Life coaches provide motivational guidance to their clients and assist them in overcoming personal and professional troubles. Their clients include people from all walks of life, like the students, parents, trauma survivors, business executives, etc.
Generally, the aspiring life coaches in Canada get formal training to make their mark in the profession. Some of them also opt for certifications to boost the credibility and reliability of their skillsets and services. The salary of a life coach depends upon the years of experience and work location. Average life coach salary in Canada is around $40,000.
Glance through the detailed information regarding the profession of a life coach, training, and skills required:
Role of a Life Coach
A life coach is like a support system for individuals who are going through rough patches of their lives. These people are either unable to cope with sudden changes in life or facing career difficulties or personal problems. In these scenarios, the life coach assists them in figuring out their priorities, clarifying goals, working through the obstacles, and thus, giving a direction for the fulfillment of their aspirations.
The challenges of life often weigh down a person’s spirit and lead to indecisiveness as to how does he/she moves forward. So, people seek help from a life coach who will aid them in choosing the right way ahead. Life coaches may work with a single person or a group of people.
The job of a life coach is unlike that of a therapist or counselor. A therapist usually advises the client by examining his past and reaching the root cause to resolve his concerns. However, a life coach just focuses on the current situation and its consequences. A life coach’s work revolves around the notion that people can decide upon the best solution for their problems with adequate support and proper guidance.
A life coach’s precise role varies according to the kind of client and his/her needs. While one client requires the life coach to act as an emotional anchor during his personal transformation, the other may require the life coach’s guidance for rearranging his organization’s setup. In every case, the function of a life coach is to direct the client towards an optimal solution.
Life coaches do not only advise their clients but suggest practical strategies to resolve the issues. Such as, a client of management field may need help to enhance communication with his team. Similarly, a homemaker may want to know how can she identify her skills and talents so as to rejoin the workforce.
To start with, a life coach holds the first meeting with a client to understand his desired objectives. Then, a customized strategy plan is prepared by the life coach to mentor the client. For example, a life coach can help a fresh college graduate in making a career plan which involves creating a resume, applying for suitable jobs, and building a professional profile on job websites like LinkedIn. In the same way, these coaches can show clients how to prepare for interviews or hone presentation skills.
Life coaches formulate their techniques in many different ways. While some clients have face-to-face sessions with the life coach, others talk over the phone or via online teleconferencing tools such as Hangouts, Skype, etc. Likewise, some people require very few or short sessions while others need sessions for several months and years.
At one time, sessions usually last from 30-90 minutes. In between these sessions, the clients correspond with the life coach over email or phone. The workloads of life coaches differ as per the format of their work. Some life coaches are employed in institutions or companies while others work in an independent manner. For instance, an organization may hire a life coach for assisting its staff in balancing personal and professional lives or tackling job stress. Similarly, higher education institutions can avail the services of a life coach in guiding students about how to make their action plan for career goals.
The institute-related life coaches generally meet a dozen clients per week. Further, life coaches can get clients through word of mouth of other clients or referrals of counselors.
Categories of Life Coaches
Most of the life coaches have specializations in a certain sphere of career or personal coaching. Some of the common categories of life coaches are:
- Life Balance Coach
Life balance coaches attend to clients who need help with finding time for their family amidst busy work schedules.
- Relationship Coach
Relationship coaches help individuals who are searching for love, having constant quarrels with their partner, or going through the pain of a recent divorce.
- Health Coach
Health coaches lend support to people who have weight issues due to some terminal or chronic health problems.
- Personal Finance Coach
Personal finance coaches counsel people on how to get through financial troubles like bankruptcy, credit card debt, etc. They also help people in making budget plans for their kid’s education, buying a home, etc.
- Small Business Coach
Small business coaches guide people who wish to start a new trade or the business owners who are facing economic losses or market transitions.
- Executive Coach
Executive coaches mainly deal with corporate executives who seek advice in making plans for promotions, career change, business decisions, or looking for other opportunities in their job sector.
Training in Life Coaching
Several international and Canadian life coaching training companies extend online as well as onsite courses in the field. For example, CCF (Certified Coaches Federation), an international coaching organization, provides a certified live course for life coaching practitioners in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Kingston, Calgary, Sudbury, and Montreal. The cost of the program ranges between 900 – 2000 dollars. It is a two-day course that trains people in life coaching and devising business strategies.
Further, CCF also delivers a 10-week online course called Business Development Certified Master Coach program. This course is designed for experienced life coaching professionals and dwells on marketing, public speaking, and business practices.
In Vancouver, Rhodes Wellness College offers a comprehensive course for beginner life coaches. This two-semester program costs CA$4,750 and spans 32 weeks. In this, the trainees learn how to obtain referrals, prepare reports, deal with different categories of clients including the trauma survivors. The course also covers topics like coaching methods, group coaching techniques, communication skills, interpersonal skills, goal achievement plans, and life skills.
Life Coach Certifications in Canada
Generally, you don’t need a license to work as a life coach in Canada. But the majority of the life coaches prefer to get a certification from some renowned training institute. In order to receive a certification, you are required to complete the training provided by the respective organization. Most of the aforementioned courses include relevant certifications.
For instance, CCF extends several certifications like that of a Coach Practitioner, Master Coach Practitioner, In-house Coach, Group Coach, and Advanced Coach Practitioner. You get the certification after completing the corresponding training course.
Likewise, Rhodes Wellness College, an internationally-recognized coach training institute, provides a program for ICA (International Coaching Association) certification. This program is formulated for both the experienced and new life coaches.
Getting a certification does add credibility to your work, which in turn will get you, clients, independently, as well as, assist you in acquiring a job.
Skills Required for a Life Coach
While training equips the life coaches with requisite knowledge, yet they should also possess a specific set of traits to succeed in the profession. A good life coach has the following personal skills:
- Listening Skills
- Calm and Patient Demeanor
- Interpersonal Skills
- Decisiveness
- Trustworthiness
- Empathy
- Organizational Skills
- Marketing and Business Skills
A life coach needs to be patient as they often come across clients who are feeling insecure, scared, or overwhelmed. At the same time, they must have effective interpersonal skills to help different types of clients.
Also, a life coach must show genuine concern and empathy while listening to the clients’ troubles. This way, the client perceives the life coach to be trustworthy and converses more easily. Further, life coaches should be good at decision-making as they need to create action plans that set a roadmap for the client to overcome setbacks.
A life coach’s ability to comprehend complex human emotions and maintain a calm demeanor is critical to solving clients’ issues.
Since life coaches work with several clients, they require expertise in prioritization and organization. If a life coach is working independently, he/she needs to be well-versed with marketing and business strategies to get more clients.
Salary Prospects of a Life Coach
Government agencies like Statistics Canada do not monitor salary data related to life coaches. And other sources reveal slightly inconsistent information.
Life coach salary in Canada
Some career websites extract salary details based on the data input by the users. Among these, Indeed and Neuvoo are two such sites that estimate the average annual salary of Canadian life coaches at CA$40,000 in 2021.
It is observed that the independent life coaches earn on an hourly basis, and the full-time corporate coaches have a fixed monthly salary. In 2014, Sherpa Coaching, in alliance with the Howard University, Change Partners Coaching, and The University of Georgia, conducted a Global Executive Survey to collect the salary information of life coaches. They found out that the executive coaches worked at a mean hourly rate of CA$440. On the same lines, the general coaches earned CA$223 and the business coaches received an income of CA$318 on an hourly basis. It was observed that the coaches employed with organizations have the highest salaries, and equivalent to the income of coaches with an experience of 6-10 years.
Even though the hourly rates stayed more or less the same over the previous years, the number of clients reduced. It was seen that the Canadian coaches had the least salary in North America.
Currently, the hourly wages of life coaches lie between CA$15-20, and the ones earning fixed salaries earn somewhere between CA$51,000-69,000 annually.
Career Scope of Life Coaching
In 2015, a report from Toronto Sun stated that there were almost 8000 life coaches working in Canada in the year 2014. The report gathered this data from a research study of IBISWorld. However, recent times have witnessed a rise of 2.7% in career prospects of life coaching.
Further, there is no known information collated by Statistics Canada on the profession.