches offer one-off consultations or book regular slots to help with all aspects of a client's life – such as career, personal issues, time management, stress and so on.

No Qualifications Required

It’s worth remembering that you do not actually have to have any particular qualifications to become a life coach. Just because there are loads of adverts in the back of every woman’s magazine or Sunday supplement for life coaching courses, you do not have to do anything official to call yourself a life coach.

Most people who are successful life coaches have some sort of management training. They may have trained in a certain area such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), sports psychology or eating disorders, too.

Remember that this is not a career for the faint hearted. Life coaching got a bit of bad rap when it was thought that only yummy mummies with too much time on their hands became life coaches, telling people what to do with their lives without needing to make a success of their Own Business. But that reputation is not really accurate any more because people expect something more for their money, especially since the recession has made us all look at how effectively we spend our hard-earned cash.

Skills Required to be a Life Coach

Becoming a life coach is largely to do with being a Good Networker, being self-disciplined and motivated. You have to be interested in what makes people tick, be able to encourage others and have the confidence to ask people the questions they need to ask themselves to move forward with their lives.

The types of skills needed to be a life coach include being a good listener, being able to see problems and solutions clearly, being able to offer positive, realistic advice in an eloquent manner and being totally trustworthy.

Life coaches need to be able to inspire their clients. That’s why these £500 courses in the back of magazines are often inappropriate, because you can’t teach just anyone to be a good life coach – these are often just money making schemes taking advantage of the fact that it’s such an appealing career choice.

If you decide to change career to become a life coach, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to complete some kind of course or get a qualification. Do your research and brush up on/or qualify in a specific area that will help your life coach career. This will help build your confidence and enable you to advise in a particular area. Focus on building your network of clients and gaining a solid online presence.

First-hand Experience

Discover how one reader utilised her experience without wasting her skills to establish a successful life coaching practice in our article From Dietician To Life Coach.