Life Coaching - What are the Benefits?
What is Coaching?
Coaching is about fostering directed, purposeful change. Coaching has been shown to be effective in developing personal insight and shaping and reinforcing desired behaviours to enhance performance or life experiences. [1,2]
Coaching has been defined as a therapeutic relationship between you and your coach with the objective of assisting you in achieving your professional or personal goals. [3]
Coaching combines philosophies, theories, and evidence-based interventions and techniques from a variety of fields, including behavioural medicine, positive psychology, sociology, business leadership and management, and sports performance psychology. [1,4]
Coaching has gained popularity among business professionals and individuals as a means of enhancing performance, managing stress, and achieving both professional and personal goals. [5,6]
Almost all forms of coaching share several characteristics, such as the underlying assumption that people have an inherent capacity for growth and development, as well as the ability to construct their solutions rather than simply analysing the problems. [1]
Coaching can be defined in a number of different ways, including:
Coaching is the process of assisting you in realising your full potential and performing at your peak. [7]
Coaching is a tutoring or instructional approach that focuses on improving your performance and skill development. [8]
Coaching is the art of helping you improve your performance, learn, and develop as an individual. [9]
What is Life Coaching?
Life coaching is a person-centred, collaborative, systematic, solution-focused approach that entails a long-term therapeutic relationship in which the life coach facilitates the enhancement of your personal and/or professional life experiences. [4,10,11]
As with health coaching, life coaching is a client-centred approach that focuses on helping you identify and overcome obstacles and sustain long-term behavioural changes consistent with your personal values, purpose, and goals. [10]
What is the Role of a Life Coach?
The role of the life coach is to develop a therapeutic, cooperative relationship, creating a safe and open environment in which you can reach your full potential.
The life coach aims to facilitate hope by assisting you in clarifying and pursuing your goals across various life domains, while helping you change your perception of your ability to achieve them. [11]
The life coach employs their skills and techniques to help you make purposeful behavioural changes while helping you to identify and foster your strengths to enhance your personal and/or professional life experiences. [10]
The Benefits of Life Coaching
What you may not realise is that you have all of the solutions within you and that you are the only person with the power to change your life.
Coaching can help you reach your full potential and take control of your life by enabling you to evaluate your values and circumstances, explore solutions, and learn to overcome obstacles and problems independently, without needing external advice. [7]
Coaching can help you become more optimistic, which is the general expectation of achieving positive outcomes in life. It can be beneficial for anyone who identifies a gap between their current situation and their desired future.
There is evidence that cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused coaching can improve mental health, quality of life, and goal achievement. [2]
Coaching has been shown in research to increase self-confidence, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence, while reinforcing positive beliefs, all of which contribute to enhanced work performance. [4]
Coaching can also be effective in helping you improve your interpersonal and communication skills as well as your critical and creative thinking skills. [4]
Coaching can help you identify and develop your strengths, assisting you in attaining your goals and feeling more fulfilled, healthier, and happier in life. [4]
Your personal goals may also include enhancing your self-esteem, well-being, and sense of meaning and purpose in life. [11]
How does Life Coaching Work?
Life coaching is based on your needs and values, as you set the agenda once you have identified and prioritised the most important issues to address in your life. [1]
The evidence-based psychology of coaching encompasses the underlying psychological mechanisms of change, helping you develop insights into the most effective way to adopt new behaviours. [12]
The life coaching process is a one-on-one consultation designed to facilitate you towards helping you: [2,12]
• Develop a clearer perception of your overall life
• Develop a clearer understanding of your present needs
• Evaluate your readiness for change, make decisions, and manage stress
• Identify and evaluate your response to your environment and new situations
• Attain the necessary skills to effectively cope and achieve your objectives.
The life coach also facilitates the process of setting goals, developing and implementing a plan of action, and monitoring and evaluating performance, while helping you modify your plan to attain your goal and improve performance. [2] See Figure 1.
Figure 1 & 2. Source: 1. Grant, A.M. (2001). Towards a Psychology of Coaching: The Impact of Coaching on Metacognition, Mental Health and Goal Attainment.
The cognitive-behavioural coach recognises that goal achievement is best accomplished by regulating the four dimensions of human experience - thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and situation or environment. [2]
Considering a Coach - How To Choose The Right Coach For You?
It can be challenging to know where to turn when you need help in today’s fast-paced world, with its constant flow of information, advertisements, and advice.
The first step in making a significant change in your life is to find the right coach. Unfortunately, the coaching industry is not regulated in the same way as the health, medical, or legal professions.
Be prepared to do your homework and interview several professionals, reviewing their background, experience, and qualifications, as many coaches do not base their practice on behavioural science and instead depend on popularised, unproven motivational approaches. [11]
Coaching primarily attracts ambitious individuals who want to improve their personal development, growth, and performance, as well as cultivate positive health, well-being, and happiness.
According to health research, many of the factors associated with happiness are health outcomes, raising the question of whether health and happiness have a bidirectional relationship. See figure 3. [13]
Figure 3. Source: Steptoe, A. (2019). Happiness and Health. Annual Review of Public Health, 40(1), 339–359.
Health Coaching vs Life Coaching
Health Coaching differs from life coaching in that it focuses on specific health-related topics and goals, and seeks to support you with lifestyle changes that enhance your health and wellbeing. In contrast, life coaching covers a wide range of whole-life issues. [1]
What Next? Read: The Psychology of Coaching
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback
+ REFERENCES
[1] Ammentorp, J., Uhrenfeldt, L., Angel, F., Ehrensvärd, M., Carlsen, E. B., & Kofoed, P. E. (2013). Can life coaching improve health outcomes? A systematic review of intervention studies. BMC health services research, 13, 428.
[2] Grant, A.M. (2001). Towards a Psychology of Coaching: The Impact of Coaching on Metacognition, Mental Health and Goal Attainment.
[3] Spence, G. B., & Grant, A. M. (2007). Professional and peer life coaching and the enhancement of goal striving and well-being: An exploratory study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 185–194.
[4] Tsai, L., & Barr, J. (2021). Coaching in small and medium business sectors (SMEs): a narrative systematic review. Small Enterprise Research, 28(1), 1–22.
[5] Palmer, S., Tubbs, I., & Whybrow, A. (2003). Health coaching to facilitate the promotion of healthy behaviour and achievement of health-related goals. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 41(3), 91–93.
[6] Yossi Ives. (2008). What is ‘Coaching’? An Exploration of Conflicting Paradigms. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 6(2), 100–113.
[7] Whitmore J. Coaching for Performance. The principles and practice of coaching and leadership. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing; 2017
[8] Parsloe, E. (1995) Coaching, Mentoring and Assessing, Kogan Page, London.
[9] Downey, M. (1999) Effective Coaching, Orion Business Books, London.
[10] Jarosz, J. (2016). What is life coaching?: An integrative review of the evidence-based literature. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 14(1), 34–56.
[11] Green, L. S., Oades, L. G., & Grant, A. M. (2006). Cognitive-behavioral, solution-focused life coaching: Enhancing goal striving, well-being, and hope. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(3), 142–149.
[12] Schlossberg, N.K. (1981). Reactions to reactions. Counseling Psychologist, 9(2), 49-50.
[13] Steptoe, A. (2019). Happiness and Health. Annual Review of Public Health, 40(1), 339–359.