Almost all of us know what coaching or training is. Our favorite world-class athletes will not be at the level they are today without exceptional athletic coaching, and many Chief Executive managers, CEOs, business leaders, executives, and business professionals will not be successful without business coaching, but there is another type of coaching that seems strange to many people called life coaching.

What is Life Coaching?

Life coaching has evolved from a mere form of counseling, to a successful form of speech that has helped many set their goals in life and work to reach them.

Life Coach Definition:

A life coach is someone who is professionally trained to help others maximize their full capabilities and achieve better results in their lives. The life coach is a trusted supportive friend and advisor all in one; someone who pushes you to set your goals and gives you encouragement throughout your journey to become a better version of yourself.

The life coach should receive intensive training to learn the right way to ask questions, communicate effectively, and reach the core of your needs and desires in life.

What does a life coach do?

The life coach encourages and advises the trainees on a range of professional and personal issues. Life coaching is different from giving advice, counseling, and directing, as the life coach helps you with specific professional projects, goals, and personal transformations.

The trainer helps you grow by analyzing your current situation, identifying the restricted beliefs and other potential challenges and obstacles you face, and creating a customized action plan designed to help you achieve specific results in your life.

An excellent coach doesn't give straight answers, but instead, they ask powerful questions to open up and highlight a better way forward for their clients.

Is the relationship between the trainer and the client a business relationship?

The relationship between the client and the life coach is more like a creative partnership than a one-way street. From the first meeting with the life coach, the following should be done:

  • Identify, clarify, and create a vision for what you want.
  • Use personal trainer experience to adjust goals as needed.
  • Encourage you to self-discovery and grow.
  • create strategies and action plans to determine based on what fits your goals, personality, and vision.
  • Enhance your sense of responsibility to help you increase productivity.

What are the benefits of life coaching?

Life coaching at the end allows you to maximize your capabilities in any field, as research shows that coaching and mentoring are a much more effective combination than coaching alone. Coaching alone can increase productivity by 22.4%, but when combined with weekly lifelong coaching, productivity is enhanced by 88%.

What are some good questions to ask as a lifelong coach?

To be effective, the life coach needs to understand the perceived future of their clients as well as their current situation and also needs to understand the most important things in their life and get a good overview of how they can help their clients overcome perceived obstacles.

How does the life coach communicate and ask questions to the clients?

Continuous attendance at Life Coaching sessions is often an obstacle for trainees, so communicating with the client using a smart app is the perfect solution to the challenges that obstruct continued participation in Life Coaching training.

Quenza application is an online training application that allows the trainer to assign customized surveys to the client, ensuring an ongoing conversation and a simple way to ask questions. The client can answer these questions in privacy within their own home using the secure encrypted platform, which is compliant with General Data Protection Law (GDPR) and (HIPAA).

Life Coach question forms:

These questions help you understand your clients’ mindset:

  • What makes you happy?
  • What do you want to achieve more of in your life?
  • Are you aware of what brings these positive feelings to you?

These questions help you learn more about your client as a person, can help them start thinking about creating more of these moments, and help the client start thinking about possible long-term life goals.

For instance:

  • What is the happiest part of your daily routine?
  • What are some things that you are grateful to have?
  • In the last week / month / year, what were the three most positive moments for you?

Questions for setting directions in life:

It is also helpful to know what your client hopes to achieve from their sessions with you. Clarity helps you adapt the process according to the timeframe, whether it is in a longer sequence or a one-off meeting.

  • What do you hope to achieve by the end of our session (s) together?
  • How exactly will you know what success looks like for you?
  • What is the most important success you can hope for from our meeting?

Benefit from the values that the customer has:

Clients often look forward to solving a problem in addition to achieving a goal. For example, a client may feel they do not live up to the values they believe in. If you think it is appropriate, you can dive into these things to create a convincing reason and help you later on the motivation process, and with more time, it can also help you use a structured assessment for values to identify what the client considers important.

  • What other aspects of your life do you feel will improve by achieving this?
  • How will your achievement of this goal help others around you?
  • Why is it important for you to achieve your goal?

Questions to encourage customer's self-inquiry encouragement:

Training is not about spoon feeding answers; The goal of the training is to invite the trainee to take a closer look at their life from the inside, and self-inquiry is vital in helping clients motivate, plan barriers, and develop a convincing logical basis for the client.

  • How do you feel you can motivate yourself better?
  • What are the best ways to support yourself at this stage?
  • If you don't have restrictions at all, who would you be?

When asked about or discussed the clients’ goals, it is useful to make them relevant to them. These questions have been formulated in general, but it is better to assign them to the beneficiary personally:

Example:

For example, if a clients’ goal is to become a professional engineer, instead of asking, “How will achieving this goal enrich your life?” Ask the question in the following form: “How will you enrich your life to become a professional builder?”

What is the GROW model for life coaches?

Many life coaches choose to use a form of framework to organize their sessions, and the GROW model is a framework that includes organized processes in four stages. Also, it is one of the most common frameworks that is used by a large number of life coaches. The questions in the GROW model are usually divided into three types, starting with goal setting questions, then questions to understand the trainee's reality and current situation, then questions to identify possible options and opportunities that they may follow, then questions the way forward or what is next.

Examples of GROW model questions:

The first stage: Goal setting questions:

  1. What interests you most about this area of life coaching?
  2. What are you keen to achieve with this personal training session?
  3. What do you want to see?
  4. What exactly do you want to achieve?
  5. Describe the ideal outcome you expect to achieve from this training … Tell me more about this perfect result?
  6. Why do you want to achieve this goal?
  7. What deeper meaning or personal importance does this goal have for you?
  8. What positive things do you feel will happen if you accomplish what you are trying to achieve?
  9. Tell me how will you know if you have achieved the result you seek?

The second stage: questions understanding reality:

  1. What is happening to you now?
  2. What is the impact of this happening? Tell me more about this … with whom? Where? when?
  3. Have you tried anything yet to achieve your goal?
  4. I'm curious about what you did … How did it go for you?
  5. Share some examples with me … How do you feel now regarding your life goal?
  6. Would you be able to rank this out of 10?
  7. So far, what has helped your progress? What's holding you back?
  8. Tell me about the last time this happened…?
  9. What do you feel you need to achieve your goal?
  10. What could you do differently this time?
  11. Has anyone you know achieved the same goal? How did they manage that?

The third stage, questions to determine the options:

  1. What do you see as the first step to achieving your goal?
  2. What can you do to get you closer to the next goal ?
  3. Can you think of some alternatives?
  4. Is there another way to get there?
  5. Who would you ask to meet? Anybody else?
  6. In the past, what have I tried that worked for you?
  7. What did you learn from it?
  8. Tell me, what do you think would happen if you try to do this?
  9. What are the pros and cons of this option?
  10. Which possible path do you feel you are ready to go to?
  11. What would you do if time, money, or resources were an obstacle to you?
  12. How will you measure your progress using this option?

Fourth stage: What next?

  1. What opportunity will you seek?
  2. What specific actions will you take to achieve your goal? What time frame have you set for yourself?
  3. What steps will you take?
  4. What is the first thing you will do?
  5. What are the next three steps? What's next?
  6. Have you thought about possible barriers?
  7. Tell me how you plan to overcome these obstacles … Who are you going to ask for your help along the way?
  8. What will you need?
  9. How committed are you to taking advantage of your own opportunity out of 10?
  10. What are some ways you can get to 10?
  11. How will you know that you have succeeded in reaching your goal?