In your coaching practice, having a variety of effective life coaching tools at your fingertips can help you determine potential strengths, weakness, and vulnerabilities of your clients. These tools can be used as a starting point when working with a new client and as a way to initiate communication.

One of the best life coaching tools to use is a listing of the various areas of a client’s life that can be assessed, analyzed, evaluated, and ameliorated. Each area can be rated and then the areas that seem to be problems can be prioritized during sessions.

Life coaching tools are essential aids in any successful practice. This list can be amended, edited, and manipulated to fit your particular practice and the needs of individual clients. This is not only one of the most versatile life coaching tools, it is also one of the most effective and easiest to use.

Life Coaching Tools: 12 Life Assessment Areas

1. Body
2. Health
3. Self Perception
4. Character Traits
5. Relationships (Marriage/Lovers, etc)
6. Relationships (Friends)
7. Community
8. Career/Work
9. Fun, Recreation, and Travel
10. Spirituality
11. Education, and Continued Learning
12. Time

To use these areas as an effective life coaching tool, you would ask clients to describe each area of their lives according to the following scenarios.

1. Their life as it is today.
2. Their ideal life.
3. What prevents them from having an ideal life.
4. What can they do to make their life ideal.

They would rate each of the 12 life assessment areas, utilizing the four client descriptions. It may be difficult to go over all 12 areas in one sessions, so it might be best to separate them into two or three different sessions.

Though you can select any rating scale you like, this is a good example of a simple yet effective rating scale that will provide you with some insight into the mind of the client.:

5. Life is perfect in this area.

4. Good. Can’t complain. Very satisfactory.

3. Satisfactory. Client can easily see that there is room for improvement, but feels no pressing need to improve.

2. Needs improvement. Client feels that this is one of the weak areas in life.

1. Bad. Client feels that this area is a mess, perhaps even hopeless.

Obviously, this rating scale is subjective and open to interpolation, and it is up to you, the life coach, to create parameters for your clients so they can effectively and properly categorize their life areas.

There are many life coaching tools that can be used when assessing clients. This list and rating scale is one of the better starting points in a coach/client relationship. It gives the coach a good method of categorizing and assessing what a client may want or need from coaching. It provides the client with the perfect opportunity to begin essential communication with the coach.

Fred Philips
Business Coach
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