What Is a Life Coach and What Does a Life Coach Do
A life coach is a trained professional who helps a person decide what they want to change in their life and then follow through on it. In practice, a life coach runs structured conversations, asks questions that sharpen the client's thinking, turns goals into steps, and holds the client accountable between sessions. The client chooses the goals, and the client does the work.
What a life coach does not do matters just as much. A coach does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions, does not run the client's business for them, and does not hand over answers drawn from their own career. Those are the jobs of a therapist, a consultant and a mentor, and the differences are covered further down.
What a life coach is, in plain terms
Coaching starts from a simple assumption. The client is capable, already knows a great deal about their own situation, and is stuck less for lack of information than for lack of clarity, structure or momentum. The coach supplies those three things.
That is why the core skill is questioning rather than advising. A good question makes the client say out loud something they had only half thought, such as what they would do if the promotion never came, or which of two options they keep avoiding.
Once the real goal is on the table, the coach helps break it into steps the client can take this week. The coach then keeps those steps visible. Accountability sounds like a small thing, but for many clients it is the reason they hire a coach rather than reading another book on the subject.
Life coaching covers a wide range of goals. These are among the most common reasons people hire a life coach:
- A career decision, such as whether to change fields, return to work or go for a promotion
- Confidence and assertiveness at work or at home
- Time, priorities and work-life balance
- A personal goal that keeps slipping, from fitness to finishing a degree
- A major transition, such as moving city, an empty nest or retirement
Some coaches take all of these, and many narrow to one. A coach who works only on careers usually calls themselves a career coach, which our guide to what a career coach is explains.
What happens in a typical coaching session
A first meeting is usually a short consultation, free or low-cost, where coach and client check the fit. Paid work follows as a program, often six to twelve sessions of 45 to 60 minutes, held by video or in person every week or two.
Most sessions follow the same arc, whatever the topic. The example below is an illustration of one hour with a fictional client, Megan, who wants to decide whether to leave a stable job for a role at a smaller firm.
- 1
Check in on last time
Megan reports on the two conversations she agreed to have with people at the smaller firm.
Hands on what changed since the last session - 2
Agree the focus for today
She chooses the question of risk, because the salary is lower for the first year.
Hands on one question for the hour - 3
Explore with questions
The coach asks what "too risky" would mean in numbers and what she would regret in five years.
Hands on a clearer picture in her own words - 4
Decide the next actions
Megan sets two actions, to work out her minimum monthly budget and ask about a review at six months.
Hands on commitments with dates - 5
Close and record
The coach confirms the actions and notes them so the next session can start with them.
Notice who does the deciding. The coach never tells Megan to take the job or stay put. The value lies in the structure, the quality of the questions and the fact that someone will ask next week whether she did what she said she would.
A program usually moves through three phases. The early sessions clarify what the client wants and why it has not happened yet. The middle sessions do the work, one action at a time. The final sessions review what changed and plan how the client will keep going without the coach, which is the point of the whole arrangement.
Between sessions, many coaches send a short summary and check in by message. Some use simple tools, such as a wheel of life, which scores satisfaction across areas of life so a client can see where their attention is going.
Who tends to hire a life coach
Clients are usually adults in the middle of their working lives who are doing reasonably well but want something to change. Across the students we work with at the Life and Career Institute, the clients they describe in their first practice sessions are most often in their late thirties or early forties, a pattern that has held over the past three years.
That matches what the field reports more widely. The International Coaching Federation's research has found the typical coaching client to be between 35 and 44, and most coaching clients to be women.
What life coaching is not
Coaching borrows techniques from several older professions, which is why people confuse it with them. The distinctions are not academic. They decide what a coach may promise, who a client should see, and when a coach must refer someone on.
Here is how coaching sits next to the three roles it is most often mixed up with:
| Role | Main focus | Who supplies the answers |
|---|---|---|
| Life coach | Goals, decisions and follow-through | The client, drawn out by questions |
| Therapist | Diagnosing and treating mental health conditions | Shared, within a clinical method |
| Consultant | Solving a specific business problem | The consultant, as expert advice |
| Mentor | Passing on experience in a field | The mentor, from their own career |
The therapy line is the one that carries legal weight. The National Institute of Mental Health describes psychotherapy as treatment for troubling emotions, thoughts and behaviours, delivered by licensed professionals such as psychologists, counselors and social workers. Coaches hold no such license and must not provide that treatment.
In practice, a coach who hears signs of depression, an eating disorder, trauma or thoughts of self-harm pauses the coaching and refers the client to a licensed professional. Coaching may resume later alongside therapy, with the client's agreement. The American Psychological Association publishes guidance on what therapy involves, which is useful for explaining the difference to a client.
Consulting and mentoring
The other two lines are softer, and many coaches cross them on purpose for a few minutes at a time. A career coach might share how hiring panels work, which is mentoring, or suggest a budgeting method, which is close to consulting.
The test is whether the coach says so and then hands the decision back. Good coaches ask permission before offering an opinion, label it as one, and return to questions. A coach who spends most of every session giving advice is consulting, whatever the invoice says.
How to tell a well-trained life coach from the rest
No state licenses life coaches, so the title alone tells a client nothing about training. That makes the coach's own evidence important, both for clients choosing a coach and for anyone weighing up becoming one.
A well-trained coach can usually show four things. They have finished a structured course with an assessment, and can name the credential it awarded. They use a written agreement that explains confidentiality and the limits of coaching. They can describe how they run a session. They have a referral plan for clients who need therapy.
Our guide to what a certified life coach is explains the main credentials and what each one tells a client. If reading this has you thinking about doing the work yourself, how to become a life coach sets out the route step by step.
How the Life Coach Certification teaches this work
The Life Coach Certification teaches the session described above as a repeatable method. Introduction to Life Coaching sets out the ethics and the coaching-versus-therapy line, including when and how to refer a client.
Coaching Methodologies and Techniques covers goal setting, accountability design and the session record that carries the work from one meeting to the next. Building Rapport and Effective Communication Skills is where the questioning and listening are practised, through written assignments that ask you to plan and reflect on real conversations.
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The Life Coach Certification takes you from where you are now to a credential you can show a client, with an online exam and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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