Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Life Coaching Communities Of Practice Why It's Important

There are so many life coaching courses to choose from, they vary not just in price but the technology the delivery method, the engagement of the instructors they can start for as little as $500 up to $4,000 or more. I personally payed $4,000 for the life coaching course I enrolled in. While the price may be high at first the value provided is indeed priceless. One makes it back 10 times fold with the proper training. It was Bengamin Franklin that once said if you think education is expensive try ignorance.

One of the critical components of a life coaching course is its communities of practice. All skilled service professions are required to do a certain amount of practice hours, and a certain amount of supervised hours that are evaluated to insure competency of the core studies. They also provide a way to sample if you may the generalized version of the niche we are thinking about developing after graduation. Perhaps you are thinking of working in the business coaching niche, after the fact of experimenting and working in the community of practice you decided that it may not be your best fit. You then experiment with different communities until you find one that resonates best with you. This saves the student an incredible amount of stress and time because they will have a more clear idea of the niche they will be perusing. Is a well defined niche important? NO, it is absolutely critical to your business successes. The promising life coach must be full aware of their niche if they are to succeed in the business of coaching. It will become not just their area of expertise but it will be their marketing camping, their marketing strategy, and their own personal branding.

Communities of practice also provide a safe space to practice and develop new strategies that the student is learning with out the stress of having to get it right. It is a space where the participants are all linked together under the global belief that it is all part of the learning experience and that it is ok to make mistakes. It is accepted that mistakes is a space for every one to grow and learn more about the area they are specializing. When looking into a life coach training program insure that this critical component of the process is included. At the end it will make a significant impact as a coach upon graduation and heading out to the world of business.

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