So you’ve decided you want a coach. Maybe you’re looking for a life coach, or a leadership coach. Maybe you’re looking for a specialized coach, like a career coach or health coach or a relationship coach or a sales coach or a new manager coach. So many choices! Where do you start?

In this post, I’ll try to address the most common questions faced when looking for a coach: What do you need? Where do you look? And how do you evaluate prospective coaches?

Identify your WHY

The first step should always be to ask yourself why: why do you want a coach? What are you hoping to get out of the experience? What challenges do you want to tackle? This insight, often left unstated, can steer you towards any number of specialized coaches. It is key to finding the right person, with the right experience, to help you achieve your goals.

Maybe you want to make a change in your life (job, career, relationships, habits, health), but don’t know where to start, or feel you need some support and motivation. A good coach can help you figure out how to accomplish your goals, motivate you to achieve them, and help you develop the habits to make the change stick.

Many coaches specialize, and this can be a useful way to ensure you’re finding a partner with the right background, expertise, and knowledge to support you. Knowing your why can help you make this choice, and save you a lot of time and heartache working with someone who doesn’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

There really is a coach for everything: Career coaches can help you identify new career paths, and make a plan to change. Health coaches can help you stop unhealthy behaviors and habits, or adopt good ones. Leadership and Executive coaches can help senior executives become stronger leaders, tailor their message to different audiences, and drive their business to new heights. A business coach can help you if you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner trying to grow. Life coaches can help you identify your purpose, set goals, and motivate to achieve them. There are coaches for parenting, for relationships, for salespeople, for technology leaders; in my own practice, I work with new managers who are leading others for the first time in their career. If you have a specific need, chances are you can find a specific coach.

WHERE should you look?

Once you’ve identified the change you want to make, start looking for coaches that do that kind of work. It’s no surprise that a search engine is the best, first place to start. Use specific terms to find a coach that works in your niche, and you’re likely to find some examples quickly. Avoid overly broad terms like “life coach” and instead go for the specifics: try search terms like “coaches who work with new moms returning to the workplace” if that’s what you’re after. You’ll be surprised, I promise.

You can also look on specific websites that provide listings for coaches, like Noomii or Coach.me. Be aware however, that most of these sites only list coaches who pay for the privilege, meaning you’re not going to see all the options, and may not always find the best (if a coach has a strong word-of-mouth business, they may opt not to list their practice on these kinds of sites).

Certification bodies (more on these below) like the ICF or training programs like Coach U offer listings of the coaches they certify, which is a great way to ensure your coach is properly trained and credentialed. However, this can be limiting too; coaches with deep specialization may not feel the need to get certified, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good.

Lastly, and most common, is word-of-mouth. Your network of friends and colleagues can be a powerful resource.  Ask around, post a message on social media, or talk to someone in your Human Resources department.  Chances are you know someone who’s work with a coach.  If they liked their coach, ask them why.  However, you should be sure that the people you’re speaking with got coaching for similar reasons as you. If you are looking for a career coach, and your friend recommends their grief coach, it’s unlikely to be a good match.

WHAT should you look for in a coach?

So you know what you want to do, and you’ve found a whole list of prospective coaches that can help you. How do you pick from the list?

Experience

First, use your why to guide you. Look for a coach who specifically states that they work with clients like you. Look at their experience for examples of work in the space you want to address. If you’re looking to learn healthy habits, you should look for examples of their work in health and nutrition, instead of relationships and family. Your need is something you understand better than others: trust your own instincts to identify what experience will matter.

Qualification

Second, look for qualifications and training. Unlike health care or mental health practitioners, coaching is an unlicensed field. Anyone can put their sign out and call themselves a coach. But there are credentialing bodies  out there (more below). Short of fully credentialed, many coaches pursue certification (formal training that’s less exhaustive than the full credential, and typically part of that process. Listing a certification tells you a coach has undergone some amount of formal training, evaluation, and has an established practice.

Many coaches have been through certified training programs. This information is valuable as well; while the training quality may vary, you can at least know that they’ve spent some time formally improving their practice. Typically they’ll list that training on their website or LinkedIn profile – look for some kind of certification, and then investigate it a little. You can look up a certification program to see if it’s part of the ICF-training regime, which tells you it follows the same standards and practices. This is not the only signal that a coach’s training is quality, but it is a good one.

Fit

At the end of the day, coaching works best when there’s a trusted personal connection. You’re going to be sharing a lot with this person, and they’re going to ask you a lot of questions. You should feel comfortable around them. You should feel a connection. Otherwise, you’re likely to find the experience challenging (in a bad way) and struggle with the work.

Look first at their website or listing. How someone has decided to present themselves tells you something about their personality. Look at common social cues like language and tone – does this person sound like someone you’d enjoy talking to? If they offer personal anecdotes or context, look for clues there. Has this person had similar experiences to you? Do they have an outlook and style that resonates with you? If you’re looking to create more meaningful relationships with family, you probably won’t enjoy working with someone who’s profile is full of strongly worded statements about their bold achievement, grabbing life by the horns and conquering their goals. If you’re looking to reach specific and tangible business goals, you may not be turned on by someone who’s profile shows sunset beaches and references to the joy of life’s journey. Don’t be afraid to listen to your gut instinct – those clues and cues are telling you something may be important to you.

Selection

Once you’ve found a few coaches you’re interested in, reach out to them. Most offer a free or discounted first session. All coaches will make the time to connect with you to talk openly and free of change about your needs, and tell you about their practice.

Be mindful of the free session.  Coaching is a process, and that process takes time to produce results. The first session might not be the most productive one you have, so using it as a chance to evaluate the coach can be challenging.  Consider having an informal conversation first, to ask questions and learn more about their approach. 

Set up a few of these conversations. It’ll take time, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle. In these conversations you’ll get a chance to gauge fit and personality; do you want to talk to this person? Do you like what they have to say? You should ask them about their training, their approach, and the kinds of clients they work with. They may talk to you about their philosophy, their background, and why they do this work – don’t be afraid to ask questions. Treat this like a job interview, because it is. Can they get the job done for you?

What credentials should I look for?

The biggest credentialing body is the International Coaching Federation or ICF. Another trusted credential is the Board Certified Coach or BCC, issued by the Center for Credentialing & Education. The ICF is the most common, and is something of a gold standard in coaching; BCC is equally good, but much less common, and is more often seen in mental health related fields. Certification from either is a sure way to know a coach is skilled and experienced.

Credentialed coaches must undergo a minimum number of training hours, real life experience hours, and take certification exams. Once credentialed, they coaches often use post-nominal letters (ICF coaches use “ACC”, PCC”, or “MCC”) and these represents various tiers of training and experience. ICF credentialing takes time – the lowest tier requires over 100 hours of real-life coaching experience before coaches can apply.

What that means in practice is that many coaches are out there working and coaching without their ICF certification. They might be pursuing it, and they might be trained already. Can you use a coach who isn’t ICF certified? Sure! You might even find a better one, if your need is highly specialized – as I mentioned above, a coach whose practice is strong without certification might not take the time to pursue it.

How much will this all cost?

Most coaches do not list their prices on their websites. You should ask via email or in an initial conversation. If you want to avoid wasting your time or theirs, ask via email. If you have a specific budget you need to stay within, feel free to share it.

When you talk to a prospective coach, be sure to ask about discounts. Don’t be afraid to talk about money here. It doesn’t have to feel like buying a used car, but most coaches offer discounts for clients committing a number of of sessions, or pre-paying for a package. Remember that coaches are entrepreneurs themselves, so most will understand the power of price in acquiring new customers.

Find a coach you can afford, but don’t choose on price – you’ll often get what you paid for. Consider the value this change will have on your life when deciding how much you’re willing to spend. If you’re changing careers to something with a higher earning potential, your investment in a coach to get you there will more than pay you back. If you’re making a change to find more meaning in your life, or achieve greater success in your work, won’t that be worth it?

Recap

Working with a coach can be one of the most powerful experiences of your life. Finding the right partner to act as your change agent, cheerleader, and counselor can help you make meaningful and lasting change in your life, your work, or your relationships. To close, here’s a recap of how to select a coach:

• Determine why you want to work with a coach.
• Look online, through search engines and coaching directories, for someone who works with clients like you. Ask around for referrals.
• Find someone with experience that’s relevant to your why, some level of training, and qualifications (prior experience or recognized certification) to meet your needs.
• Meet them, and ask them questions. Understand price, approach, and experience. Look out for social cues that you’ll actually like this person.

• Coaching fees vary wildly. I mean wildly. Prices range from $80-$250 per hour session. Coaches with more experience, higher levels of certification, or more specialized niches will typically charge more. Executive coaches, the kind who work with CEO’s and leaders of large companies, often charge even more.

  If you’ve done your homework to narrow options, don’t be afraid to make the final choice on personality and fit.