Life Coaching Pitfalls: The Tyranny of Template Coaching

Most life coaching programs teach the template method. Especially hypnosis and NLP coaching programs. It’s actually a good place to start, but there is another level. In the book, “Clinical Reasoning”, Mark Jones describes the differences between the novice and the expert clinician. The novice tends to relay more heavily on templates, and the expert is able to use their experience to recognize patterns and get results much more quickly. Just as it’s said there are no new stories in literature, there are no new problems in coaching. Most life coaching clients fall into recognizable clinical patterns.

Moving From Novice to Expert in Life Coaching

Before you throw out the template, recognize it for what it is. It is a well carved path. It offers a great deal of certainty that others have used it before successfully. It may take more time, but you will probably get results. Learn it backwards, forwards, and sideways so it becomes part of your life as a coach. Reflect on what you learn from each client.

Conquering the Template

As the fibers of the template become a part of who you are, challenge yourself to move on to the next level. Use your experiences to start forming patterns, and try to start recognizing your clients’ patterns during your session. Listen to master coaches run life coaching sessions, get mentoring, and find role models. Being part of a community of good coaches can also help you learn more advanced coaching skills and develop the ability to recognize clinical patterns more quickly. As you become more skilled at recognizing patterns, you will be able to use your knowledge base to get results more quickly. When you do this you can start becoming a coach who can get life changing results in as little as 10 minutes.

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Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach