Professional life coaching is still something that’s relatively new. A lot of people these days have heard of it, but don’t really know what it is. And since the coaching session is unique to the client, it can be hard to explain in your typical “elevator pitch”. Because of that, I’m going to do a little blog series on what professional life coaching is about. For today. I’m starting with some of the proven benefits.
Most people seek out professional coaching primarily to benefit from improved self-esteem/self-confidence, work-life balance, and career opportunities. Other popular reasons include:
• Business management
• Relationships
• Work performance
• Interpersonal skills
• Communications skills
• Wellness
• Team effectiveness
• Personal organization
• Time management
• Corporate culture
• Vision/life/personal purpose
• Financial organization
Clients of a professional coach experience new perspectives on personal challenges, better decision-making skills, superior interpersonal effectiveness, improved confidence, an increase in productivity, greater life and work satisfaction, and the realization of relevant goals. Many of these results are attributed to the fact that professional coaching gives rise to learning and clarity for moving forward, towards measurable results.
While I obtained this data from the 2009 ICF Global Coaching Client Study (conducted independently by PricewaterhouseCoopers), it supports, and is supported by, my own experiences as both coach and client. Some additional reasons and benefits I have observed are in the areas of grief, fitness, and infertility coaching, which also overlap and can be parsed into the categories listed above.
For more data on the benefits of coaching, see the case studies and industry reports at the ICF Research Portal.
– Coach Jamie –
You mentioned that most people seek out professional coaching primarily to benefit from improved self-esteem/self-confidence, work-life balance, and career opportunities. I had heard in the past that a life coach could be really beneficial. I’ll have to look online to see if there are any services available to learn more about life coaching. Thanks for the very interesting article.
I think my daughter would really benefit from seeing a life coach. She has had a rough year, and it has really effected her typically happy personality. It’s amazing how much a life coach could help her. It would be so great to see her improve her time management skills back, she would seem a lot more like herself.