The Definition of Coaching – 31 Words or Phrases to Define a Coach

Scouring the Internet, you will find many different experts providing their opinion on the definition of coaching. None of them are wrong and almost all of them are right – coaching means different things to different people. The are a million and one definitions of coaching and all of them have some validity.

There are also many words or phrases that can be used when composing a definition of coaching. Once again, you may not agree with all of them, and I may not agree with all of them, but it doesn’t make them wrong. A coach can mean many different things to many different people – that’s why the field is so wide open for creative people to hang out a shingle and become an effective and highly sought-after coach. Coaches have many different styles and work in a variety of different niches. It is a great field because you can be who you want to be while helping people and making money!

The Definition of a Coach- 31 Definitions

  1. Motivator
  2. Inspirational leader
  3. Mentor
  4. Performance enhancer
  5. Babysitter ( yes, some coaches do this!)
  6. Assessor
  7. Evaluator
  8. Problem solver
  9. Problem finder
  10.  Instructor
  11. Educator
  12. Tutor
  13. Consultant
  14. Counselor, but not exactly
  15. Confidant
  16. Sort of a therapist, but not really
  17. Trainer
  18. Advisor
  19. Someone who gets you to do things you wouldn’t do by yourself
  20. Someone who gets you to think about things you would never think about without some serious prodding
  21. Spiritual guide
  22. Behavior modifier
  23. Peer mentor
  24. Someone who helps a client set goals you could really set yourself but you have no idea where to begin
  25. Someone with professional experience who can provide guidance in a time of crisis
  26. Some who gets paid to listen to your whining and complaining
  27. Someone who gets paid to offer suggestions, exercises, opinions, assessments, and guidance after you are done whining and complaining
  28. Facilitator
  29. Trainer
  30. Motivational speaker
  31. Someone with the knowledge, skills, passion, and intuition to help you assess your life, determine your strengths and weaknesses, analyze your situation, figure out your passions, prod you into articulating your goals and dreams, and then give you a bunch of BS as to how you need to figure out the pathway to success, achievement, and happiness

Yes, a coach cannot do it all. It is a partnership in which the coach provides some professional expertise, specific knowledge, and passion for helping people, while the client provides the dedication, determination, and ultimately the solutions. The definition of a coach doesn’t include doing for someone what they can do for themselves. The definition of coaching doesn’t include providing someone with the answers, but it does include helping someone find the answers themselves. Coaching is dynamic, adaptable, and vital. Coaching has many definitions – choose one definition that works for you and become the best coach you can be.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “Life Coaching Business Blueprint” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your life coaching business blueprint videos.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Three Keys to Success in Becoming a Job Coach

There is more to becoming a job coach than just being able to find your client a job, even a good job. As with almost every profession, how well you meet your client’s needs in the longer term is the real measure of success. Here are three keys to building a big business and making a lot of money, as a job coach.

Make Sure there Is a Superstar Match on Values

I believe that to be a really successful job coach, you need to be a skilled assessment coach. From your client’s assessment you can learn the values are most important to your client. Both how they score individual values and how they rank values relative to one another. Are they relatively high or low in utilitarian, theoretical, aesthetic, social, individualistic, traditional values. But your client is only half of the equation. What are the strong and weaker values for the superstars at a particular job? By understanding the superstars and your client, you can predict the success and fulfillment that you client will experience in any particular position.

Becoming a Job Coach Master Takes Style

That’s right, becoming a job coach master takes style. You need to understand your client’s natural and adaptive styles. And you have to know the styles – often referred to as their DISC scores – of the historically really successful people in a particular job.

Without the Right Personal Talent Skills, Values and Style Are Not enough for Success

The final element, again available through assessment, is your client’s Personal Talent Skills Inventory. This includes “Judgment and Self Direction,” “Practical Thinking and Role Awareness,” “Empathic Outlook and Sense of Self.”Without the right level in each skill area, to match the skill levels of the superstars, it is unlikely your client will be the best fit for the position. And your client will either fail, outright, or suffer a long stint in a job that brings increased stress and mediocre results. So if you are thinking of becoming a job coach, you really have to make a commitment to master the assessment coaching process, for your clients’ success and your own.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your30-day coaching blueprint videos.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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More of the Best Life Coach Books

Last month I posted about the top five life coach books. Here’s a continuation of that post with the next best life coach books. Life coach books offer additional training and knowledge for the dedicated life coach and serve as a great way to supplement the information needed to be a outstanding coach.

These two life coaching book lists are not inclusive and not necessarily in any particular order. All of these books are extremely well-written and informative. Here are my selections as the next five top life coach books.

More of the Best Life Coach Books

Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and Life by Laura Whitworth

This is a great book to have on your shelf to use for new ideas and as a reference tool. It has many ideas and concepts from pioneers in the coaching industry. The book contains four main parts: coaching fundamentals, co-active coaching skills, co-active coaching processes, and coach’s toolkit. The models in this book concerns both the coach and the client and works with the whole person to achieve goals. The toolkit is a comprehensive collections of exercises, tools, and resources for the coach.

Coaching for Performance: Growing Human Potential and Purpose – The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership by John Whitmore

This book talks about a way to manage people, treat people, and think about people. The book is concerned with the relationship between coaching and performance. It provides the reader with examples of performance achievement from sports and business. This book has been around for some time and is currently in its 4th edition. The author gives us his G R O W model of coaching individuals – Goal, Reality, Option, Will.

Leadership Coaching: The Disciplines, Skills, and Heart of a Christian Coach, by Tony Stoltzfus

Written by a leading Christian coach, this book contains examples, exercises, applications, and real-life stories to help you become a better Christian life coach. Part One explores the intersection of coaching and the principles of God and faith, while Part Two offers an interactive method of coaching that will help you in your practice. Though it is a book based on Christian values, it is beneficial for all coaches.

Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others by James Flaherty

This informative book is filled with questions that will help coaches understand people before coaching them. Coaching is about giving people the opportunity and tools to understand what they are doing; it is not about telling clients what they need to do. It is a book filled with practical and useful tips for professional coaches.

Four Steps To Building A Profitable Coaching Practice: A Complete Marketing Resource Guide for Coaches by Deborah Brown-Volkman

Last but certainly not least on this list, is a book about the business of coaching. As coaches, our primary reason for being a coach is to help people. However, if we don’t make enough money, our coaching practice won’t survive and we will no longer be able to help people achieve their goals and dreams. This book shows you how to create, build, and market a successful and profitable coaching practice in four steps. It is a short book, but don’t let the size fool you; it is packed with valuable and useful information.

Picking up these life coach books and using them as reference material will boost your coaching ability and increase the viability of your practice. Don’t hesitate, these life coach books will make you a better coach!

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your30-day coaching blueprint videos.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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Get Started as a Student Success Coach

As a student success coach, there are many potential areas of expertise to consider. You could coach high students, college students, or post-graduate students. You could select a particular subject or be more of a jack-of-all-trades. You could work on an individual basis, with groups, or even online. However, there is one area that is just calling out for experts.

What is possibly the most lucrative niche for a student success coach? You guessed it – college-bound high school juniors or seniors There is no doubt that student success coaches are needed for this segment of the student population. College applications are big business and you can get in on it NOW!

If it’s been a long time since you were in college, you would be surprised at how competitive it is to apply and how much work is involved. You would think that the Internet has made it easier, but the easy access of information has actually made it more difficult and time consuming. It’s a labyrinth of questions, tasks, and forms that most parents and students have no idea how to navigate. It is very time consuming and can be extremely exhausting – for both the students and parents!

Help – Student Success Coach Needed Now!

As a student success coach, you can help parents and students with many of the most pertinent questions. They need help!

  • What are some of the right colleges to consider?
  • What are some good college majors to consider?
  • How to apply – different colleges have different requirements.
  • How to apply for financial aid without going insane!

These questions often cause an inordinate amount of stress on both parents and students and can cause rifts in relationships at a time when parent/child relationships need to remain solid and strong. Having someone help – you, the student success coach – can alleviate any stress, avoid problems, and help students find the right pathways to college without completely frustrating their parents.

A coach can help students apply to the right colleges, fill out information completely, decide what major is the right choice, and find and help them apply for financial aid, grants, and scholarships. You can also help them think of a topic for their college essays and then offer support, encouragement, and guidance in the completion of these essays.

Find Your Coaching Niche

One of the best ways to make money and find success in the coaching business is to locate a niche. A niche is something with a decent amount of demand but is very short on supply. It’s that old big fish in a small pond truth – it’s the way to attract customers, expand your business and make the big bucks! All this while you help students begin their journey to a rewarding and prosperous career.

Applying for college is a big business! Thanks to the Internet, you can do much of it from the comfort of your home. However, ease of access has not made it easy – far from it! It can be one big pain in the…neck! As a student success coach, you can help parents and students win at the college admissions and financial aid game while staking your claim in this potentially profitable niche coaching business.

Special Bonus – Learn 32 ‘Guru’ Transformation Techniques when you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to become a life coach in 30 days.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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Why Do You Want to Become a Life Coach?

Here are three good reasons for wanting to become a life coach. They are not the only reasons but if your reasons don’t jive with these, it might be a warning flag; kind of like wanting to have kids, so you have someone to play with.

First, You really Care about People

Let’s face it: people can be pretty disappointing. They say they want to achieve something special, and then they fail – again and again. That’s life. That’s people. But if you want to become a life coach, you have to look beyond that and understand, that with the right coaching and inspiration and the right internal drive and commitment, your life coaching client can achieve great things and be an inspiration for many. And even if their dreams are more modest, helping them achieve their potential can be just as fulfilling.

Second, You Have Something Serious to Share

To become a life coach, you have to realize that you will have the life of your client in your hands, as surely as if you were a heart surgeon. And while it may be interesting to wander out on to the fringe of reality and embrace quackery for yourself, you have a sacred obligation to care for your client responsibly. Frankly, if you want to drink your own Kool-Aid that’s your business, but you don’t have the right to encourage your client to drink it, particularly if you are their life coach.

Third, to Become a Life Coach, You Need to Be Driven to Master Your Craft

I say this because I have recently run into a new generation of, so called, “life coaches” who know little of life and less of the art and science of coaching. It is frightening when you realize that their coaching is based primarily on the placebo effect. It is enough to make you crave regulation of your profession. And it is certainly nothing to give you comfort. The truth is that if you decide to be a life coach, you are deciding to achieve mastery of both accountability and strategy coaching based on the teachings of a recognized coaching organization and based on established scientific methods.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your30-day coaching blueprint videos.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Become a Christian Life Coach and Change People’s Lives

One of the best ways to make a good living and to truly help people change their lives is to become a Christian life coach. Becoming a Christian life coach is all about helping people get from point A in their lives to point B. Point A is where they are now and point B is where they want to be. How they get there will be based on Christian values.

Why Become a Christian Life Coach?

When you become a Christian life coach, you learn the skills that can help people get from point A to point B. A Christian life coach teaches their clients that with faith in Jesus Christ and a Christian approach to life, goals and dreams can be attained.

As a life coach you can earn respect, become involved in a highly rewarding career, make a good living, and work in an environment that embraces Christian values. When you become a coach, you put yourself into a position where you can help others while helping yourself!

When you become a Christian life coach, you help clients work on and improve various areas of their lives. Personal attributes, relationships, career, health, finances, organizational skills, and goals are all areas for which you can offer assistance and guidance. In some ways, your job as a coach, is to make them “see the light.”

Personal attributes:

  • Increase self-respect and self-worth
  • Improve self-esteem by helping clients place value on their lives
  • Instill confidence by recognizing positive attributes
  • Remove doubt, relieve depression, and teach ways to overcome defeat

Relationships:

  • Teach communication skills
  • Provide strategies for overcoming problems and issues
  • Teach ways to value and positively recognize the self-worth of a spouse or a child.
  • Teach ways to increase, maintain, and restore intimacy

Career:

  • Assess your client’s skills to determine the best career choice and discover hidden and unrecognized talents
  • Teach ways to get promotions or to find better jobs
  • Analyze and assess your client’s entrepreneurial potential

Health and Finances

  • Teach ways to improve health through exercise, nutrition, and stress reduction
  • Teach ways to lose and stabilize weight.
  • Teach strategies for saving and investing money
  • Teach clients how to budget and stretch their money

Organizational skills and Goals:

  • Teach methods for organizing personal and business items, eliminating clutter, and setting up efficient systems for storing and retrieving items.
  • Work with clients on managing time effectively and efficiently
  • Help clients clarify and set goals and give them roadmaps on how to achieve those goals.

When you become a Christian life coach, you work with clients to help them find solutions to life’s problems. A coach does not provide all the answers; a coach serves as a catalyst in the client’s search for their own answers.

As a faith-based life coach, you frame assessments and analysis in terms based on Christian values and ideals. You offer support to your clients that are based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. You can completely change someone’s life as a Christian life coach. You can help them finding satisfaction in their personal, career, and spiritual life. Become a Christian life coach and you can begin changing the world, one client at a time.

Special Bonus – Learn 3 simple ways to become a life coach with the30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkitwhen you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to change your client’s life in 45 minutes.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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Three Great Reasons to Be a Student Success Coach

I love being a student success coach. The honest truth is that I get tired of working with adults. They get so wound up in their own self-pity. I frankly have had enough of overweight adults telling me how much they want to lose weight, and in the same breath how they just can’t pass up that piece of chocolate cake. I want to grab them by the lapels, shake them and scream: “Get your eyes off yourself for a change!” With students, young or old, you are dealing with an open and inquisitive mind. Someone with a sense of wonder and a sense of what life can be.

Establish an Ethic of Accountability

As a student success coach, you can help your client set a higher personal standard of accountability. And this perhaps more than anything else that you can do for your client can set them ahead and apart from the vast majority in our society. Establishing a commitment to a high standard of accountability will help them to set lofty goals for themselves, help them achieve those goals again and again, and position them to be a charismatic leader.

Teach Your Student How to Balance Their Lives

A balanced life is, in many ways, a successful life. And the role of every success coach is to help their clients to appreciate a life which achieves the balanced satisfaction of the four fundamental human needs (the needs for significance, love and connection, variety, and certainty). By creating an emotional touchstone, the coach can set the student on the path of achievement and happiness that few will ever experience.

Help Your Student to Become a Student Success Coach

There are few, if any things, more intriguing than human beings, and few roles more fulfilling than that of being a success coach, so to encourage your client to become a student success coach is to open up for them the possibility of a life of satisfaction, contribution and success. And knowing that you have contributed to your student-client in this way can be a great source of personal satisfaction and pride.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article…Thank you!

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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What is the Definition of Coaching?

Whether you are a potential coach or a potential client, it is good to have a clear definition of coaching. To come up with a good definition of coaching, it helps to know what coaching isn’t.

What Coaching Isn’t

Coaching isn’t consulting. Consultants often have experience in one specific area and are hired to solve a problem in that certain area. Consulting is specific while coaching can be both general and specific. Consulting is narrow; coaching is broad. Consulting is restricted; coaching is unconfined.

Coaching is sometimes similar to mentoring, but not quite. Being a mentor is more like being a teacher; a mentor-student relationship is very similar to a teacher-student relationship, which is not the same as a coach-client relationship. A coach-client relationship is more balanced and coequal than that of a teacher and student.

Coaching is definitely not therapy. Though it may seem like it with certain needy clients, a definition of coaching does not include being a therapist. The use of psychology in your practice is not uncommon, but therapy is not what you do as a coach! If your clients want therapy, tell them to look elsewhere!

What Coaching Is

There are many possible definitions of coaching, and it may mean different things to different people. However, to better understand the definition of coaching, it is good to see what the two primary governing coaching bodies have to say about defining their profession.

To paraphrase the ICF (International Coaching Federation) definition, coaching is partnering with your clients to inspire and motivate them to maximize their professional and personal potential.

To paraphrase the ICA (International Coach Academy), the definition of coaching is a collaboration between the coach and the client to help clarify their values and achieve their goals. The ultimate goal is to help the client achieve a fulfilling life.

From these definitions, we can conclude that coaching can be defined as:

  • a collaboration between client and coach to create roadmaps and strategies for success in a client’s professional and personal life.
  • a method of motivating and inspiring clients to identify, clarify, and achieve their goals.
  • a tool to help clients create a life or career plan that promotes success, health, and happiness.

One Powerful Definition of Coaching

Therapy and counseling often look to the past to find issues and problems. Once the problems are identified, therapists and counselors attempt to understand and heal these issues. However, coaching looks to the future to make someone’s life better and more fulfilling. Coaching begins with a client’s desire for personal and professional improvement and success. Coaching is not about why clients got to where they are; it is about how to get them from their current place to the place they desire to be in the future. Unlike consulting and therapy, which often looks backward and is reactive, coaching is forward thinking and proactive.

One More Definition of Coaching

Coaching is belief, tools, and leadership. Coaching starts with belief; belief that people can solve their own issues and ameliorate their life if given the right guidance and tools. Once these tools are presented, the coach uses leadership skills to help the client correctly use and apply them. Belief, tools, and leadership – that’s coaching!

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “Master Coach Blueprint” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your master coach blueprint videos.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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The Right Way to Ask How do You Become a Coach

How do you become a coach who has all the answers? Ha Ha Ha!! That was a trick question. You don’t. You will never have all the answers. There are so many people out there who are ready and able to become coaches. The only thing standing in the way is asking the most common “how do you become a coach” questions rather then looking deeper. Sure, I can tell you how to get started, what books to read, what education is important and what kind of coach training options are available. I’m going to skip all of those and get to the real question you SHOULD be asking.

How do You Become a Coach Who Honors Integrity?

Integrity you say Jeannine? YES! Integrity I say friends. If you want to know how it is you do find success once you become a life coach, look no further then the measure of your integrity.

It is easy to make excuses. With integrity you become whole, entirely trustworthy and create strong relationships. As a coach you need to be able to make time for yourself, your clients and your business in a consistent way that lasts.

If I could ask the worlds best coach, advice on starting my coaching practice, I would ask: How do you become a coach who increases their integrity within their word and commitments?

Focus on creating a strong bond with the standard of your integrity and you will have found the first place to finding success as a life coach.

How To Get Where You Are Want Need to be

Be honest about where you are.

If you want to find the level of integrity that is going to help you discover how you become a coach who bathes in endless success, you need to be honest. Take a good look at how you manage your relationship with integrity.

These questions will help you decide the current level of your integrity:

  • Do you make last minute cancellations because of your mood or small circumstances?
  • Do you show up on time?
  • Do you return phone calls and emails?
  • Do you take time to respond to questions?
  • Do you do what you say you are going to do?
  • Do you spend more time creating stories that sound convincing then you Do communicating honestly?
  • Do you consider the feelings and needs of other before your own?
  • Do you honor your commitments before the feelings of others when it is necessary?

You should have a pretty good idea after answering these questions where you can begin working to add a higher dose of integrity to your daily life/

The Exciting News

Does you becoming a life coach mean you will become a better person? I’ll raise my hand for this one!

Yes it does.

Integrity is key the ingredient in building a business that will last. Your word will ignite a passion and trust that will shift how the world reacts to you. So. next time you want to ask a how do you become a coach question, check where you are on the integrity map.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your30-day coaching blueprint videos.

Jeannine Yoder
Life Coach
Writing team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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The Top 5 Life Coach Books

One of the keys in becoming a good life coach is proper training and education education; gathering a good assortment of life coach books is a good way to supplement your training and education. There are many great life coach books available for purchase that will make a wonderful addition to your training.

Here is a list of the top life coach books and a brief summary about each one. Is one life coach book better than another? That’s up to you to decide; all the books on the list are a worthwhile read and will help you become more knoweldgeable about the profession.

The Top 5 Life Coach Books

Becoming a Professional Life Coach, by Patrick Williams

Written by the founder of the Institute for Life Coach Training, this is a great book for both experienced and new coaches. Even if you are not a coach, this book can help you improve your relationships and stimulate your personal growth. There is even a brief history of coaching at the beginning of the book that makes for an interesrting read.

Coaching Questions: A Coach’s Guide to Powerful Asking Skills, by Tony Stoltzfus

A book writen by the author and 12 other professional coaches, it provides the reader with dozens of tools and exercises for asking the right questions. There are over 1000 powerful question used by real coaches in real coaching situations. The book also includes the top ten mistakes coaches make when asking questions. A great book for any coach who wants to improve their asking ability.

The Business and Practice of Coaching: Finding Your Niche, Making Money, and Attracting Ideal Clients, by Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen

There isn’t a vast selection of books that discuss the actual business of coaching, but this is one that addresses it head on. The book deals with several types of coaching such as life, career, skills, executive, and wellness. It also talks about the legal aspects of running a business and how to create and run a profitable coaching practice. This book won’t tell you how to be a success in coaching, but it will provide you with a foundation for business success.

Get Clients Now: A 28-Day Marketing Program For Professionals and Consultants, by C.J. Hayden

This is not a book about life coaching, but a precise and specific marketing manual for anyone in the service industry. The book offers six different marketing strategies and then details a 28-day marketing program that provides you with specific tasks to help your business increase its bottom line. A great book for any business, including life coaching.

Becoming a Life Coach: A Complete Workbook for Therapists, by David Skibbins

This is a great book that delinetaes the difference between therapists and life coaches. It also offers great advice for therapists who are thinking of entering the field of life coaching. It is a well-organized book that allows the reader to skip around while offering plenty of information on what therpaists and coaches can expect in either field.

There you have it! These life coach books make for great reading at the beach, at the park, by your pool, in your favorite recliner, or anywhere. They are packed with valuable information that serves as a great addition to your training and education as a life coach. Make sure your office shelf is filled with great life coach books such as these!

Special Bonus – Learn 3 simple ways to become a life coach with the “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit when you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to change your client’s life in 45 minutes.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community

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