Growth Coaching Certificate for Life & Leadership Coaches

Understand the role of coach, client, and the client's support network.

We introduce the metaphor of cruising a canal and setting goals which account for your direction, destination, and duration.

This sets the scene for life and leadership challenges and how you will use the GROW model and SMART goal definition in your own journey.

You will learn the story of Sir Earnest Shackleton and his epic journey of disaster and success in the South Pole.

Learn about the finite mindset (no-growth) and the infinite mindset - the growth mindset. You will learn how the growth mindset - the infinite mindset of Earnest Shackleton led his entire crew from certain disaster to complete survival (and infinite loyalty!).

Learn how the growth mindset is backed by neuroscience and ways you can nurture your growth mindset to shape your reality.

Understand the GROW framework for assessing goals and options, and how to define a clear and unambiguous actionable goal that aligns with your greater objectives.

Create a GROW template for your goal on this course.

Learn the importance of translating dreams, vision and ambitions into a personal roadmap for success. You will learn how we shape our goals to be appealing and motivating, breaking the grand vision into smaller steps.

Learn the importance of aligning each of the smaller goals with the large goal and particularly your values and overall ambitions.

Learn more about the SMART goal setting process.

Realise the importance of clear goals enabling you to be held accountable.

Learn more about the importance of aligning our goals with our values.

Expanding on ways to help define your goals.

The importance of clear plans enabling us to measure and manage, and have people hold you accountable.

Learn the importance of anticipating 'failure' as not being a bad thing but as a learning point.

Think about the importance of recognising your achievements to help you handle the setbacks.

Building habits that keep you productive and motivated.

Reflect on the cost of achievement.

Identify ways to develop your skills and build your capabilities to achieve your goals.

Build your plan that includes strategies, habits and accountability to achieve your carefully defined goals.

How onboarding is the beginning of Growth Coaching Engagement

Use the Excel Framework to guide your  client engagement and designing the relationship.

Let me introduce you to a few clients who are already working as first or second-line managers and may seek your help for a range of reasons, including management coaching. These individuals face various challenges, including personal issues that spill into their work life, and work-related stress that follows them home. Beyond these, they often seek alignment between their personal and professional ambitions, trying to strike a balance between the time and energy spent on both.

For example, a family-oriented manager might be concerned about whether they’re dedicating enough time to their family while still progressing in their career, and whether their work is supporting their family goals.

By exploring these personas, you'll get a clearer understanding of the kinds of people you’ll coach and the contexts they come from. This is particularly important if you're transitioning from life coaching to management coaching, as it helps you step into their shoes and grasp their unique challenges. As we go, I’ll introduce these clients further in other videos.

Welcome back! As promised, we’re going to take a quick tour of seven client personas I’ve put together for you. These are composite profiles, and the images you see are AI-generated, not actual clients. These personas represent a diverse group of individuals—men and women—at various managerial levels, from first-line managers and supervisors to more senior roles like second-line managers and executives.

The clients we’re discussing are people you might know: your colleagues, neighbors, or friends. They are high-potential emerging leaders, all seeking coaching. Some of them might come to you initially for life coaching to help achieve personal goals, and as their journey progresses, they may also want help with management coaching. Others may approach you directly for management and leadership coaching, which means your starting point will be more focused on their professional context, touching on personal matters only as relevant to their work.

It's important to keep boundaries clear when coaching in a corporate environment. If you're working with a manager within a company, your focus should remain on their professional development, not delving into personal issues unless they directly impact their work. This ensures your role stays professional, not veering into counseling.

Now, let's briefly introduce these seven clients:

Jasmine Ortiz is a team leader at a nonprofit focused on environmental sustainability. She faces challenges like coordinating a team of seasoned professionals and volunteers, dealing with limited resources, and balancing her passion for the cause with personal life ambitions, including starting a family.

Lucas Ching is a project manager at a tech startup. His role is high-pressure, coordinating cross-functional teams while managing burnout and shifting priorities from leadership. He’s balancing his demanding job with a newly married life and is contemplating a career move into product management.

Priya Patel is a first-line manager in retail, overseeing store supervisors. She deals with high employee turnover, constant recruitment, and balancing work demands with time for her family. Priya is also questioning whether retail is the right long-term fit for her career.

Alex Gutierrez is an operations manager in a manufacturing plant. He faces the challenge of modernizing an aging workforce while meeting production quotas. He enjoys hands-on work and DIY projects but struggles with balancing his job, family life, and thoughts of possibly transitioning to a more independent career path.

Hannah Williams supervises a healthcare team in a hospital. Her main struggles include managing a stressed-out team due to staffing shortages, handling bureaucratic hurdles, and balancing her work with raising a teenage child as a single parent.

David Thompson is a second-line manager at a large corporation, responsible for multiple teams and dealing with conflicting priorities across departments. He’s under pressure due to corporate restructuring and feels the stress of funding his children’s college education while planning for his own retirement.

Sofia Martinez is a divisional general manager in a manufacturing company. She’s under constant pressure to drive profitability while integrating sustainability initiatives. Reporting directly to the CEO, Sofia balances intense career demands with family life, often questioning if it’s time to shift to a less stressful role.

Each of these clients presents unique yet overlapping challenges, seeking both life coaching and professional management or leadership guidance. This overview gives you a sense of the varied contexts and pressures they face in their professional and personal lives.

Let's focus on the importance of aligning your goals with your broader objectives and ensuring they're realistic. Some people think of this in terms of SMART goals—where A stands for Achievable and R for Relevant. But in my approach, A means that your goals need to be aligned with your ambitions, values, hopes, and beliefs.

When coaching others at work, you don't need to dive too deeply into personal motivations, but it is essential to help them prioritize their time. Ask yourself: are your goals aligned with what you truly want to achieve? Are they balanced? Balance means maintaining a healthy distribution of time and energy across your responsibilities and personal life. This only happens when your goals are centered on your values.

For example, if you’re taking this course, it’s not just about finishing it in a short time but ensuring you’ve integrated the learning. It may take two or three hours, including preparation and debriefing, to really absorb the material and practice coaching others. This could involve working with family, friends, or someone you’re informally coaching. Realistically, you’ll learn best by actually doing coaching. So, be honest with yourself—do you have the time to fully commit to this process?

Likewise, when coaching others, it’s crucial to maintain a sense of balance in their time and energy. Goals must align with the bigger picture—be it personal or professional. Think of it like training for a marathon. Some might cram training into a short period and struggle, while others spread it out and achieve better results.

Ultimately, balance, alignment, and staying centered on your core values are key. These elements create the tapestry of your life, giving you purpose and motivation. As you engage with this course, reflect deeply on the material, practice what you learn, and apply it to your coaching. This approach not only benefits you but also helps those you're coaching, allowing for more effective relationships and team dynamics in a short amount of time.

Let me introduce you to Lucas Cheng, a client working in the fast-paced world of software development. He's part of a startup that aims to be the next big thing, like Uber or Airbnb, creating groundbreaking mobile apps that could transform industries. These types of companies often either sell for millions or billions or grow into major players, like Elon Musk's or Mark Zuckerberg's ventures.

Lucas leads multiple development teams under intense pressure, juggling management’s shifting demands—sometimes pushing for quick releases, and other times delaying to ensure a big splash with the press. On top of that, he's dealing with the high burnout rate common in the software industry. His team members are feeling the strain of long hours and time away from their families, and Lucas is no exception. He's struggling with the same balance, trying to carve out time for his personal life while keeping his startup on track.

As Lucas turns to you for management coaching, he needs someone who can fully understand not just the business challenges he faces, but the personal toll they take as well. You'll see that coaching in this space always involves both life and business aspects. To coach him effectively, you'll need to help him find balance and alignment in his decisions, ensuring that his career ambitions don’t overwhelm his personal life.

• You can download a template to follow the video and complete your SMART Goal. 

• Download a copy of Jeremy Farrell's 4 Steps of Powerful Coaching

The importance of enablement as a coaching skill.

A reflection on managing diversity and trusting people to do the right thing, to take reasonable risk.

Let me introduce you to Alex , an operations or production manager in a manufacturing environment. His work takes place in a very different setting—factories or foundries that could be mass-producing goods like toothpaste or running steel plants, either traditional or modernized. Alex faces unique challenges, including managing an aging workforce in a business that's also evolving with the times.

While there's still demand for their products, they’re expected to be produced more efficiently, often overseas, and using new technology. However, his workers are resistant to change, fearing that adopting new technology will threaten their job security. They prefer sticking to the old ways, believing it protects their positions. Meanwhile, Alex is being evaluated on new performance metrics that demand modernization and efficiency.

In addition to these professional pressures, Alex struggles with work-life balance. He enjoys his hobbies and spending time with his family but finds little time for either. He’s even considering whether his hands-on skills could lead to a side business—one that could eventually replace his full-time job and allow him to work independently.

At the same time, Alex is in his mid-40s, and though it's not quite considered midlife today, he knows he'll need to remain economically productive well into his 60s and beyond. When Alex comes to you for coaching, he may need help managing his reluctant staff or dealing with underperformers, some of whom he may have to discipline or put on performance plans. He’ll look to you for guidance in motivating his team to embrace change and new methods, even if you’re not an expert in performance management. By applying coaching models, like the GROW model, you can help him navigate these challenges and find ways to engage, enable, and encourage his team while dealing with the tough evaluations and union dynamics in his industry.

Ultimately, Alex is a client with both personal and professional pressures, and your coaching will need to address his life and management challenges within a more manual, blue-collar environment than you might see with other clients.

Here we explore an approach to difficult conversations or development conversations with a team member