For people lost in their lives, a life skills coach acts as a guide. Skills coaches prepare their clients to deal effectively with their professional and personal issues. These professionals guide individuals through obstacles and activities such as behavior identification and self-discovery exercises.
Starting a career as a life skills coach is both fun and rewarding. However, quitting your previous job and investing in a new career is not an easy task. To grow as a life skills coach, you must understand this field.
To help you out in this regard, below, we have provided the ultimate guide about life skills coaching:
What Is Life Skills Coaching?
Life skills coaching contains problem-solving traits and behaviors applicable to work, community, leisure, family and even self. Based on its nature, this field is vast and crucial for society. Life skills coaches can help millions of people by aiding them to create an excellent work-life balance, change careers and lose weight.
The main focus of life skills coaching is on the welfare of human beings. This field allows you to identify some achievable goals that require time management and motivation. Once you know your goals, a life skills coach will create a plan for you to achieve those goals.
Duties Of A Life Skills Coach
As mentioned earlier, a life skills coach creates plans allowing you to obtain some achievable goals. It’s worth taking into note that a life skills coach is not
your friend. These professionals won’t do things for you. They will only provide an unbiased opinion and ethical support.
Furthermore, a life skills coach is not a therapist either. Most people think life skills coaching and therapy are the same field. However, it couldn’t be any far from the truth. A therapist is a healthcare professional who helps individuals with their past traumas and health issues.
On the other hand, a life skills coach only partners with you so you can achieve certain goals. These professionals won’t help you with your health conditions. However, they might help you in creating a diet or habit that will lead to a healthy lifestyle.
Abilities Of A Life Skills Coach
Like all other business and job descriptions, a life skills coach must possess some skills and abilities to succeed in this field. For instance, a life skills coach must have complete knowledge and understanding of this field.
Best life skills coaches know how to use numerous coaching tools and techniques to help their clients. Plus, these professionals also have excellent communication and listening skills. Besides these traits, a life skills coach must have some special qualities, such as:
- Flexible schedule
- Desire to learn
- Quick and intelligent
- Impressive work ethics
- Professional personality and high-energy
- Authoritative and assertive personality
- Innovativeness, resourcefulness and creativity
- Motivational, leadership and collaborative skills
- Critical-thinking and analytical skills
- Impressive interpersonal skills
Social And Communication Skills Coach Explained
We can easily divide life coaching into their categories: developmental coaching, performance coaching and skills coaching. Social and communication skills are considered the backbone of all three categories.
Communication skill is the trait that every human should possess. As a skills coach, you’ll be interacting with hundreds of your clients on a regular basis. So, if you are not good at communicating your thoughts and ideas, how will you help your clients?
As a life skills coach, you’ll be considered a guide or a leader – if you prefer. So, as a leader, you must give precise and clear instructions to achieve some desirable goals. You can motivate your clients with your verbal or written communication.
Here Are Some Of The Most Common Types Of Communication Coaching:
- Systemic coaching
- Speaking style
- Emotional training
- Company image and advertising services
- Speech therapy
- Voice coaching
To thrive as a life skills coach, next you’ll need to improve your social skills. In simplest words, these skills are directly connected to your interaction with other living beings, whether that certain interaction is visual, written, nonverbal or verbal.
The main focus of social skills will be on the rules and regulations of society and the social norms. In life skills coaching, the social skills include empathy, listening, eye contact, nonverbal cues, and turn-taking.
Starting a Career as a Life Skills Coach
Even though life skills coaching is a famous field, this industry is still an unregulated one, meaning you don’t need an advanced degree or a license to start your coaching practice. As a result, you can start your career as a life skills coach today, and no one will object to it.
However, becoming a certified life skills coach comes with unmatchable benefits. For instance, as a beginner, no one will trust you and hire you as a life skills coach. However, if you have a valid life skills coach certification, people will know you know what you are doing.
Furthermore, life skills coach certification allows you to learn about your field in depth. With these certification programs, you’ll be able to learn numerous coaching tools and techniques that will help you in your journey.
5 Best Training And Certification Opportunities
Enrolling in a high-quality training program is one of the best decisions a life skills coach can make. A life skills coach certification program offers you the necessary information about your field. Consider this an investment – an investment in yourself.
Here are our top 5 picks when it comes to life skills coach certification programs:
International Coaching Federation
International Coaching Federation or ICF is one of the most popular coaching organizations available out there. This institute offers several certification programs for different coaching niches. In general, ICF has three well-known credentials:
- Master Certified Coach – The criteria of this credential are over 2,500 coaching hours and more than 200 training hours.
- Professional Certified Coach – The criteria of this credential are over 500 coaching hours and more than 125 training hours.
- Associate Certified Coach – The criteria of this credential are over 100 coaching hours and more than 60 hours of training.
Furthermore, the ICF also offers accreditation to other coaching certifications. You can enroll in any program that is associated with ICF, and once you achieve the specific criteria, you’ll get ICF accredited certification.
Association For Coaching
Next, we have the Association for Coaching or AC. This organization also offers accreditation to other life skills coach certification programs. It is an international institute with students in more than eighty countries. This organization offers both advanced coaching certifications and professionalized coaching programs to its members.
The Association for Coaching provides numerous professional developments, accreditation, and membership opportunities. They have also built a resource platform for everyone that contains recommended reading, articles, guides, and research.
Evercoach By Mindvalley
Another organization that deserves a spot on our list is Evercoach by Mindvalley. This organization is popular because of its YouTube channel and free coaching guides. They offer hundreds of free-of-cost resource videos that will help you in your coaching journey.
The goal of Evercoach by Mindvalley is simple: they want to create more than 1 million life skills coaches to help billions of people. With their free and independent approach, Evercoach by Mindvalley promotes abundance and freedom.
Health Coach Alliance
Health coach alliance offers multiple certification programs for life skills coaches and health coaches. This organization is focused on uniting holistic nutrition practitioners, nutrition & health counselors and health coaches all across the globe.
Health coach alliance offers both comprehensive and short courses. The comprehensive life skills coach certification programs offer both the knowledge of skills coaching as well as business and marketing skills.
Fowler International Academy Of Coaching
Founded by well-known Berry Fowler, the Fowler International Academy offered numerous ICF accredited life skills coach certification programs. Besides life skills coach certification programs, this organization also offer the following training programs:
- Executive Leadership Coaching
- Master Business Coaching
- Group Leader Coaching
- Personal Life Coaching
- Hope Community Coaching
- Vocation and Career Coaching
- Disaster Recovery Coaching
Health Coach Institute
Last but not least, we have a Health Coach Institute. Both Carey Peters and Stacey Morgenstern combined their 25 years of coaching experience to create this organization. This life skills certification program offered by Health Coach Institute is accredited by the International Coaching Federation.
This program is nothing if not flexible. Health Coach Institute offers online life skills coach certification programs that are short but precise. Depending on your course, you can complete this certification program in less than 6 months.
How Much Does a Life Skills Coach Make?
A life skills coach can charge anywhere between $50 to $500 per session. According to a report, the average salary of a life skills coach is around $22 per hour. Because of its flexible nature, a life skills coach can easily earn up to $60,000 annually.
Wrapping Up
Life skills coach partners with people to achieve certain goals. The main focus of these professionals is to guide individuals through different activities involving behavior identification and self-discovery.
Life skills coaching is an unregulated industry. However, to become a successful life skills coach, you can earn a life skills coach certification. When it
comes to coaching certification, we always recommend enrolling in an ICF accredited training program!
