Coaching Certificate— Becoming or Finding the Best Coach: Essential Qualities and Skills

The truth is, we need the best coaches to help us reach the utmost of our essential Qualities and Skills. I’ve always wanted to help the kids learn how to paint, but I had no formal art education although I’ve been painting for years now as a hobby.

A friend who has her own coaching career urged me to take coaching certification programs to help me improve my communicative skills to satisfy that burning desire to push kids who had painting potentials.

This is just a stark example of how coaches and learning about coaching can help us in the transitions that we face regarding our career, personal, or relationship aspects and this article will talk about the important qualities and skills needed if you want to find the best coach for you— or if ever you want to take that career and be the best coach.

This Article Includes: What is Life Coaching How To Become A Certified Life Coach Qualities of a Life Coach Skills Needed for Life Coach Training

What is Life Coaching?

A life coach is sought by those who want to consult regarding the values that are essential for success or in finding solutions to their specific problems. Their problems may range from areas like marriage, entrepreneurship, career, spirituality, health, and self-development. Although it may help find a solution to problems that lead to stress and anxiety, life coaching is not a substitute for dealing with problems regarding mental health.

A life coach is not someone that finds a solution to a client’s problems, but rather someone that guides them to help them find the solution on their own. Life coaches are not supposed to hand out answers, they can only give a context of the whole picture that a client is in.

People who seek coaching are those who want to change, grow, and/or improve. Imagine being stuck in a situation that you hate, and as much as you want to transition to a better scenario, you don’t have enough money to see you through that shift.

If you want to help people or seek help in your career, you can either find a coach or enroll in coaching certification programs to help you find the right industry that you are most likely to grow and flourish through an examination of your experiences, inclinations, and skills. Once you (or when you have helped your client) have found the best industry to take the jump into, you can now plan the steps and path that can help you develop a course of action to be able to make the leap possible.

How To Become A Certified Life Coach

Getting a coaching certificate course of your own can help yourself and others in opening up new paths and discovering potentials to help one regarding their personal, job even in one’s relationship growth. Imagine, you get to have a new career and a guaranteed personal growth in one!

Before you can coach others, you can opt to get certified so that you have the accredited training, education, and experience for the area of expertise that you are planning to focus on. This gives you an advantage over others.

Some training teaches you how to lead entire workshops for others. Some certify you to teach others to speak in public. Some teach you how to coach others to increase their sales.

But most coaches start a coaching career late in their life, lots do so following retirement. Although there are training courses for those who want to coach an area that they have no formal background in, some coaches do not need to take a certification course, especially if the area that they are going to focus on is already their line of work and which they are in for years. The latter kind of coaches having the necessary credibility can simply set up a website or ask their former associates and find leads on who needs their help in moving forward.

If you were to choose, would you choose a coach who has been in the specific industry and position that you want to know more about or would you choose that someone who has the same credentials as the first but also has undergone coaching certification programs?

For sure, coaches with the right work background who also took courses about coaching have an edge over those who opted to not get certified.

Qualities of a Life Coach

But since not every coach is a tenured worker in their chosen specialties the following are just some of the qualities that can surely help individuals succeed as a life coach:

1. A Positive Attitude

A positive attitude is affirmative and constructive and inspires motivation for your clients by making them know that you believe in their skills and potentials.

2. Passionate

As a coach, your passion should be exercised by your empathy and an intense desire for helping others – this allows you to connect to the humanity of your client and lets you understand your client’s emotions and their perceived and unperceived barriers to success.

3. A Good Listener

Life coaching is lending a trusted ear to your clients.

Understanding the needs of your clients doesn’t just come from their act of opening up their problems to you. A life coach needs to practice active listening to fully and efficiently engage and discover the needs, and expected outcome of your clients.

4. Objective

One common misconception of being a coach is that you are obligated to advise your client, but it is not like that. As a coach, your main duty is to help them come up with solutions on their own by reflecting them the point of view that they may have not taken into perspective. Always step back to look at the bigger picture, rather than just outright focusing on the problem.

Jim Domanski, President of Teleconcepts Consulting notes how objectivity plays an essential role as a trait in coaching.

“Great coaches are objective with their feedback. They eliminate the arbitrary and subjective nature of feedback by clearly defining the ‘standards’ or ‘standard operating procedure’ for certain key parts of the employee’s job. When feedback is provided on the standards, it is based on pre-determined components and not on the whim of the coach at that moment. The employee understands that and realizes it is not a personal perspective. This makes feedback meaningful, relevant, and easier to apply.”

5. Criticizing appropriately

You do not need to challenge every point of view of your client, as you have to look into their problem according to their view of the world. Being a coach you need to know when your opinions would help or when it would instead result in more confusion or sound too offensive for your client.

6. Fosters Curiosity

As a coach, inquisitiveness helps develop your ability to ask the right questions that can help your clients understand their feelings and how their attitudes, decision, and point of view impact their success.

7. Challenging

The best coaches know how to challenge their clients. Challenging them is a way for them to gain a deeper understanding of their issues, it may involve challenge their thought patterns, their long-held beliefs and putting up a daring them their fears, doubts, and insecurities.

A coach helps their clients face the reality surrounding them to bring about clarity, focus, and honesty to help them solve their dilemmas

8. Observant

Coaches need to have attentive so they can be aware of the subtlest signs of worry, uncertainty, doubt, and expressions of fear. A coaching certificate course can help you learn how to be perceptive and know what to do when a client withholds vital information through the non-verbal cues and their expressed emotions.

9. Communicates With Clarity

An excellent coach is adept not only verbally but also knows how to communicate well in every aspect, may it be through their body language, vocabulary, expressions, tone, volume, etc.

A coach should know how to engage in a good conversation. Good conversations build rapport and in turn, could help in efficient coach-client interactions.

10. Honest

Your coaching relationship with clients depends on trust, as a coach you should preserve your integrity because your reputation is one of the main reasons why your client sought you.

Skills Needed for Life Coach Training

Together with the qualities of a life coach, certain skills can be beneficial if you want to become a life coach. You see it is not enough that you have the ‘resources’, you also need to know how to effectively use it.

Coaching as a profession is becoming the hottest trend over recent years because of its benefits! The following are the most notable benefits of coaching:

• • You can be your boss
  • You are the only one making your schedule
  • You can choose your clients
  • You set your fee

Coaches all come from different backgrounds since there is no specific background required. Although being from a previous employment area that is close to your chosen coaching expertise gives you an advantage, there are specific skills that are truly helpful if you want to grow and pursue your coaching career.

Coaching certification programs may focus on specific areas, such as business coaching, weight loss, career counseling, and so on. Other coaches may prefer to work with a wide range of client concerns. So the skills required by life coaches may vary considerably depending on their specialties.

However, the following are just some of the skills that most life coaches will find most helpful to help them with their clients and to run their life coaching practice.

• • FOCUS

A coach needs to be able to give their full attention to their client as they go through the things they want to resolve. Focus can help the coach fully discern the issues and to remember important details about an issue that is brought up on hand.

• • ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS

A coach needs to be able to organize their time well. They should be able to book and show up on appointments, allow sufficient time to build up skills and knowledge, and be prepared on taking on their coaching schedules.

According to Customer Service Profiles’ Measurements of a Good Coach:

“A good coach prepares for each session with information, examples, ideas, etc., and is ready for discussion.

Coaching sessions should be scheduled in advance, and the coach should have a solid agenda for each session that lays out the mission for the day. Without structure, the coaching session can devolve into a casual conversation with no real substance or direction.”

Would you like to be coached about time management by someone who can’t even show up on time, looks tired, and always seems so unprepared? Organizational skills are important because a coach should and is expected to walk the talk.

• • BUSINESS SKILLS

Business skills are important because first of all, you are running your own business and you are responsible and is expected to keep satisfactory accounts or books, plan a diary, keep taxes up to date, get insurance, and so on.

• • MARKETING

No matter how good a coach is, it cannot be regarded as a profitable career if you don’t have the means to reach clients and for them to know your services.

As a business, you need to gain clients to make your income, so learning how to market your services is very important. The following lists some of the ways that a coach may use to market themselves:

• • Paid advertising, such as in newspapers, magazines, or website adverts,
  • Free advertising through the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram,
  • An option to have their website, with an inquiry form if there is a need to ask about any of their services
  • Relying on word of mouth where satisfied past clients give them a positive appraisal to potential new clients (though this takes a little time to establish).
  • If one has a website it can include client testimonials to promote their services.
  • NETWORKING

This is related to marketing skills, but instead of focusing on means to advertise the service it involves interpersonal skills and that attract and retain customers. Networking is about building up personal contacts that may be potential clients in the future. Life coaches need to be:

• • approachable
  • personable
  • friendly
  • helpful
  • enthusiastic
  • empathic
  • have a sense of humor
  • has patience

Possessing these qualities are important in helping coaches to gain new customers, but also new business contacts. If you’ll read articles on how to be a certified life coach, you will find that networking skill is one of the most obvious skills needed

Online social networking through social media and forums is just one of the most common next to ‘traditional’ face-to-face meetings.

Business people in a specific town may meet up at regular events, such as luncheons or breakfasts, social events, and so on. Professionals belonging to certain associations are also likely to attend regular meetings.

A life coach might attend seminars, workshops, or conferences held by related professions where they can make new acquaintances with other professionals who might refer clients unsuited to their line of work to the coach. There are many different ways that a life coach can make themselves known.

As you take part in social circles and gatherings, you slowly build up a reputation as you meet new clients, and as they hear of how you have helped others as they change their careers and improving businesses. Building up a name for yourself in different places and circles makes you likely to have future business engagements.

• • PROBLEM-SOLVING

A coach needs to have a good eye and an ear to help approach issues that serve as a hindrance to your clients. This skill is important to help change the client’s behavior and pinpoint possible resolutions to their dilemmas. As mentioned previously, to truly help a client, a coach has to ensure that they are really listening to what the client has to say.

• • LISTENING SKILLS

This is one of the most important abilities to have because this helps you determine what the client needs. They may share their common problems and needs but you have to scrutinize the specific problems that the client cannot outright see and talk about. This requires careful and active listening.

Language is used to convey and share information but not all clients are good at communicating and they might hide information from their coaches due to embarrassment, fear of appearing silly or stupid in front of the life coach, feelings of shame or guilt, and so on. This information may not be relevant to the coaching process, but sometimes it may be, and so the coach needs to be able to encourage a client to feel comfortable and secure with them so that they will reveal pertinent information.

You can learn more about coaching and how it benefits you as you take a coaching certificate program, it can even provide you tools and needed resources to effectively learn how to develop the qualities and skills mentioned.

You may have all the essential qualities and skills above but just remember that the best measurement of a good coach is their capacity to effectively help others through transitions and leaps that we (and others) will surely encounter as we take the steps towards the best version of ourselves.

Hopefully, I’m on my way there too!