Last Updated on February 14, 2019

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being. John Wooden

What good is life coaching? Why do I need someone to tell me how to live my life? How would listening to someone else talk about what they think I should do really help me? Am I not capable of being my best self on my own?

These are some of the questions that many people have been asking themselves and has contributed to a misunderstanding of what life coaching is, how it works, and how it can help people find out what drives them and apply it to create a better and more fulfilling life.

If this description of life coaching sounds like it could benefit just about anybody, its because it can. Life coaching is not therapy or counseling, which pairs a mental health professional with a client who may be struggling with an illness or disability.

Its not mentorship, in which a professional is paired with a more experienced professional. Life coaching is also distinct from a training relationship, where a teacher or trainer agrees to share their knowledge or skills with a client for a short period of time.

Life coaching can help fill in the gaps in our master plans and clarify the path from where we are to where we want to be. It is a partnership between the life coach and the client designed to help the client explore their options, focus on their goals, and create a personalized action plan.

Life coaches do not give their clients a list of boxes to tick or a strict set of steps to follow, rather they aim to help their clients discover their own motives and goals, and aid them in finding the best path towards them.

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Life coaching is not for the faint-hearted.

Its a career path that allows you to put your skills to use helping others, facilitating their personal and professional growth. The range of problems, challenges, and goals that clients bring to coaches is so vast, it would take an entire article just to list them all.

With such a broad range of practice, there are many skills and tools that a life coach must have in order to be successful. In this piece, we provide 40 exercises, tools, and tips for effective life coaching, plus links to other resources that may prove useful.

Read on to see if there are any exercises or tools that you can apply to your practice!

Coaching is unlocking a persons potential to maximize their own performance. Its helping them to learn rather than teaching them. Timothy Gallwey

There are numerous tools in the life coachs toolbox, and each life coach will likely have their own tools, exercises, and methods. However, there are some tools that have so much potential, they would be at home in almost any coachs practice.

One of the life coachs most valuable and versatile tools is the Wheel of Life. Its a simple and easy-to-use exercise that can help clients find out which areas of their lives are most satisfying and where they would like to focus attention on improving their quality of life (The Coaching Tools Company, 2012).

There are only two steps to this exercise:

1) Review the 8 categories on the wheel and think about what would represent a satisfying life in each area:

2) Draw a line across each segment that best represents the current level of satisfaction, with the center of the wheel equal to 0 and the edge of the wheel equal to 10, the maximum level of satisfaction.

The end result looks a bit like a spider web and can give your client a general idea of their overall life satisfaction in relation to their desired life satisfaction.

You can find the Wheel of Life exercise and download a copy for yourself here. For more information on how you can use the Wheel of Life, check out this article.

One of the many ways that we tend to get off track or bogged down while striving towards our goals relates to our spheres of influence. The idea behind the spheres of influence tool is that there are three distinct areas we can sort the comings and goings of life into:

While we may feel like there is nothing under our control at times, there is always at least one thing we have direct control over ourselves. Even when we are under enormous pressure or when we feel trapped, we always have at least some level of control over our attitude and our behavior.

The second area is that of factors we can influence. We do not have direct control over these factors, but we can put our effort into pushing them in the right direction. For instance, while we cannot control others attitudes or behavior, we can offer them advice, guidance, or provide evidence to help them make good decisions.

The final area is things that we have no control or influence over. This is the largest area since the majority of what happens around us is not under our direct control. A good life coach will help his or her clients to recognize and accept that there is much we cannot control, but will also help them to find opportunities to effect change through taking control or influencing that which is within their reach.

Life coaches can walk their clients through the spheres, helping them identify what is within their control, what is in their sphere of influence, and what cannot be controlled. To read more about this tool, plus learn how clients can apply the lessons learned to their work, click here.

Keeping a journal can be useful for many different reasons, including as a life coaching exercise. Daily journaling facilitates reflection and can spark useful brainstorming about how to better strive toward your goals. Coaches can help ensure that their clients journaling is helpful by providing some guidance.

To guide your client in effective journaling, use can use the handy JOURNAL acronym (Coach Federation, 2013):

To learn more about the JOURNAL acronym, check out this blog.

The action brainstorming worksheet can help clients get out of a rut or a sticky situation.

This easy to use tool is only one page long, with a table that is split into five columns. The instructions are to think of actions or behaviors that you frequently engage in or would like to engage in, and direct them into the appropriate column.

This easy-to-use, one-page tool can be viewed and downloaded here.

The Understanding Our Goals worksheet is intended to help clients figure out whether their goals are worth their time and energy, or to help them prioritize their goals in terms of utility.

This worksheet invites readers to identify their top three current goals and asks a series of questions to help them learn about why each goal is important to them and what they are hoping to gain. These questions begin with the simple Why do you want this goal? What does it give you? and essentially repeat several times to help the reader drill down into what they are really hoping to achieve.

After answering these questions four times, the final question for each goal is What will this goal help you feel? Once the reader has reached the heart of the goal, answering this question should be easy.

As an example, take the goal of losing 20 pounds.

An answer to the first question may be To look and feel better.

The answer to the second repetition could be something like Achieving this goal will allow me to take pride in my body.

The third iteration may elicit a response like Taking pride in my body will help me feel better about myself overall.

The fourth question may then be answered with Feeling better about myself overall will help me to tackle my other goals and improve my quality of life.

Finally, the answer to the ultimate question, What will this goal help you feel? might be something like Confident, proud of myself, and motivated to pursue all of my other goals.

To see the worksheet for yourself or to download a copy for your clients, follow this link.

The coaching website from Kristin Houser (www.mshouser.com) is an excellent resource for instructional coaches, but the tools and tips are not limited to one kind of coach they can be adapted or modified to apply to all forms of coaching.

Here are some of her tools and processes for coaching, from beginning to end (Houser, Instructional Coaching Tools):

This is a great way to begin a coaching relationship, as it gets both parties up to speed on what the coach can offer and what the client is hoping to work on.

Questions to be answered at the kick-off meeting include Whats going well? and What are they struggling with? This is also where the coach and client can set up a schedule and agree on a way to keep in touch and track progress on goals.

The coaching work plan tool includes space for identifying the client, the coaching goal, brainstorming ways to support the goal(s), how you will track progress, and any other notes. As you work through the coaching process, you can also note the progress that has been made and how you can support the client moving forward.

This tool is an excellent way for coaches to stay organized and devote as much time as possible to working with their clients.

This tool is geared towards teacher coaches, but it can be used with any client who a coach has the opportunity to observe in action. It provides space to take notes on what the coach observes when sitting in on a class or other client-led activity.

After the observation has ended, there are prompts to review the next steps and ask any clarifying questions, as well as discussion prompts for the coach and client to go over together. Finally, it ends with space for identifying the next steps.

These tools can help many coaches with many different kinds of clients, ensuring that the coach stays organized and on top of their coaching duties.

For more instructional coaching tools, there is an excellent resource page from http://www.instructionalcoaching.com that you can access here. You will find teaching tools, forms, and exercises that can take coaching from effective to highly impactful.

Coaches know that to make a change, you need to first assess your current state. Assessment tools are a great way to do this, and there are dozens if not hundreds of different assessments in disparate areas that can help.

No matter the area of life that a client is committed to improving, there is probably an assessment that can help them get started!

Here, we go over four essential areas that coaches often help their clients understand, improve, or maximize (Stinnett, 2011):

These areas are identified in the context of leadership coaching, but we find that they are extremely relevant for life coaching as well. What is the intention of life coaching, if not to help the client take leadership of their own life?

Leadership is a common area that coaches are called in to assess and improve. Whether its leadership in the boardroom, in a work team, or in ones own personal life, leadership skills are an excellent resource to have in your toolbox.

These are some of the most popular leadership assessment tools.

The Leadership Competency Inventory measures leadership skills as a function of four leadership dimensions:

This assessment is composed of 46 items gauging the degree to which the user has demonstrated certain behaviors. If the client is interested in getting a more holistic view of their leadership skills and abilities, they can have their colleagues, subordinates, or even friends respond to these items as well.

To learn more about the Leadership Competency Inventory, click here.

This assessment from developers Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard helps the client figure out their leadership style and generates scores in four leadership areas:

The quadrant in which the client has the highest score is considered their dominant style, while the next highest score or scores represent their fallback style or the style they can use when their dominant style is not appropriate or effective.

This assessment is most useful for those who must practice active leadership in their work, but it can help those who may someday take on a more leading role to learn and prepare for that future.

You can download the assessment and try it for yourself or your clients here.

This questionnaire is similar to the previous assessment, in that it divides leadership style into four quadrants. However, this assessment replaces the Supports quadrant with Facilitating.

The different styles can be briefly described as follows:

Directing

A leader high in the Directing style likely provides detailed instructions, specific goals, and works closely with staff.

Coaching

A coaching leader likes to motivate and encourage staff, both praising their success and providing feedback for them to improve.

Facilitating

A facilitating leader involves staff in the decision-making process, listens to their comments and concerns, and is likely to have an open-door policy.

Delegating

A leader high in Delegating provides less detail than a directing leader, and expects staff to find their own way in navigating their goals and objectives.

Like the LEAD, this assessment can be a useful tool for leaders and future leaders to think about their own personal style. This questionnaire can be accessed by anyone through SurveyMonkey at this link.

Personality assessments are very common in all types of coaching, as well as the classroom, a therapists office, and in guidance counseling.

While there is no personality assessment that can tell you exactly who you are and what is most important to you, the results from these assessments can be an excellent guide to learning more about yourself and making sure your goals line up with your priorities.

A few of the most popular personality assessments are described below.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator , or MBTI , is perhaps the most well-known personality inventory. It narrows down the test takers personality based on four bipolar dimensions:

Individuals can fall anywhere along the spectrum between the two poles, but they will always be a bit closer to one than the other. This results in 16 possible personality types, all with their own unique characteristics.

This tool has been put to good use in the corporate world as well as in schools and universities. The idea is that when you know more about your distinct preferences, you can learn how to put them to best use. Your results are not a crystal ball in which you can see your life plan, but they can be a useful resource when building an outline of your future goals.

You can learn more about the MBTI or complete the assessment here.

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths, or VIA-IS, is another popular assessment tool. This is slightly different from the MBTI in that it focuses on values instead of traits or preferences. It still provides a window into understanding your personality, but it focuses on your strengths instead of neutral factors.

There are 24 character strengths, divided into 6 categories:

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Your Ultimate Life Coaching Tools Library 2019 (+PDF ...