As a Certified Holistic Life Coach, we take detailed notes during the holistic assessment so that we can begin building up a bit of a picture – and a collection of facts for everything we want to capture as coaches and then we also search for evidence in the client’s life where they may actually be functioning pretty well. But this is not what they are here for. This client feels that you can be effective at helping them. But you will use the information to build positive attributes in an ongoing manner, in each session, whenever or wherever it is required for you to interject PEA activation (positive emotional attractor) into your coaching work.
Most clients will come to us with emotional constraints, conflict or turmoil – resulting in – or causing – low self-confidence and low self-esteem; this client may not see anything positive about them- selves whereas the coaching skills we use give us a chance to actually build up a bit of evidence from areas of their life where they’re actually functioning well. We are going to take this scenario and examine it from three different perspectives.
Obviously, we are interested in the clients point of view – this is the first perspective, it is the most important to learn, honor and respect; the second view comes from the coach; what we see can be related to how the client sees them- selves – because we are appreciating their point of view and yet we are shaping our own. it is during this time that the “doing skills” of coaching factor in to things – what is the coach doing? Hopefully, what you are doing is that you are getting impressions from the client – but we are also building up some evidence of their strengths – and that would be the third part of the triangle.
Ultimately we are collecting evidence that we can then use to help them maybe to look at themselves in a slightly different way and realize that there may be certain areas in their life where things are actually going pretty well for them. Maybe they have managed to achieve quite a bit of success in other parts of their life – and as their coach you feel that your client is prepared to contemplate change in other areas where either they, you – or both of you – feel there is a need. Other parts of the client’s life may show the need for more support; they may present obstacle or barriers. They can be internal or external barriers – such as finances.
Fears That Holistic Coaching Clients Can Experience
Some barriers are internal and they are centered more around your client’s thought processes and fears; we consider them emotional barriers if they interfere – or they could be rational barriers related to how they think. We don’t say it but it is a pretty accurate summary to say “it may be in their head”, literally. But some of them are very real external barriers as well – so when we consider family, for example, we know that very often family dynamics can be a barrier to a client trying to make changes. This is also often due to the effects that change can have on the family. For example, consider a female who is about to return to work after maternity leave; now let’s say that this is a client and she wants to get back to work – but the attitude and resistance of her partner is strong and might be causing conflict. This is an example of an external barrier that must be resolved.
One fact is that most likely you have spent time with client at this stage, then we’ve already anticipated or revealed some of our client’s barriers and it may require that you now consider the role of your client’s family, requiring a whole family approach for some clients in this dynamic.
Whether it is a partner and/or children – even parents – we might also be interested in the client’s family as being part of their whole life. This is also a source of support – friends and family can support clients towards their goals n major ways.
After the early or initial stages of coaching, where by you are getting to learn about your client, you transition into a steady state with your client; this is more likely if they are meeting their goals in a timely manner. This stage is all about the client’s long term goals. We want to get our client to look 12-18 months into their future and in doing this we are asking them to image
It requires vision skills to do this effectively.
If your client can imagine making a change in their life; and having a better life in 12 months. This now becomes a vision with a goal. This is precisely what all coaches do at a fundamental level. We let the client make the declaration.
Think of it this way; an employee looking for a job as a janitor might be asked why they would want such a difficult job. While there is nothing wrong with this, it’s not an easy job and can involve unpleasant tasks. So it seems normal to ask “why do you want to be a janitor?” Whatever the reason, we find this asking questions and assessing our client to be able to know them more completely. Many coaches believe that if we can find out what people really want the chances of them sustaining action plans for the long term becomes more realistic. But some coaches need to be coaxed to raise their expectations as it is an art to do this while working alongside our client to elevate their expectations. This is a leadership skill or trait that helps you guide clients accordingly. Speaking of companies, corporations and employees, you can also learn how to implement holistic coaching programs in a corporate environment.
Some clients will have really clear goals on some parts of their lives, leaving others wide open with possibilities. Picture a professional on the fast track at their job; we might have this client reflect on what their ideal career situation is or what the journey looks like to get there. For this client, your job is to help them by uncovering the positives of the situation and of course, acknowledging the clients past successes. We also use our coaching intuitions to understand clients better from their own level of ambitions, based on what we hear in their reflections. When we get a hunch about something, weak questions to satisfy our curiosities.
After assessing clients, the CHLC will develop timely strategies but we still need to stop at planned intervals to review what you’ve observed, heard or read from your client. During this time, we might also provide feed- back or better yet, reflections – to clarify what your client has shared with you. Perform a type of a summary of four or five points that have arisen during your conversation that you feel to be important for your client. In some cases, being able to move on with more advanced visions will depend on being able to address some things first.
Coaches will want to provide feedback and to repeat the stated goals if there are any present at this time. Then we ask our client to rank what we’ve collected in terms of importance. Again, some coaches call this The Importance Ruler. It is nothing more than a client’s scoring of how important each situation is on a scale of one to ten. At this point, our client is beginning to prioritize what they think they might want to start working on first. We respect their score but if something’s very incongruent – maybe due to the client scoring something really low that seemed really important to them during the conversation then you just point that out by saying, “You know I’m a little bit surprised that you scored that”.
It is not enough to leave things like this. Maybe your client is scared – at times people will score things lower on the importance ruler because they they think “Oh I don’t know if I could deal with that at the moment”. This is part of the scoring process – just to check people against your own intuitions. But we have to proceed with caution because you may have collected enough from the client to say “Well, on one hand you were saying before that this is what you really wanted but you have only given it a 4” There is a gap here. It is perfectly acceptable to pursue this incongruence. You need to find out why the perceived value of one of your client’s goals or ideals has dropped. Regardless of our questions, we can not destroy their motivation to do make a change or try some- thing new. This process is really about trying to pull good, useful information from the client and to put them in the driving seat for their own for their own life. We always show positive, genuine appreciation for what the client shares with us. Regardless of it’s accuracy or congruence.
Of course, the above examples are just a very small part of holistic life coaching. Read through the blog to learn more. And, you can also become a Certified Holistic Life Coach online with complete support from our faculty.
