Face-To-Face versus Telephone Life Coaching

I know that a great deal of life coaching is done over the phone and I have no issue with that at all. After all, if you live 100 miles from the nearest city in a town populated by 20 people, 4 dogs, 2 cats, a pair of thieving raccoons and   a bad tempered goat called Nathan you will be lucky if you have access to 7-11 never mind a life coach. So it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that you forgo the chance to improve the quality of your life just because I think face-to-face coaching is better.

 

I am guessing, but I reckon that approximately 90% of Life Coaching is done via telephone in the UK. In fact, it seems that is it promoted that way i.e. being the norm rather than the exception. There are huge benefits to telephone coaching for the life coach in terms of no need to buy additional furniture or hire office space and best of all you can coach in your dressing gown! Not that I would do that of course I am way to professional, but I do knew a coach once that did do that some while ago.

 

So like most newbie coaches when I first set up in the UK I did all my coaching via the telephone. However, on the whole I felt frustrated with it, it just didn’t feel right for me as an individual. I did ok in terms of client results but never as well as I would have liked and I didn’t feel equipped to deal with certain issues when they presented themselves. Then I did my first lot of NLP training and realized that this stuff was way more useful when I could actually see people! The visual element means I can look out for body language, which can be absolutely critical in determining whether a client is responding congruently to what I am saying and more importantly, whether they are likely to follow through with any changes.

 

So bit-by-bit I have withdrawn from telephone coaching and feel better for doing so. I feel more in control of things (in a good way I hasten to add) and I’m not second guessing people and wondering whether they meant what they said. It’s fairly easy to say something and sound like you mean it, but it’s way more difficult to say something, sound like you mean and get your body to look like it means it too, especially if you are in front of somebody that knows what they are looking for.

 

As I said at the beginning this isn’t in any way shape or form an attack on telephone coaching, it’s more of an explanation of why when my website is rebuilt next month, it wont include a price to do life coaching on the phone.

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