Need help in life coaching courses!!

[VibrantSoul]

HELLO ALL,

I was wondering if someone could help me as I am a bit lost at the moment.
Right, Im very new to this Life coaching topic, I have been reading and doing some researches and found that to be trained as a life coach is a fortune :-( basically I am interested in becoming a life coach in personal issues only, does anyone know of any good course in London where I can go to, Im doing a free weekend course with the coaching academy, I dont know if they are any good.
Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

Many Thanks
VS

[Bannick]

Hi VibrantSoul,

In my experience, life coaching courses tend to range from about £900 to £10,000, the high end of the scale usually combining coaching courses, business coaching courses, NLP diplomas etc all tied in together. That said, the business coaching courses really bug me as they often mean that someone with no "hands on" business knowledge whatsoever ends up presenting their business as a professional Business Coach (I've seen some of these, they are often advertising their services as a business coach while failing in their own coaching business!).

Although NLP is very useful in a coaching environment, I have come across very good life coaches who have little or no practical knowledge of NLP.

Obviously, the free weekend course at the Coaching Academy is designed to give you a taster and open up the opportunity for them to sell you their courses. Nothing in life is free! Personally, I found the coaching academy weekend annoying and far too americanised (no offence to any Americans on here) and what I refer to as the "happy clappy brigade" end of coaching, which is really not how I work. That said, there are several very good coaches who have come through their training (which is also quite expensive, especially once they try to up sell to the "full monty" version of their training).

However, if you can see past the "happy clappy" element of the weekend (I'd had enough by lunchtime on the first day), it will give you a good idea of the foundation elements of Life Coaching and help you decide if this is the path for you. If you do decide to continue on and train with them then I would also suggest holding off and not signing up on the day, the discounts tend to get bigger the longer you wait, regardless of what they say on the day. If they claimed that you will get a certificate for the weekend, make sure you chase them up on this as I understand from several people who have done the full weekend with this promise that the diploma/certificate is not very forthcoming!

Unfortunately, I don't know the London training companies well enough to really recommend an alternative. I would suggest shopping around until you find a course you feel is right for you, making sure of course that it's one that is accredited in some way that means you can obtain insurance at a reasonable rate (mine is added on to my insurance for Hypnotherapy, NLP and EFT so it doesn't actually cost me anything extra).

[Masha B]

Hi VibrantSoul,

This one won't be cheap - but Ian McDermott's (International Teaching Seminars) training courses are very reputable, their Coaching course is NLP based, which is an added bonnus (Ian is one of the top NLP trainers in the UK, though I only did some short training courses with him, he is very good indeed in my opinion) and carries European certification.

http://www.itsnlp.com/ecp.html

I did my coaching training with the Performance Solution in Corsham, Wiltshire, who were excellent too - but I actually won my place my course in a raffle, so didn't have to pay however many thousands it cost then (can't remember as it was a few years ago).

Masha

[confidence]

When I trained to become a coach I first used a very cheap online course - about £99 I think. It was all distance learning and then completing a few essays and answering some questions.

Although the content was fantastic, it's no better than reading a book on coaching to be honest. Start out with something like Co-Active Coaching and you can begin to build up some skills and confidence in your abilities. Then save like mad for the right course for you.

I ended up paying around £4000 for a Coaching Course with Coaching Development in London which I can't recommend highly enough. They are accredited by the ICF too. It's not specifically Life Coaching but once you realise that you need to specialise then it doesn't really matter!

I guess the best thing to do is to try and get some funding - look at traintogain and government funding.

Good luck to you - there's a huge need for Life Coaches now, people are really suffering.

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Kind regards,

Dan