Life Coaching and Counselling Making Connections.

Abstract

Our aim was to ascertain whether there were any unique aspects of life coaching which could inform counselling and how our counselling skills might inform any extension of our practice into coaching. We interviewed eight Christchurch life coach practitioners and researched available literature and material on the Internet. We discovered life coaching has close affinities with the forward-looking, goal-centred emphases of brief solution-focused counselling, with added emphasis on explicit psychoeducation and the client's motivation and practice of skills to bring about change. We note these emphases are already a strong aspect of many counsellors taking clients through specialist programmes. We highlight coaching's emphasis on giving advice and challenges, and how coaching practitioners counteract risks for highly distressed clients by emphasising negotiated boundaries of responsibility, transparency of process and ascertaining limits and appropriateness of approaches. We conclude that counselling and life coaching have much in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Zealand Journal of Counselling is the property of New Zealand Association of Counsellors and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)