Life Coach and Business Coach FAQ

"Where your talents and the needs of the world cross,
there lies your vocation." ...Aristotle

Why consider the NLP and Coaching Institute of California?

Do I need previous training experience in NLP take the Coach Program?

How much does a professional coach make?

What is the demand for business coaching?

How many clients does a typical coach have?

What is the tuition cost of the 120 hour Coach Program?

What specifically is Coaching?

How does Coaching work?

What kind of people become coaches?

What exactly does the coach provide?

How long does a Coaching relationship last?

How do NLP and Coaching fit together?

What are the roots of Coaching, how did the field get started?

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Why consider the NLP and Coaching Institute of California?

Experience.

We have been conducting long-term certification programs for over 20 years. Throughout the years we have sponsored more than 45 NLP Practitioner Certification Training Programs through our Institute, as well as participating in several other programs throughout the world. We have also been conducting Coach Certification Programs since 1999, and have offered these courses in various locations throughout the United States and Internationally. We have developed and refined our programs over time, always keeping the content and teaching methods on the cutting edge of these fields. Moreover, for the past two decades, we have pioneered and taught The World Health Certification Program with Robert Dilts, Tim Hallbom, and Suzi Smith, which is considered the "Graduate School of NLP". Tim Hallbom, the training director the NLP and Coaching Institute, is one of the few well known trainers in the field of NLP, who has also maintained a full coaching practice for several years.
Training Excellence.

The trainers in our programs are simply the best teachers in the fields of NLP and Coaching. In addition to Tim Hallbom, Nick LeForce, Suzi Smith, Kris Hallbom and others who are part of our certification training team, we include well-known trainers from other institutes as special guest trainers, recently including Steve Andreas, Robert Dilts, and Jan Elfine.
Our Mission

Our mission is to teach our student's to be able to actually do Coaching and NLP through our trainings with a high level of skill. We also are absolutely committed to using the powerful NLP and Coaching methods with integrity, openness, and without mystery. We also treat each student with the acknowledgement of their special gifts and have as our goal for each of them to truly step into their magnificence.

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Do I need previous training experience in NLP in order to enroll in the 120 hour Coach Certification Training Program?

No, you don't need to have any experience with NLP to enroll in the 120 hour Coach Certification Training Program. While it is always helpful to have previous NLP experience, it is not a requirement.

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What is the Tuition Cost?

Tuition: $3600.00
Tuition Payment Plans Include:

1) 6 payments of $600 USD (The first payment is due at the time you register for the program. The remaining 5 payments are due on the first day of each training session.)

2) Or you may choose to pay in full when you register.

Payment forms accepted
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Checks, and Money Order

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What Specifically is Coaching?

Coaching is one of the fastest growing new professions. What is the appeal? Recent issues of Newsweek, Money Magazine and the Wall Street Journal urge professionals to avail themselves of the services of a personal coach. Why?

Dedicated athletes use coaches to increase their focus and to provide support, structure, and ongoing accountability to prepare them for win/lose competitions. Organizations and individuals who hire coaches are interested in having, being, and doing their best, not settling for less. We humans have a deep need to grow and develop, to actualize our potential. We want to "go for the gold" in the game of life.

The Personal and Professional Coaches Association defines coaching as "an ongoing relationship which focuses on clients taking action toward the realization of their vision, goals or desires. Coaching uses a process of inquiry and personal discovery to build the client's level of awareness and responsibility, and provides the client with structure, support and feedback." How is that different from existing professions? Like counseling, it is client-centered and individual. Like consulting, it is outcome oriented, dealing in visions and actions.

The major difference between masterful training, counseling, therapy, consulting or mentoring and masterful coaching can be described quite simply. The coach does not have answers. The coach does not provide expertise. A coach operates from the presupposition that the client has all the resources, including the ability to discover and utilize resources.

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The results of the ICF Global Coaching Study are out. In case you haven't seen them, below are the survey highlights. The ICF will also be releasing more information about this survey throughout the year.

The approximate annual worldwide revenue produced by coaching is $1.5 billion (USD).
Coaches earn an average of $50,510 (USD) per year.
69% percent of coaches are female.
The average coach is 46-55 years old, has coached for 5-10 years, and 53 percent of coaches have acquired an advanced level of education (i.e., Master's Degree or Ph.D).
The majority of coaches maintain 11 active clients at any given time.
Coaching clients tend to be 56 percent female/44 percent male, and between 38 and 45 years of age.

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How Does Coaching Work?

Most coaching begins with an initial intake appointment of two to three hours in which the coach and client design an alliance. Momentum and focus are maintained with weekly half-hour appointments. The client determines the agenda for the weekly session.

Most coaching is conducted over the telephone, so it is well suited to professionals' busy lives. Some coaches also use e-mail or FAX, and some work in person. Often the coach doesn't live in the same community or even the same part of the country as the client. To many, this is seen as an advantage. It puts the coach well outside the system within which the client lives and works, and provides a sense of distance, objectivity and perspective.

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What exactly does the coach provide?

The coach holds a safe space within which the client can explore. That space allows the client a "time out" to evaluate how well things are going, to establish the evidence procedures for success, and to strategize future action steps. The coach does not judge results. There is no failure, only feedback. The coach does expect the client to take responsibility and to develop the flexibility to overcome barriers.

Coaches also provide structure. As coaches hear clients express a desire for action, they make requests. Examples of requests are: "Will you make two calls about that this week?" "Will you spend ten minutes a day on this?" Requests are negotiable. The client might counter, "No, I won't do it every morning, but I'll do it three times this week." The alliance evolves. Once requests are accepted, coaches hold clients accountable for taking those actions.

As individuals, most of us prefer self-generated action steps, yet we often fail to take them because no outside force holds us to them. We rarely have deadlines for the things we want to do for ourselves, so they go to the bottom of the "to do" list. In coaching, the client chooses the steps they want to be held accountable for. The coach provides an external expectation that those steps will be taken. By holding a client accountable, the coach sets up an expectation. The coaching call then provides a deadline for the client to achieve their goals.

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How long does a coaching relationship last?

Most coaches require an initial commitment of three to six months from clients; individuals often remain in a coaching relationship for a year or more. One objective of coaching is to help the client establish habits of personal inquiry and accountability that make the coach unnecessary. Then they complete their work with a coach or cut back to monthly or quarterly focus sessions.

Often after an initial month or two, clients learn to make powerful use of the relationship and have changed their expectations about what coaching is. They may begin with the assumption that the coach will have the answers, will get the client on "the program" that will lead to personal success. After several weeks, understanding shifts and clients begin taking responsibility for the changes they create in their lives. Some individuals find as they get involved with a coach that they do not want to take that responsibility. This may not be the right time for them to work with a coach.

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How do NLP and Coaching fit together?

NLP presuppositions, skills, and models serve the coach in many ways. Several of the presuppositions of NLP are particularly useful in establishing the coaching frame. In reading this article, I'm sure you have noticed many of them such as:

Everyone has the resources he or she needs.
The worth of an individual is constant, while the behavior can change.
The map is not the territory. We respond to our personal maps of reality, not to any "objective" reality.
It is better to have choices than not to have choices.
Behavioral flexibility is more useful than having limited behavioral choices.
Every behavior has a positive intent.
There are no mistakes, only feedback.

These NLP presuppositions balance responsibility with nonjudgmental, and allow the coaching client to evaluate without being self-deprecating. By living these presuppositions, experienced NLP practitioners naturally embody the attitudes of great coaches both assume that the client is capable. Both have experience exploring underlying mental frameworks that either support or inhibit growth. They are less likely to get distracted by "the story," the surface structure. They assist clients in finding the deep structure of their experience, where profound change takes place.

NLP skills assist the coach in every session. Since much of coaching takes place on the phone, an NLP coach uses sensory acuity to listen to the client's voice tone and tempo. In addition, the coach knows how to listen at different levels, to the client's message and to the meta-message. The NLP coach listens for familiar language patterns that indicate a client's self-imposed limits, and he/she knows how to generate powerful questions in response to those patterns. The NLP coach can introduce the idea of multiple perspectives through skillful questioning. "What might your future self suggest?" "Is this the critic? What does the dreamer have to say?"

An understanding of NLP models enriches the abilities of the coach to coach the client with outcome specification questions. Eliciting a well-formed outcome helps clients define their vague dreams and set up evidence procedures. In many cases, just specifying an outcome generates movement toward it.

NLP Coaches also lead clients through a belief audit. The belief audit provides questions that help the client examine blocks or challenges. These questions often facilitate major breakthroughs. Exploring underlying beliefs is an important aspect of coaching. Beliefs change naturally and organically as people align with their goals and values.

These and other NLP models provide coaches with Cadillac versions of the coach's basic tool, which is the powerful question. NLP models that generate powerful questions include: timelines, reframing, perceptual positions, the meta-model, and logical levels. Frequently, the most powerful questions in a coaching session come spontaneously from the coach's intuition.

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What are the roots of Coaching, how did the field get started?

The roots of professional coaching can be traced back to the Inner Game books of the mid-1970's. In these books, W. Timothy Gallwey suggested a paradigm shift in sports coaching. He had noticed that clients self-corrected when he coached with open questions, instead of catching errors and offering suggestions. In fact, when a client listened to a suggestion and tried, performance diminished. When a client relaxed and held a picture and feeling of the end result, and allowed the body to create that result, the client improved. The system had corrected, without knowing it had ever been in error, unselfconsciously.

The message in The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis, and Inner Skiing is the same, "Neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the client, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation. In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance." (The Inner Game of Tennis, Introduction)

As the Inner Game books topped best-seller lists and Gallwey's reputation grew, he found himself speaking more often to business leaders in the U.S. and Europe than to sports audiences. As the principles of the Inner Game were applied to professional development, the value of individual coaching became apparent. Sports coaches took the Inner Game skills into the business environment. Coaching for Performance, by John Whitmore, was one of the first books devoted to the practice of professional coaching.

Whitmore describes the essence of coaching in this way, "Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."

Whitmore uses the metaphor of an acorn "...which contains within it all the potential to be a magnificent oak tree. We need nourishment, encouragement and the light to reach towards, but the oaktreeness is already within."

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Here is a brief and informative article about Life Coaching. While it is from the UK, it is the same for America. link

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Our Pledge To You...
Total Satisfaction or Your Money Back

The NLP and Coaching Institute of California offers 100% satisfaction, no-questions-asked guarantee for all of its training.

Here is how it works: come and attend the first two days of the Coach Certification Program. If, at the end of the first two days, you decide that the training isn't for you (for any reason), just let one of us know by the end of Day 2, and we'll refund 100% of your registration fee. No questions asked...and no hard feelings.

You will be completely delighted with your Coach Certification Training - we promise!

Kris Hallbom, Co-Director, NLP and Coaching Institute of California