Life Coach

545 Hours / Access Length: 12 Months / Delivery: Online, Self-Paced

Course Overview:

Life Coaching is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand professional services.  Life Coaches work with clients to help them establish and achieve their professional goals, as well as personal aspirations.  This course will provide you with the skills you need to become a successful life coach.  Through theoretical and practical applications, you will learn how to work with clients in every aspect of life.  You will learn coaching fundamentals, including listening skills and the language of coaching.  From there, you will go beyond the basics to learn how to work with individual clients to help them establish their personal and professional goals.  When a student completes this course, they will be fully prepared to help individuals through one-on-one and group coaching.

Curriculum Developer Biography:

Willow Nolland is an expert in education and eLearning, with more than ten years of experience in curriculum development and instructional design. She has worked in higher education for over twelve years, and has developed numerous courses and has been involved in curriculum development across disciplines. She has experience with academic program development and coordination, curriculum development, student learning outcomes, educational partnerships, and student development. In addition, she has developed and administered professional development programs for various groups, including teachers, counselors, healthcare workers and members of private industry. She is a certified Quality Matters Reviewer and has taken graduate courses in online course development. She designs and teaches online courses at the college level and is proficient in a variety of course management systems. She has helped educators redesign their courses to transition them from a face-to-face format to an online format, and has provided course editing assistance to others. As a freelance instructional designer and curriculum developer, her projects have included course editing and redesign of online continuing education courses for nurses, CEU curriculum development for healthcare workers and teachers, and course review and editing for various colleges and universities.

Course Outline:

Lesson 1: The Basic Foundation of Life Skills Coaching

In this lesson, you will learn the foundational elements of life skills coaching.  First, you will learn about the listening skills that are essential in life skills coaching.  From there, you will learn about the language of coaching and the role of coaching in the developmental change process.  Finally, you will learn about communication skills.  Upon completion of this lesson, you will have a thorough understanding of the basic elements of life skills coaching and will be fully prepared to expand your knowledge beyond the basics.

Lesson 2: The Coaching Process

In this lesson, you will learn the basics of the coaching process.  You will identify the key strategies that are used in the coaching process and you will develop your own processes for coaching clients. You will learn about the basic asking skills that make up the framework of a coaching conversation: setting an agenda, defining the problem, creating goal statements, exploration, developing options, addressing obstacles, and taking action.  You will use these skills with all clients that you work with, regardless of their needs.  

Lesson 3: Beyond Coaching Basics

In this lesson, you will go beyond coaching basics.  You will learn how to empower the client during the decision-making process.  You will learn how to "stretch the client" by asking probing questions that challenge the client.  Finally, you will learn how to create momentum with your clients through the use of six strategies and common practices.  This lesson will expand the foundation of coaching skills that were provided in lesson one to provide a platform for the coach to work from.

Lesson 4: Life Coaching and Destiny Discovery

In this lesson, you will learn about life coaching and destiny discovery.  You will learn a variety of strategies that you will use to help your clients determine their life purpose and identify what they find fulfilling.  Through the use of interactive applications and theoretical readings, you will develop the tools necessary to work with clients to help them design their own future.  You will learn how to ask questions that will require them to truly identify their wants and desires, while focusing on the realistic, attainable goals.  Upon completion of this lesson, you will be fully prepared to apply these skills in your life coaching practice.

Lesson 5: Helping Clients Identify Challenges

This lesson will focus on the skills and strategies needed to help clients identify challenges they are experiencing, or might experience, as they work toward their goals.  You will learn how to use a variety of tools and coaching activities that will encourage clients to truly think about what is holding them back from pursuing their passion.  You will have to help clients work through their fears and insecurities as they begin to consider what it is that will make them truly happy, and you will learn the strategies that will help them work through the various emotions they will experience as part of the process.  Upon completion of this lesson, you will be fully prepared to help clients identify the challenges that are preventing, or may prevent, them from accomplishing their goals.

Lesson 6: Advanced Life Coaching Skills

This lesson will move beyond the basics of life coaching to more advanced strategies and tools that help clients actually create the life they have been designing.  In this lesson, you will learn how to help clients apply actions to their plans and move forward with their goals.  While the beginning stages of coaching are crucial for helping clients identify their passions and design their lives, they cannot be the final component of life skills coaching.  The action stage of personal and professional development is necessary, or clients will be left with little other than a dream and a plan.  Upon completion of this lesson, you will have a toolkit of strategies that will help encourage clients to take action.

Lesson 7: Coaching Niches

In this lesson, you will learn about the different coaching niches.  While some life skills coaches will provide general life coaching, others will tailor their coaching to meet the needs of a specific type of client.  As a life coach, you will have to determine the type of clients you want to work with.  The first section of this lesson will discuss Career and Professional coaching niches.  The second section of this lesson will cover Health, Wellness, and Personal coaching niches.  Upon completion of this lesson, you will have a thorough understanding of the different coaching niches and you will be prepared to identify the niche you would like to work in.

• Cable and DSL internet connections are recommended for the best experience.

• CPU: 1 GHz or higher
• RAM: 2 GB or higher
• Resolution: 1280 x 720 or higher
• Speakers / Headphones
• Microphone (Webinar / Live Online sessions)

• Microsoft Windows 7 or 10 (Home, Pro)
• Mac OSX 10 or higher.
• Latest Chrome OS
• Latest Linux Distributions

NOTE: While we understand that our courses can be viewed on Android and iPhone devices, we do not recommend the use of these devices for our courses. The size of these devices do not provide a good learning environment for students taking online or live online based courses.

• Latest Google Chrome is recommended for the best experience.
• Latest Mozilla FireFox
• Latest Microsoft Edge
• Latest Apple Safari

• Office suite software (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice)
• PDF reader program (Adobe Reader, FoxIt)
• Courses may require other software that is denoted in the above course outline.