Becoming a Professional Life Coach by Patrick Williams

By Patrick Williams and Diane Menendez
Reviewed by Tony Stoltzfus

Becoming a Professional Life Coach, from the leaders of the Institute for Life Coach Training, is an excellent overview of the life coaching process and the core tools used in it. Williams is a therapist and a PhD who has trained a lot of therapists to coach, and one of the great strengths of the book is that it connects common coaching practices with tools and research from the psychological arena. For instance, the introduction is a lengthy look at the roots of coaching in psychology and psychotherapy, specifically listing what coaching draws from different schools of thought.

What You’ll Learn
The book begins with a solid section on the coaching fundamentals (listening and asking skills), then goes on to present some more advanced skills like endorsing and reframing. Several developmental models for stages in life or the change process are presented that I found quite helpful. Knowing these models helps a coach tune in more quickly to what is going on inside the client. For example, the cycle of renewal (pg. 93.) is a great tool to help clients decide if it is time to really go for it, to step back and retool, or to think about changing roles and activities. Another interesting tool in this section is a continuum of escalating ways to challenge a client’s thinking (pg. 122).

The second half of the book introduces tools and methods for discovering and living out your life purpose. Along with an excellent discussion of what life purpose is (and the difference between vision, mission and purpose) are some great exercises to help clients tune into their own purpose. There is a section on life purpose statements, on helping people discovering destiny clues in past events, and a section on life design that helps you home in on the “gap” between what you want and where you are. The values chapter is particularly useful, with exercises approaching values discovery in several ways (different personality types do best with different approaches.) A chapter deals with blocks, energy drains and internal obstacles, with more exercises you can hand to a client.

I found the section starting with chapter 12 on boundaries, wealth and mind-set less helpful. It brings folds together ideas from different streams of psychology, neurological research, self-help concepts (like the law of attraction), NLP, etc. Christianity has a very particular set of beliefs, values, tools and vocabulary for dealing with internal issues and attitudes. While there are parallels here with biblical principles, some readers may object to the references to karma, energy, possibility thinking, etc, as well as to the underlying idea (common in self-help literature) that your mindset brings into being your reality.

Summary
This book is the best introduction to the specific arena of life purpose coaching that I’ve seen. It’s best strengths are the foundation in psychology and the tools and research it brings into coaching from that world. It also includes a plethora of exercises to use with your clients. The tone is on the academic side (although it is quite readable), and it needs more coaching dialogs and real life examples to bring it to life. This omission makes the book more suitable to those who already have a background in coaching. Don’t make this the first coaching book you buy, but it is a great choice for the second or third one.

Reviewed by:
Tony Stoltzfus, Professional Coach & Coach Trainer www.CoachingPastors.com/stoltzfus.htm