Achievement Specialists' Answers
to your Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is Life Coaching about?

Q2. How do I know if Coaching will help me?

Q3. How does Life Coaching differ from other similar approaches?

Q4. How does Life Coaching work in the business environment?

Q5. How do I get myself a Coach?

Q6. Could I be a Coach?

Q7. Do you accept just anybody onto the Course?

Q8. How long is a Life Coaching course?

Q9. Is there any external accreditation?

Q10. Is there any post-qualification support?

Q11. Can I make my living as a Coach?

Q12. Will Achievement Specialists help me to set up my business ?

Q13. Will I need insurance?

Q14. Do you offer open days?

Q15. What is the real truth about government standards?

Q16. What makes the gold option special?

Q17. Worried about which company to train with?

Q18. Unsure, if you really want to become a life coach?

Q1: What is life coaching about?
Life Coaching is an evolutionary form of an age-old discipline with which we are all familiar. Where before, extended family structures often retained the ability to influence individual members, to help them to "find their way", today's fractured social structures and pressurised corporate environments put pressure on the availability and effectiveness of these tradditional support systems, which were in any case often restrictive and limiting in nature, rather than developmental and supportive. Life Coaching is both a professional and a personal relationship between two otherwise unconnected people, which is designed and managed by the Coach in such a way as to help the client to improve one or many aspects of their lives, independent of the pressures of the past and the present.

This is done through helping the client to understand what it is they want to achieve: by setting goals which are realistic and which will help them to achieve their higher level ambitions, by helping them to believe they can achieve their goals and their ambitions, and by guiding them as to how they can achieve their desires, and by encouraging them to go out and do it FOR THEMSELVES.

This is the important point - a life coach will not, cannot, go out and improve your life for you. He or she will help you to decide and to act. They will push you to overcome the inertia that is inherent in life, They will help you to convert dream to reality and self-doubt to self-belief.

Operationally, coaching sessions are conducted by telephone, though occasionally some coaches and clients prefer to meet and work one-to-one. Usually however the client calls the coach at a pre-arranged time for a discussion, the details of which are held in absolute confidence. These calls are generally at weekly or fortnightly intervals and last between half an hour and an hour, rarely longer. It usually takes a month to six weeks to start achieving the desired results, though the client will often start to feel the benefits of the Life Coaching approach more or less straightaway. It is unusual for a coaching process to last longer than six months without a break, but it is not uncommon to have a series of Coaching relationships, each one building on what has been achieved before.

Your coach will listen to you in a totally non-judgemental way. He or she will help you to open up and to decide where your true ambitions lie. As each goal or desire is defined by you, the coach will help you to decide on specific ACTIONS that will move you in the right direction to realise those goals. Typically, each session closes with agreement on the actions that you will take before the next call. The next session will go over those actions and their results, and your feelings about what you have achieved. It is this level of agreement, commitment and performance analysis that makes Life Coaching effective. You may have promised yourself in the past that you will one day do X or Y, but Life Coaching gets you to make that promise to someone else, your life coach, and you know that they are going to challenge you if you don't step up and deliver.

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Question 2: How do I know if Coaching will help me?
You don't, but to start finding out whether it might, then ask yourself these few questions, and answer them honestly. Do you have clear goals and an overall plan for your life? Do you know and plan where you will be and what you will be achieving in the next week, month, or year? Are you as successful as you would like to be with your career, your relationships, your finances and your personal happiness? If you can answer these questions positively and truthfully, then coaching might not be of great benefit to you. But if you answered 'no' to the questions, or if you even hesitated about any of your answers, then coaching could be of help to you.

If you ever feel that 'your life should be better than it is, or that you want to have more control over the way your future develops, then Life Coaching could help to provide you with a way of achieving the aims and goals which you harbour. Our coaches know that every human being has the potential to achieve almost anything they want out of life, and can show you how to tap into, and enjoy developing, your full potential.

The very first coaching session you have will introduce you to new ways of thinking about yourself and your life and will provide an insight as to how you can overcome those obstacles you feel are holding you back. Our coaches can help you to question your life and your current direction.... and come up with answers which will change your life.

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Question 3: How does Life Coaching differ from other similar approaches?
Life Coaching is not counselling! In many situations, a counsellor will look at your past to try to formulate a specific solution to a particular problem. Your coach will come to have an understanding of how your past has shaped your present, but the focus of Life Coaching is on where you are now and where you are aiming to be in the future. Every situation, every client and every coaching session is unique, and the overall aim is to enable you to take control of your life by accepting responsibility for all that you are and all that you do. Our coaches can guide you in how to achieve this and will be there to support you every step along the way.

Life Coaching is not therapy! A therapist typically addresses a specific physical or mental condition. Your coach sees you as a single, complete person; a culmination of interactions between all that you are, all that you have been and ultimately all that you can be. Instead of looking for causes and reasons, our coaches, using a holistic approach fundamental to Life Coaching Practice, will help you achieve your objectives by helping you to focus in on yourself, mentally, physically and spiritually.

Life Coaching is not consultancy! Coaching in a business environment in itself is not a form of consultancy, though working out how it might best be applied in a business environment can be. Consultants are generally asked to look at particular work-related issues. They usually gather data, analyse functions and quantify requirements, to support proposals designed to create operational or structural change. Their focus is generally on resolving particular functional issues. Our life coaches adopt a different approach; one where people and personality are paramount and where the changes sought are at a personal, psychological level. Life Coaching with its breadth of coverage and depth of understanding about the attitude and desires of the individuals involved, will often enable a company to achieve change in a faster timescale and with longer lasting benefits than those resulting from a standard consultancy approach.

Life Coaching is not mentoring! A mentor is altogether a different beast. A mentor will generally be there to help someone to learn a particular task or to acquire a specific skill-set. The mentor will have a lot of experience in a particular area and will be able to help the client to find short cuts and to learn how to gain specific results in specific areas. The mentor will generally know the ins and outs of a specific job related situation in advance. Life Coaching does not require that the coach should have personal experience of a client's industry or occupation. Indeed it may be that the absence of experience adds to the effectiveness of coaching in this area, A mentor already knows the answers. The coach works with the individual so that they can first discover the questions for themselves and then find their own answers.

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Question 4:How does Life Coaching work in the business environment?
Some of our coaches tailor their practice to meet the particular requirements of the corporate market. As coaching professionals, they will also have taken advanced training in the application of Life Coaching principles to senior executives and to work groups in the corporate environment.

Life coaching for a busy and successful senior executive may seem an unlikely idea, but it is often these very powerful people who can most benefit from the clarity of thought and firmness of purpose that can be derived from Life Coaching. It can also be very valuable in helping individuals to differentiate between what their business card says they are and what they really are, or would like to be. Being successful in business does not necessarily mean being successful in many other important areas of life. This is what Life Coaching can help the senior executive to achieve.

As with Life Coaching, Business Coaching focuses on personal goals. With Business Coaching however the range of these goals is restricted to those which match the overall goals of the organisation, as they apply to a team or work-group. With Business Coaching the aim is to ensure that the members of a work-group have a full understanding of the corporate goals and the targets of the particular projects to which they contribute. Our life coaches work with each individual, but focus more on helping the individual to understand how they can best fulfil their own and the organisation's objectives. This approach often highlights personal development areas that not only allow the individual to make a stronger contribution to the organisation but also helps them to be more successful, a more valuable team-player and serves to increase their personal level of happiness and satisfaction. That overall effect is of benefit to both the individual and the company and serves to boost productivity, job satisfaction, teamwork and staff-retention.

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Question 5: How do I get myself a Coach?
Well, it's very simple. CLICK HERE and visit the Achievement Specialist Individual Life Coaching pages. That will explain how it all works and link you up with our coaches. If you have doubts about the whole process then there are a couple of other things you could do first. You could, for example, ask around your friends to see if you can find someone who has tried coaching and ask them for their recommendations. Or if you type in the search string 'individual Life Coaches' to your favourite search engine, that should come up with a list of coaches' websites that you can look around. They will typically have numbers to call and will offer a free initial consultation. Don't think you have to go with the first person you talk to. You can get in contact with as many as you like before you decide on one or decide not to do it. It is always your choice, though it is the coaches' aim to help you to make choices that are better for you.

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Question 6: Could I be a Coach?
Well, in all honesty, it depends on you. We don't apply any particular restrictions on who can and cannot become a life coach, but we do ask all our applicants to provide us with a CV and we always have a telephone interview with them to explore their backgrounds, their motivations, their aims and ambitions, their level of commitment and most of all, their understanding of what it means to be a life coach and their willingness to undertake the responsibilities that coaching involves. If you are open minded and interested in people for themselves, and you truly want to help others to achieve their own goals, then you are most of the way there. You don't need academic qualifications, though they don't hinder either, but you must have passion, be able to communicate clearly and be able to engage with your clients without getting too personally involved. Remember! Being a practicing Life Coach means you are running your own business too, so you need to think about that as part of the planning exercise. You will need somewhere quiet where you can talk to your clients on the phone and where you can make notes on each client conversation and somewhere secure to keep your client files and other paperwork.

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Question 7: Do you accept anybody onto the course?
Achievement Specialists asks that all course applicants complete the booking form, send in an up-to-date Curriculum Vitae and pass a telephone-based interview.

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Question 8: How long is the Life Coaching course?
The full course usually takes six months, but it is done pretty much at your own pace, depending on your personal circumstances. It can be done in three months, the average is between 6 to 12 months, although we do not have a cut off time, which means you can take as long as it takes you. The total study time is about 200 - 350 hours depending on your style of learning, including a residential workshop, home study materials, assignments and final assessment.

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Question 9: Is there external accreditation?
Yes, the diploma course is independently accredited by two separate non-affiliated bodies. Firstly, it is accredited by The Open College Network. This means that the course has academic credibility, has defined learning outcomes and is professionally assessed by an appropriate and independent third party. Also, the diploma has been awarded the top grade (A) by the European Coaching Institute.

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Question 10: Is there any post-qualification support?
As a coach who has qualified for the LCH Diploma from Achievement Specialist, you are automatically enrolled in the Achievement Specialists' ACHIEVERS CLUB. This gives you access to a range of support services from Achievement Specialists. These include access to telephone and on-line support, access to the Achievers Club discussion forum, the ability to download many useful forms. You also have the option of appearing on this site's 'Our Coaches' page and can take advantage of our special web-development offering where we will help you to develop your own independent web-site,which can be linked from this one as a promotional assist for your coaching practice. Click Here for more information on the ACHIEVERS CLUB.

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Question 11:Can I make my living as a coach?
You can work part-time, full-time or eighty hours a week. Part-time can generate some useful extra revenue, a forty hour week should give you a pretty good living, and if you're working eighty hours a week you are probably working too hard and you should contact a life coach. You will need some money to start off; to pay for the course, to advertise and promote, to set up your office or whatever, but you don't need a great deal in the way of capital investment and we will show you how to find clients and develop your skills.

Corporate coaching and small business coaching are also covered in the diploma course and we show you how to maximise your experience, competencies and skills to build a coaching practice to suit your particular needs which can include all of the areas or as we recommend, a niche area.

The Achievement Specialists LCH Diploma Course provides you with everything you will need to develop a successful practice, provided you have the commitment, drive, application and desire to succeed. Our ACHIEVERS CLUB provides post qualification support, contact and encouragement. But your ultimate success is entirely up to you.

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Question 12: Will Achievement Specialists help me to set up my business?
We have a specifically designed module on the workshop which covers what you need to do to set up your business practice, which includes fast tract set up ideas and important legal contact information to save you time researching and enable streamlining of your efforts to facilitate you to be legally 'open for business' when you are ready.

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Question 13: Will I need insurance cover?
Yes you will, and we can provide you with help in finding low cost cover. We discuss the important aspects of this insurance during the course. With you in mind, we have negotiated a heavily discounted insurance scheme with Westminster Indemnity Insurance, which offers excellent cover for low cost. We believe being insured is important and therefore we offer our negotiated rate to all coaches not just the coaches who have carefully selected us as their training provider.

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Question 14: Do you offer open days?
No. We will not ask you to pay your hard earned money so that we can pitch our business to you in the guise of a training day. Find out if life coaching is for you for as little as £16.99. Avoid being bombarded with marketing claims for free courses (providing you part with your money first), or 2 for 1 offers simply, invest £16.99 (or less if you buy the book from Amazon.co.uk and you can read the customer reviews of the book before you buy) on a copy of 'The Life Coaching Handbook'. Everything you need to be an effective life coach'. It explains exactly what is involved in setting up a coaching practice, how to become an outstanding coach using the copy write coaching models, NLP coaching and advanced techniques. Like the book? You will love the course! If, or, when you now decide to train with us, you can claim your money back or collect a new book at the workshop, which Curly will sign and write a dedication to any of your friends, so you can give a very personalised gift. Better still, she will put a personalised dedication to a company CEO/Director/personnel that you want, thus giving you a fantastic gift for your business promotion. Buying the book first, you get to decide if life coaching really is for you in the comfort of your own home without any sales pressure and you can decide now if Achievement Specialists training style is for you; all this, before you part with your money.

Extra bonus: Whenever you have a company or individual you want to do business with you can order a discounted copy of 'The Life Coaching Handbook' with a personalised dedication from Curly and send it as a gift along with your marketing and contact details to your target client. This is an absolutely unique opportunity and many of our coaches use this to leverage their business.

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Question 15: What is the real truth about government standards?

Our diploma course is accredited by the European Coaching Institute and also, under the National Open College Network umbrella, which is a national awarding body, recognized by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in England , the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland and the Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment Authority (ACCAC) in Wales. NOCN qualifications and OCN accredited are delivered through further education and sixth form colleges, universities and higher education institutions, training organizations and voluntary and community organisations. The OCNs support the delivery of NOCN qualifications, through our centre. We are accredited by the OCN South Region.
 
Recently the Employment National Training Organisation has been working on a government initiative related to coaching and mentoring. National Occupational Standards are about work based learning. Those working to achieve qualifications from NOS (NVQ's, SVQ's or Apprenticeships) must already be doing that job. You cannot train to be, say, a Coach through NSVQ's, but they are a route to formal recognition of the standard you are working to and the level you are working at.' IMPORTANT: The words 'must already be doing that job', is the interesting part about this extract; if you are using this criteria as your deciding factor for your training provider. Our course has been accredited by the Open College Network since 2002 and we, like universities and higher education institutions, are satisfied with the Open College Network standards of this well established regulation body

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Question 16: What makes the gold option special?
 
Our Gold Option is the best value for money on the market today. On top of our highly rated training and support (see website for the long list) you will also receive your own personal professional practicing life coach mentor. Your coach/mentor is not one of our paid employees because we understand you want mentoring from a coach who has qualified and is running a successful practice in their own right. The Gold Option also states exactly how much time you have with your coach (45 minutes for 12 sessions = 9 hours of dedicated tailored mentor coaching) you are not waiting in a queue for a few minutes of irregular time from an employee. You are setting up a practice and deserve to have the support of someone who is running a practice.

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Question 17: Worried about which company to train with?
 
Spend time deciding exactly how you want to be trained, what you are going to use the qualification and training to achieve in your life and how much disposable time you have to allocate to your studies and your future. Once you know this you have a framework for selecting a suitable course. TAKE YOUR TIME.

Curly is very sorry and saddened that selecting a training provider has now become a tricky and problematic process for you. To assist you in your choice of training provider, she has designed a decision matrix tool which will take away the sales hype and leave you with the facts as you want them to be. We wish you great success with your life coaching practice because coaching is the best profession in the world for the coach and the client.

There are many companies offering training to become a coach and some, who make outrageous claims. Because of Curly’s expertise and huge success in the coaching field, currently, there are unscrupulous organisations who are claiming association with her or even more outrageous, that she has been trained by them. They are using ‘Reflected Glory Marketing’ which lacks the fundamental integrity we believe is at the true core of coaching. Therefore BUYER BEWARE! Select your training company carefully and check their integrity. If they are unprincipled enough to use reflected glory marketing you need to consider the implications of the service they might provide.

Those who do not display all their prices on their websites and will not tell you the prices when you enquire. Consider this; if a company does not display course prices or content on the website there can only be one reason. They want to up-sell. Marketing claims of buy now (or within a 2-3 day time frame) and save £thousands, buy now get one free; offers of sponsorship which arrive after you have not taken up all the previous offers, merit particular concern.

If training companies offer you sales leads but they are not prepared to guarantee paid contracts be very wary. We could all offer courses with sales leads when we do not have to guarantee you will get paid contracts – that is easy (ethical?). So if you are attracted to these offers, check where the leads come from, how old are the leads, how they have validated the leads, and who else has had the same list of leads. Ask yourself, what else might such a company embellish and how will that affect your training and the support they say is offered?

Avoid solely distant learning packages unless you already have coaching experience.

Remember it is your training, your career and your future, guard it passionately. Caution, if it is made difficult for you to speak to previous delegates (for whatever reason) and/or, you cannot select who you speak to, be wary. Free courses have been used for many years as a platform, a marketing ploy similar to the very successful timeshare techniques. If you are truly respected by a training provider they would be willing to tell you all their prices over the telephone before you leave your house! Resist heavy sales approaches and TAKE YOUR TIME. Saving a few pounds now because you feel you will miss a ‘deal’ could cost you much more later, not only in monetary terms, also loss of your valuable never to be returned - time. Remember deals have to be paid for in one way or another – no such thing as a free lunch.

©2004 Life Coaching Decision Matrix: We have designed a form to help you decide between training providers. It is based on the briefing matrix in 'The Life Coaching Handbook' and adapted to assist you with choosing a training course best suited to your needs. Simply click here and print the form. You will find the easy to use instructions at the top of the form. Please call us on our free phone 0800 191 0200 if you have any difficulties printing the form and we will post one out to you. Good luck and enjoy using the matrix

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Question 18: Unsure, if you really want to become a life coach?
 
A cost effective way to decide: Find out if life coaching is for you for only £16.99. Before you become bombarded with marketing claims for free courses (providing you part with your money first), or 2 for 1 offers simply, invest £16.99 (or less if you buy the book from Amazon.co.uk and you can read the customer reviews of the book before you buy) on a copy of 'The Life Coaching Handbook'. Everything you need to be an effective life coach'. It explains exactly what is involved in setting up a coaching practice and coaching models. Like the book? You will love the course! If, or when you decide to train with us, you can claim your money back or collect a new book at the workshop, which Curly will sign and dedicate to any friend you wish to give the book as a gift. Buying the book first, you get to decide if life coaching really is for you and you can decide if Achievement Specialists training style is for you; all this, before you part with considerably more of your hard earned money.