You’ve probably heard the term “Holistic Coaching” many times, but what does that even mean?
It’s actually pretty simple!
It’s a style of coaching that covers every aspect of a person’s life as a whole – their body, mind, and spirit.
Holistic coaching helps raise your awareness into understanding the human experience with the world. Its methodology implies creating an empathic connection with your clients, and giving them the guidance they need towards a bright and purpose-driven life.
Here are 3 powerful ways you can use this approach in your coaching sessions.
Holistic Coaching For Focus
Coaching for Focus is currently one of the most important skills you can have as a mentor and coach. In today’s world, we are constantly distracted by messages or calls on our smartphones, and the beeps have us living in a continuous alert mode.
If you want to embrace a sense of absolute focus and channel it to your clients, you must first live it. Try to cultivate a calm and organized mind that will communicate safety and trust to your clients. There are two basic ways to achieve this: mindfulness, and a healthy environment.
Being mindful and ‘living in the now’ helps you to reduce your distractions and pay attention to what’s important. And a healthy environment is necessary for you to get there.
Holistic Coaching For Growth
The most powerful coaches have one transformational purpose for their sessions, that is to encourage growth in their clients.
This growth result combines the transformation of their clients on several levels: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. It is achieved when they manage to tackle the root of their problems and see themselves differently.
You can only be the best at coaching for growth if you as an individual, put the same effort into growing as a coach and human.
Start with simple tasks like identifying discomforting situations or difficult emotions.
Once you recognize these challenges, you will reach the “growth edge,” and if you are serious about becoming a better coach, you will ask yourself, why am I feeling this way? You will try to get to the root of your emotional states. This “growth edge” is the door to a huge opportunity. You can either enter it despite the path being difficult, or you could just walk past it without meaning to improve your coaching abilities.
Doing this repeatedly with yourself will help you excel when you do it with your clients.
Holistic Coaching For Change
The idea of using coaching for change is based on the Transtheoretical Model, which looks to answer the most crucial question: “is your client ready to change?”
You have to understand the steps and stages of change to identify where your client is located. And then see how you can help improve their performance towards transformational results.
Stage 1: Pre-Contemplation
You can find your clients in this stage when they haven’t acknowledged there’s a problem and that they need to make a change. In this case, they are not ready to listen to you as a coach.
Stage 2: Contemplation
Once they accept there’s a need for change, they have reached the contemplation stage. Although they acknowledge and want to modify their life, they still lack the determination to act, which is where you, as a coach, come in to help them navigate this uncertainty.
Stage 3: Preparation
As you can imagine, right after having doubts about taking action, comes the stage where your clients are ready to take action. They have done their homework and research, determined what to change and how, but need an extra push on motivation towards getting it implemented.
Stage 4: Action
When your clients start taking action, they are making changes in life. As a coach, you must only stay as support, so they don’t go back to square one.
Stage 5: Maintenance
When the change is almost automatic, you must help your clients to make sure that they continue this work long-term, and excel with the results they experience.
To be best at transformational and extraordinary coaching, the one thing you must be able to understand is the psychological aspect behind it. Really understanding your clients, and the ‘why’ behind their behaviours, is key.
Be their support. Learn how to ask the right questions. Stay absolutely focused. Listen to your clients. Lean into their needs, their requirements. And coach, coach, coach!
