Top 5 life coaching tools you should be using in 2023

Life coaching is an emerging career path that has gained prominence within the last decade. More people are seeking the guidance and counsel of these experts to shape their life and career choices. According to the ICF, the average success rate for life coaching is 70%, indicating that most people are satisfied with the outcome of their life coaching sessions. As a result, there is an increasing demand for life coaches. It is reported that every month, there are over 1.3 million searches for life and business coaches all over the globe.

Apparently, there is also an increasing interest in pursuing a profession in life coaching, and you’re probably interested in switching or adopting this path. However, it’s not enough to have an interest. Understanding every life coach tool, you’ll need to dispense your responsibilities is also important.

This Workee article examines a set of life coach tools focusing on the types of tools for life coaches that have universal and generic applications in the coaching business. But first, what are the tools for life coaches?

What are life coaching tools?

Life coach tools are various material and immaterial items, tangible and electronic, that a coach could use and also give to a client to assist the client in conducting a proper self-evaluation and taking the necessary action.

These tools focus on specific topics/themes/issues that match clients' needs and assist them in achieving the desired outcomes from the coaching process. They also exist to supplement and strengthen the relationship between a coach and a client, stimulate meaningful interactions, foster learning, and accelerate the client's growth.

Tools for life coaches include documents, apps, and activities/exercises that help coaches and their clients achieve results more easily and quickly. Some are available in print as predesigned templates, while others are available as worksheets, eBooks, manuals, guides, forms, audio-visuals, etc.

Storytelling can also be used as a coaching tool. Coaches use them, and their clients adore them. They exist to make the entire process easier and to help both parties get results faster.

Life coaching tools can be used for client prospecting as well as coaching. As a result, they are extremely useful tools that every coach should have. However, it is critical to understand the available tools and what each does in order to achieve the best results when using these tools.

It is also critical to understand when to use a given tool, what type of client to use it on, and how to use it. This will reduce confusion and waste of time. As a result, the following section looks at specific and necessary tools for life coaches that you should use in your coaching business.

Furthermore, while some life coaching tools are free, others must be purchased outright or through a subscription.

Types of life coaching tools

1. Books

Life coaching tools can come in books, journals, or manuscripts. These materials could be in hardcopy forms, such as a handout, physical book, textbook, or special report, or in electronic forms, such as an eBook. Some clients prefer a good read a good to help them learn and grow. When selecting books, keep the following in mind:

• Books that help clients improve their cognitive abilities and thought processes:

• Books that help to debunk false and harmful beliefs

• Books on increasing self-esteem and self-worth.

• Inspirational books that help motivate and mentally energize clients to achieve their life goals.

Tip: Please double-check the books you recommend for accuracy and to avoid wasting your clients' time with controversial or out-of-date information.

2. Visualization tools

Visual life coach tools include pictures, drawings, sketches, and info-graphics which can help them visualize a scenario. This is an important life coach toolkit. They help ignite the brain, inspire the mind and connect patterns in the client’s mind. They boost creativity and imagination. You can draw these and demonstrate them to the client or get the client to draw things out by themselves under your supervision. Opting for the latter helps to get the client engaged and become a part of the process, speeding up the achievement of the desired goal(s). A few Examples of visualization tools and exercises include:

1. Drawing of “A Life Map.”

2. Drawing of “A Wheel of Life.”

Both of these help the client and you visualize and appraise the challenges, the highs, the lows, the possibilities, and the strategy for meeting the client’s goals.

3. A story or metaphor

If you are looking for free life coaching tools to utilize, this is one option you should go for, as stories are freely available, and you don’t have to pay for them. They come mostly from personal experiences or the reports of others. Telling stories and using metaphors can help to pass a message and speed up the process of solving clients’ problems. Some of these stories may be real, while others may be imagined. 

Whether real or imagined, these stories or metaphors in the process of coaching help convey messages easily, simplify life’s challenges, and provide contexts to build solutions on. They help to inspire clients, remove the feeling of loneliness, and instill the “can do” mindset in your clients. Hence, they qualify as generic life coach tools and techniques to get desired results.

The stories and using metaphors, you should:

1. Make clients realize they don’t have to be victims before taking action to do something or avoid it. An example is telling them the “Build a Bridge Exercise” story.

2. Show clients that holding on to irrelevant things for too long can hinder them from achieving their core life goals. To clarify this, you can tell them the Buddhist “What Do I Need to Let Go Of?” story.

3. Encourage clients to prioritize their tasks to avoid wasting time on irrelevant things. A good story to tell in this regard is the “The Big Rocks, Little Rocks Exercise.” 

Tip: in telling stories or using metaphors, ensure that the context applies to the situation and needs of the client to avoid boring the client. Also, study the client’s body language to decipher when the client does not appreciate the story and either change it or use another coaching tool.

4. Self-assessment quizzes

Your life coaching toolkit cannot be complete without the use of a coaching quiz. A self-assessment quiz is a highly preferred life coaching tool that helps clients quickly see their true situation through self-examination. This tool is a self-appraisal tool/approach wherein you ask clients to prop themselves on a given subject matter to help you provide them with the most suitable help. Some coaching quiz examples:

• Quiz on life satisfaction:  This type of self-assessment quiz elicits clients' input regarding their fulfillment or satisfaction level in life. This can focus on one area or all multiple aspects of their life. The outcome of this rating helps you to identify how best to coach them to success. It is a very important life coaching tool that you should give to your clients early in the coaching session.

• Motivation quiz: This is a good example of a life coaching quiz. It assists the clients in comprehending if they are willing and motivated enough to accomplish their desires. It also helps to determine the client’s proposed level of accomplishment.  This involves quizzing clients to decipher their motivation for actualizing the desired goal. Based on the response, you can know the level of preparedness and motivation of the client to achieve the desired goal.

• Self-care quiz: This life coaching quiz will expose the extent to which the client is aware of himself or herself. It is especially useful in coaching sessions that relate to life equilibrium balancing.

5. Self-proof tools (Life coaching forms)

People like to see a proof before making an effort to change. One way to achieve this is by asking the clients to be the proof-maker themselves. This can be achieved with a life coaching toolkit called “the life coaching form,” on which the client records things about his/her life over a specified timeframe. 

On the expiration of this time, you and the client would evaluate this form to know the true situation of things with the client. This factsheet becomes living proof of the clients’ true situation and would help provide the needed remedy. 

A life coaching form can reveal a client’s time-spending habits or things that use most of the client’s time. Examining the form would show themes, patterns of activities, and the correlations among them. Here are a life coaching forms examples:

1. Time-waster mitigation form: This type of life coaching form documents the time or minutes a client spends doing different things per day, week, month, etc. It is one of the life coaching forms that you can use with busy clients. 

2. Interruption minimizer form: This coaching worksheet and form is designed to help clients learn to manage and reduce interruptions, which in turn boosts their productivity. A significant part is keeping track of and monitoring disruptions in the client's life so that they can save time and energy in the future. Because of this, it encourages clients to try new approaches. Therefore, it is an essential tool in the life coach's arsenal because it helps clients get more done in less time.

Conclusion

Life coaching tools come in various shapes and forms and include assets you can use to help your clients achieve their goals. Clients can save time and get closer to their goals and dreams by using them. They can also be used as administrative tools to assist coaches in performing their duties more effectively. These tools can boost your enthusiasm as a coach while saving you time, money, and human resources. Almost every industry, field, and coaching job uses life coaching tools. They are also used everywhere and by everyone. As a result, you can employ them in your coaching business to help you acquire, retain, engage, and meet clients' needs more quickly. This tool is a must-have in today's coaching business because it can be difficult to connect with clients in today's busy world when coaching is done the old-fashioned way. With the Workee coach management tool, you can automate your work process and save time for other important parts of your business.