6 Health & Wellness Coaching Tips

1. What is coaching?

Coaching is an emerging service profession based on concepts from sports, business, spirituality, psychology and organizational development. It's for passionate people like you who want more from their personal and business lives. A coach can help you set larger, more rewarding goals, develop a strategy to achieve them and provide support throughout the process. It's not unlike having a personal trainer or an athletic coach... transformational, but in a business and personal sense. The achievement of goals is something that comes more quickly as a result of the coaching partnership.

2. Why does coaching work?

Coaching works when there are two factors present:
1) The client is willing to grow, and
2) There is a gap between where they are now and where they want to be.

Successful coaching clients know the value of sharing ideas with someone who understands them and is subjective enough to want a lot for them, yet objective enough not to be biased or self-serving. Talking about options with someone who can listen, is often enough to have it all become very clear.

Coaching works because of three unique features:

SYNERGY: Client and coach become a team, focusing on the client's goals and needs and accomplishing more than the client would alone.
STRUCTURE: A coach can provide accountability which motivates the client to take more action, think bigger and get the job done.
EXPERTISE: In addition to his/her coaching skills, each coach may also have specialized knowledge to help clients make better decisions, set the best goals, develop new skills for communicating and restructure their personal and professional lives for maximum contentment and productivity, respectively.

3. Where do you start with a coach?

Most coaches begin with a special client meeting or call to get to know each other. The coach wants to hear about the client's goals, needs, and problems. The client wants to get comfortable with the coach. During this meeting, both parties design a list of goals and a game plan to reach these goals.

4. How do the coaching sessions work?

Coaching is usually done over the phone. In addition to allowing frequent, regular contact, it makes it easy to stay in the "coaching relationship", since the client can call from their office, home, car or hotel. The person coached completes a coaching call strategy form prior to each call, describing the current challenges and the progress they've made since the last call. Most people are coached two hours a month, in either four 30-minute sessions, three 40-minute sessions or two 1-hour sessions.

The focus of each call is determined by the client. The coach helps them to see their issues or problems from different perspectives which provides opportunity to discover new solutions. A coach can bring out the clients best by providing insight into the client success roadblocks and helping them strategize breaking through those blocks and celebrating the wins. There is often "fieldwork", where the client is given a formula, new perspective or a challenge to try something in a new way. That forms the basis for the next call.

5. What happens when you begin a contract with a coach?

You take yourself and what you want more seriously.
You take more effective and focused actions immediately.
You stop putting up with stuff that gets in your way.
You create momentum to achieve more, be more balanced and develop more powerful management skills.
You set personal goals that are clear and meet your needs.
You identify and eliminate the barriers that get in the way of the achievement of your goals.
You communicate about what you need and want from others in a more responsible way.

6. How can a doctor also be a coach?

Health and Wellness Coaching creates an environment where clients can share with freedom from the judgment and expectations that doctors and patients currently have in our typical health care system. In the coaching environment it’s safe to question, to appear vulnerable, to observe, to explore, experiment, to learn and change. That trust factor allows the client to use the 'Doctor Coach' (or Health and Wellness Coach) to improve his or her health and well-being in confidence, and with an anticipation that promotes their success.

Your Health and Wellness Coach, will guide and educate you in ways that will help you reach your life goals; teach you how to uplift your spirit and nurture your soul. Accomplishing these extraordinary heights consistently requires a special coach/client partnership.