Full Text of Life Coaching Introduction

Life coaching is a practice with the aim of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaching draws inspiration from disciplines including management, sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring, and other types of counseling. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification or modeling, goal-setting, and other techniques in helping their clients.

Coaching is a relationship which is designed and defined in a relationship agreement between a client and a coach. It is based on the client's expressed interests, goals, and objectives.

Life coaching is a space and a time where the client can bring their dreams and goals and be totally accepted and supported to achieve them. It is a partnership where the client can be listened to without fear of judgment, where he/she is called to challenge self-imposed limitations, and is held to their highest vision of themselves. Life coaching is a process that validates the client in every way since it calls on the manifestation of their goals through their inner resources in the manner and timing of their choosing. It is an opportunity to empower themselves to become on the outside the person they already are on the inside. The client is responsible for their own achievements and success. The client takes action; and the coach may assist, but never leads or does more than the client. Therefore, a coach cannot and does not promise that a client will take any specific action or attain specific goals.

Professional Coaching is not counseling, therapy or consulting because it neither focuses nor diagnoses the past. It focuses strictly on the present to create the future. The Professional Coach recognizes his/her limitations, and refers the client for other services as ethically required.

Louis Tetu MA, ACC, CRC