What is Life Coaching? How can it benefit your employees?

Occupational Health (OH) clinicians support employees to cope with and recover from physical and mental ill health which may impact upon their ability to work. The pace of modern life can often lead to individuals being faced with difficult choices that may predispose them to stress, anxiety, and fatigue.  Some employees can benefit from approaches to dealing with these life events/situations that is not medicalised but helps the individual find their own solace and solutions.

To complement our traditional occupational health services, Insight Workplace Health can offer Life Coaching, from trained and experienced staff, to help empower employees in urgent, challenging, or important life situations.

For example, Life Coaching may help an employee decide what to do about an impending career or relationship change. Others may use it to create a clear plan for establishing a work-life balance more suited to their needs, more successful relationships with family members, friends or a life partner, or a career transition. Life Coaching helps people to gain clarity on their goals and create a pathway (often of small achievable steps or goals) to achieve an authentic life they can learn to love.

Life coaching is about supporting clients to make their path to a future that excites and motivates them. It is action-oriented and focuses on gentle steps, easing clients forward in their lives. Coaches help people to envision their ideal futures and figure out strategies for creating it. Life coaches act as accountability partners, unbiased listeners who can help clients navigate life’s tricky situations.

• Life Coaching is a positive and encouraging space for clients to create goals for the future they want.

• Life Coaching helps employees identify how they want to feel and supports their journey to achieving those feelings.

• Life Coaches listen and ask questions to help clients get a better understanding of their deepest desires for their lives.

• Life Coaching helps clients to create actionable steps for achieving their chosen goals. 

• Life Coaches hold clients accountable to the goals they set out to achieve.

What Life Coaching is Not

Life Coaches are not therapists. Coaching does not focus on the past; rather, life coaching focuses on the present and creating the future that a client hopes to achieve. A life coach does NOT tell someone how to live their life.  This is so important we follow our own path but sometimes it is helpful to talk through the journey this may take, what may help, often small steps are a good start.

Life coaches are non-judgmental. The role is not to determine if a client’s choices are right or wrong, good, or bad. A life coach accepts who the client is and helps them achieve their goals and improve their lives, in whatever way the client wants.

Typically, sessions will run over about 6 weeks and during that time the client will identify their own goals, seek inspiration and opportunities to enhance practices which will improve their levels of motivation, they will maintain a weekly diary, helping to become attuned to their feeling’s day to day.  Action Planning is an important aspect of this process, and the Life Coach will support the individual to update this over the course of several sessions.

If you would like to find out more about how Life Coaching may help your employees and your business please contact us here or call us on 01792 321010.