How to choose a coach suitable to your needs

The awful truth in today’s world is that frustration and dissatisfaction are growing and people’s self-confidence is hitting rock bottom. It’s a never-ending struggle to manage your life, your job and the urge to push your boss over the fence. Sometimes even your beloved family steps on your toes and makes your head explode. Harsh, and that’s what the truth often is. Lucky for us all, there are professionals who can help us overcome those problems and they are called -coaches. How cool is that? The only tiny problem is that there are so many of them. Some of them promise you miracles, some really have the ability to help you, some of them just want to get a hold of your money, so how can you know form the very beginning what their motives are? Are they really professionals passionate about their job and do they truly have the knowledge to free you from that pressure that’s messing up your life? Here are the 3 criteria when searching for a good coach - choose the right person to do the right job for you.

1. Value for money

It may be a hard decision for most people to put a larger sum of money aside, having to provide for the family and to pay for all the perks of modern life, but be wise if you usually choose according to price. Surely we all have at least one cheap knickknack that lasts for years and that 2$ T-shirt that’s still as good as new. However, people don’t expect too much when something is too cheap. When you use high quality materials to build a house, you wouldn't have to think about spending more money on repairing possible damages later and it will stand for many years. The same goes for coaching. It is something that can bring so much value to one’s life and ameliorate it. So, if you invest some money, it will pay off. So our advice: make sure you measure value for money when it comes to choosing your coach. Of course, the price must not be your only parameter.

2. Compatibility and trust

A coach is a person who constantly works on himself, a person who cares, a person who has energy for great things. However, these basics are not enough, as it can happen that you simply don’t mesh with someone. That leads to a key point in coaching – you must find someone who suits you best. Feeling unpleasant and not relaxed when you need to show your vulnerability and be completely honest with yourself and the coach is not a good thing. In order for you to leave your comfort zone and work on improvement, you need a coach you can rely on. Trust is mandatory in this type of relationship. Your coach is somebody who is there to understand who you are now, show you who you can be, and uncover your hidden potential. A coach helps you discover and improve your strengths, and builds on your successes. How can someone do all that work, if you don’t let them? That is why you need to click with your potential coach and be comfortable enough not to hide any ‘embarrassing’ problems.

3. Tools and mindset

When you are selecting a coach, make sure you check his/her way of working in terms of goals, promises and outcomes. What’s also important is the focus of a coach. Can your coach understand your uniqueness while recognizing your patterns? Or is your coach trying to fit you into a system they use to categorize and label you? Is your coach supporting you to act, or is he/she playing a mentor role and telling you what to do? Does he or she understand that mindset is always more important than tools? Just a short example: if there are so many ways to work out and we all know how important it is to move, then why do so many people fail to do it? So beware of coaches who are too keen on selling their way of “working out”, when the point is actually to help you do what it takes to achieve desirable results.

To cut a long story short, when you find a person whose philosophy matches yours, a person you can trust and share anything with and when you are so convinced in their abilities you consider their price a bargain, you can stop your search. Because then you are at the start of impressive growth and improvement. And good luck in growing and developing, both personally and professionally. It’s not an easy task, but you will surely notice the difference.

This article first appeared here.

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