Life Coaching

WHAT IS LIFE COACHING? Collaborative conversations to help move toward goal clarity and accomplishment faster

Life Coaching is a collaborative process between a client and a professional coach where the client is totally in charge of the conversation and the topics, but the coach listens, interprets, supports, asks questions, and carefully manages the PROCESS.

A lot of variation can happen from one session to another and attempting to capture the essence of this process to explain it rarely does it justice. Essentially though, coaching is all about helping a client clarify, question, and meet their goals to achieve their best life faster – coaching can maximize who a client truly wants to be, as the secret squirrel ultimate goal of coaching is TRANSFORMATION.

Academic Life Coaching, by the way, is life coaching focused a bit more on the stressors and challenges faced by college students, including time, stress and energy management, routines, creating support, and motivation (among a variety of other topics). John Andrew Williams, a Master Coach and the founder of AcademicLifeCoaching the online 6-month training program I took myself, calls life coaching “the practice of helping others clarify desired outcomes and design systems and habits to achieve them.”

Essentially coaching can help people truly focus and achieve whatever they want. ANYTHING THEY WANT. Isn’t that exciting? Here’s some more info about COACHING and finding your own coach.

In several studies across 2 and 4-year colleges, life coaching has been shown to increase student success by boosting students’ retention, persistence, and eventually their completion rates, even years after the coaching has taken place. Coaching can actually help people increase their GRIT.

WHO MIGHT BENEFIT FROM COACHING?

Anyone, but it seems to be more effective with students who start early in the semester and/or students who have at least some motivation, students who really want to succeed. Many of my students want to get some coaching half or three-quarters of the way into a semester after they’re really struggling. Sometimes this is exactly what they need to get back on track. Coaching is always helpful, but in the end it is up to students to do their own work. Coaching doesn’t just make responsibilities go away.

WHAT CAN COACHES DISCUSS?

Coaches are curious. They listen and get you to talk, to think out loud. Coaches are careful and are most helpful with topics connected to goals, struggles, self-improvement, or anything connected to growth or mindset. Coaches also often specialize in different tool sets, including forward-thinking visualizations, systems analysis, transitions, relationships, communication, or productivity. After coaching, most clients feel more in control of their lives and have more clarity about WHAT they want and HOW to get there.

Some get their homework done faster. Some manage their time better. A few communicate better with difficult people like bosses or, ahem, frustrating family members. Most can clarify what they want out of college, and many discern better paths to real motivation. Many topics make good discussion material for a coaching session. Many even process with me, get to the clarity, and then decide not to do the work… YET. That’s okay too. I try not to judge.

WHAT IS COACHING LIKE?

Exploration! Challenge. And sometimes Accountability. It feels like good conversations that hopefully get to some A HA moments.

A coaching moment might be a thought-provoking question right after a meeting (What’s getting in your way?)

An average coaching session may last from 15 to 60 minutes (either face-to-face or virtually through Zoom or Teams) as a collaboration between a client and her/his/their coach. A coach isn’t out to teach or instruct or judge. Also, everything is confidential.

In the first part of the session, the coach and client work together on an agenda, or the main topic and focus for the session. Then the client starts, and the coach assists the client with their work by asking powerful questions, reflecting language, challenging the client, and managing the process. Coaching is a fun and collaborative brainstorming process that can help increase effectiveness, resilience, initiative, and accountability. You get to talk about you, and most of the time, clients leave with more clarity, awareness, and confidence.

COLLEGE STUDENTS and NON-COLLEGE CLIENTS

I coach Valencia College and Dallas College students, staff, faculty, and administrators for free. My students can get coaching after class, come by during my office hours, or email me for appointments or questions.

I have trained Dallas College staff, faculty, and advisors on Coaching skills and mindsets, and have offered brief training on coaching roles at Valencia (and can host “Coaching in Short Conversations” Trainings). I can even bring some of these Professional Developments to other campuses for a fee.

If you’re interested in receiving coaching, but you aren’t currently a college student, email me for pricing. On average, a one hour session from a coach might be priced between $125 and $300 (or higher for master coaches – they’re like having personal Yodas. I know one – he lifts ships with his mind.)

I am a certified ALC working on my ACC credential, and I generally charge $150 for a one hour session (though sometimes this may end up between 50 and 70 minutes) or $80 for a half hour. Newly graduated students on a budget often get a discount if I have availability.

The best option, for a number of reasons, is a package of 3, 4, 6, 8, or 10 sessions. First, there’s a built in discount for each session in a package. Even more importantly though, coaching over a number of sessions allows for a lot more time, flexibility so we can get more done, and an ARC to our conversations. By the end of our time together, hopefully I’ll help you transition to a place where you can coach yourself and find your own accountability buddies when necessary.

ROFFINO’s Pricing: Number of Sessions	Total Price	Price/Session
3	$400	$133/session
4	$500	$125/session
6	$600	$100/session
8	$700	$87.5/session
10	$800	$80/session

Coaching is a powerful tool that can help people achieve the life they want faster. Remember, though, that if clients really want something, a coach will push them (with words). “What are you willing to do now?”

Here’s a SUGGESTION / Group of QUESTIONS I might use with clients who know what they want but struggle to make things work: “If life plans aren’t working how you want, change your actions or change your goals. What do you really want? What are you willing to do to get it?”