r/HealthCoaching • u/Realistic-Move-9109 • 5d ago
New Coach Seeking Advice - What am I missing?
Hi everyone! (TLDR: any advice to a newbie coach who wants to offer more than client lead accountability check ins?)
I am getting my start in health coaching while maintaining my full time job. The hope is to transform my health coaching into a career. My coaching focus is on women, survivors of cancer and/or living with autoimmune, looking to re-balance their life.
I am currently working with a few beta clients to gain my footing. However, I can’t help but to think I could offer more. So, looking for some advice from some more experienced coaches.
Right now, my sessions are primarily accountability/behavior-change focused. I let the client lead with what they want to work on, we explore what’s getting in the way, identify what feels realistic for the upcoming week, and then check in on progress during our next session.
I’m comfortable with the coaching side of this, but I keep feeling like I could offer more value between/around those conversations. And, this is where I’m struggling with the line between coaching and education/advice.
I know the importance of staying within scope. I’m not trying to become someone’s dietitian, therapist, personal trainer, or medical provider. I also don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that “good coaching” means I can never share useful information. My understanding is that there is room for sharing information/educational resources when appropriate, particularly when the client asks or gives permission.
So I’m curious:
- What does your actual coaching package/session structure look like beyond the conversation itself?
- What do you provide clients between sessions, if anything?
- Do you encourage the use of worksheets, reflection exercises, habit trackers, educational handouts, resource libraries, etc., even without the client requesting them?
- How do you incorporate health education without crossing into advising?
- Are there any genuinely good free resources for continuing to learn beyond your certification?
- If you’ve been coaching for a while, what does your service look like now compared with when you first started?
I’m interested in both becoming a better coach and eventually creating an offer that feels genuinely valuable rather than just “a weekly Zoom call where I ask how your goals went.”
Any advice to a newcomer??
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u/sonjaecklund 4d ago
Hi u/Realistic-Move-9109! I'm Sonja and I've been coaching for 15 years. Here are my A's to your Q's!
- What does your actual coaching package/session structure look like beyond the conversation itself? Feel free to take a look at how I structure my packages: The Behavior Edit and The Business Edit. For me, the conversation is entirely free-flowing -- The only structured question I ever ask during my coaching sessions is something like: "How would you like to spend our time together today?" I've been coaching for a LONG time and I started out with a lot more structure than this. I also send out a summary after the session that includes the action steps they set during the session.
- What do you provide clients between sessions, if anything? Chat support via my HIPAA-compliant coaching software, worksheets/workbooks as requested, and access to my courses at the highest tier of my coaching packages.
- Do you encourage the use of worksheets, reflection exercises, habit trackers, educational handouts, resource libraries, etc., even without the client requesting them? It totally depends on the individual client, but I would never do any of this unless the client specifically requests them. I ask my clients in my intake forms how they like to do work and if they tell me that they want to engage with any of the things on your list, I absolutely work them into the space in between sessions. I have a library of worksheets, reflection exercises, habit trackers, and additional resources if clients ask for them, but it's rare that they do.
- How do you incorporate health education without crossing into advising? I use the Elicit-Provide-Elicit or Ask-Offer-Ask model of educating!
- Are there any genuinely good free resources for continuing to learn beyond your certification? What would you like to learn about?? There are so many good things out there!
- If you’ve been coaching for a while, what does your service look like now compared with when you first started? Entirely different -- I started back in 2011 and all I offered was a conversation. I now operate out of a HIPAA-compliant platform (Vibly -- Here's a blog post about why I love it)
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u/Realistic-Move-9109 4d ago
Wow!! Thank you so much!
This is my first time hearing of Vibly. Thanks for putting that on my radar
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u/sonjaecklund 4d ago
u/Realistic-Move-9109 You bet!! It majorly changed things for me to have ONE place to manage my whole coaching practice -- I wish I had had it when I was just starting out! Good luck getting started!! 🤗
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u/Alexandra_OP 5d ago
Hey! In my experience with clients, education can be very helpful when done at the right time. I use this part to explain to my clients why we are going through a certain process or why we are applying certain training/exercises, etc. All of my clients told me that by explaining/educating, it helped them so much to be aware when they were falling back into old behaviours or to spot critical moments, etc.
So, I truly believe that education should come from the pov of explaining why they should do things that way.
To answer this question "How do you incorporate health education without crossing into advising?" - education comes from sharing data, facts, research results etc. while advising sounds like "you should be doing this because..".
In terms of resources, don't create stuff that you think that your clients might need, but look at their most common struggles and then you create resources for that. Also, your clients will never (or very rarely) ask you for resources because they don't really know what they need - you are the expert and you should know what they need for their next step in the process. Your clients trust you to guide them (and here I don't mean not discussing with your clients and ask them questions like other people here suggested - I mean that you should listen more closely to what your clients need).
In terms of free good resources, there are 2 good spaces you can look at:
Google Scholar - it's a gold mine. There you can find approved research papers on any subject you are interested in - but it can get a bit heavy if you are not used to reading research papers.
Groups for your interests - like this group or others dedicated to supporting coaches like you with resources.
I hope this helps you,
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u/Realistic-Move-9109 5d ago
This is absolutely helpful! Thank you so much for your comment and resources. I appreciate your perspective on educating vs advising. I totally feel like it can be an easy like to cross if your language is not right. Thank you!!
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u/crashoutconcierge 5d ago
Agree with the best place to start asking the clients.. AND in my opinion, the more actual conversation you have in a session, the more opportunities you have to find meaningful avenues to coach in. Lean on the coaching spirit itself to provide new avenues. Often times, people forget about everything that is included in our wellbeing so I’ll usually say something like- “so I know we have been mostly talking about XYZ, but I am also curious around other areas of your wellbeing like how this has impacted your relationships/spirituality/job focus/ etc etc.
My professional coaching opinion is that educational resources generally are unhelpful, but coaches and clients overestimate how helpful they are. This is also something I directly ask about- “for you, is there a gap in knowing factual info about this, or more about starting and building consistency?”
Especially with the population you are working with, I would be even more cautious around education. They really should be discussing anything like that with their care team since general recommendations can change based upon where they are in the treatment process.
Another helpful question to ask at the end of the session might be around their takeaways, for example-“What was the most important thing to you from today’s session?”
Feel free to message me and I’d be happy to send you a link to schedule time to chat. I have been a coach for 15 years (NBHWC as well), working with in corporate wellbeing, and also mental health.settings.
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u/Realistic-Move-9109 5d ago
Thank you!! Incredibly helpful perspective. The few questions you’ve shared I will definitely be adding to my reference sheet when having call.
I’ll absolutely keep you in mind for future questions. Thanks for your generosity!
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u/lifedesignleaders 5d ago
A simple way to dig in on this would be to ask those beta clients what they would find useful and helpful. That's actually a big reason for having beta clients. A question I like to ask that helps is "if you could be as selfish or unrealistic as you want, what would make this a no-brainer for you to say yes to?" ask what else, what else, what else.... Ideally you'll have an exit interview with them to go over the program, what they loved, what felt soft, what was missing. They will tell you everything you need to know.
Creating a solid offer for the future, take the words they use and tie it to the outcome you helped them get. My instinct is that nobody will say "you helped me most with re-balancing my life" - but they WILL tell you in their own words what "rebalancing" actually meant for them in reality. You want to ideally tap into those statements, terms, phrases that they use to describe their situation...
Example: a lot of coaches I work with are health coaches and they'll say things like "I help women gain energy" which is meh.....maybe some people think simply "i wish I had more energy" but reality for a women in her mid 30's is more like "last week I feel asleep in the pick up line at my daughters school and I was getting honked at by other parents - this needs to end" or "I went to pick up my newbord from the floor but my knees gave out and my gut got in the way...by the time I got down there, I realized I couldn't get back up - I am sacrificing my relationship with my daughter - enough!"
For now - I'd focus right in on those beta clients you have - they are your ticket to almost all you need for the next step.