Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills, and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice...and Your Life [Hardcover]

Patrick Williams (Author), Lloyd J. Thomas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393704343 | ISBN-13: 978-0393704341 | Publication Date: December 20, 2004

Total Life Coaching by Pat and Lloyd is more than just a book.

It is an interactive experience in which you will find recipes for living your life more authentically, as well as master time-honored lessons that you can bring to your coaching clients. Regardless of the personal coaching techniques or skills you may have learned, you may still not be the most effective coach you can become. This book will help you move closer to that goal.

Life coaching is more than a collection of techniques and skills. It is more than something you do. Life coaching reflects who you are-it is your authentic being in action.Readers of Pat Williams's and Deborah Davis's book, Therapist as Life Coach, know Pat to be a gifted life coach and passionate teacher. Here Pat and colleague and writer, Lloyd J. Thomas, build on this earlier book and share a unique insight into the coaching process, which shows you precisely how to enhance your professional practices through practical and effective life coaching. It also empowers you to change your own lives through use of the practical information and philosophy presented here.

Total Life Coaching is organized into a series of 50 life lessons, and is designed to be either read cover-to-cover or dipped into, as needed, for assistance when conducting a coaching session. Keeping life's processes on the "message and lesson" level makes living and life coaching much easier and more enjoyable. Total Life Coaching guides you step-by-step through the complex process of learning and coaching these fifty important lessons. The lessons are organized into 8 sections: Creating a Personal Identity; Coaching Spirituality and Life Purpose; Coaching Communication Skills; Living Life with Integrity; Success: Clients Achieving their Potential; Coaching Cognitive Skills; Creating High-Quality Relationships; Understanding Your Past to Create a Desired Future.Each lesson is presented as a structured recipe and includes:

• The life lesson
• The messages contained within the lesson
• Coaching objectives for your clients regarding the lesson
• What you need to know about the lesson to provide the framework for coaching it
• Coaching methods, exercises, questions, and language for bringing each lesson to your clients
• Sample coaching conversations that exemplify the coach-client dialogue for the coaching of the lesson.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An interactive experience in which you will find recipes for living your life more authentically -- Adolescence, Vol. 40, No. 159

About the Author

Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D., is an adjunct faculty member of University of Southern California, Albany Medical College, and the Institute for Life Coach Training. He is a certified life coach and licensed psychologist and for more than 20 years has written a weekly newspaper column, 'Practical Psychology.'

Patrick Williams, Ed.D., a pioneer of the coaching profession, began executive coaching in 1990. In 1998 he founded the Institute for Life Coach Training, an ICF Accredited Coach Training Program. He speaks worldwide on living purposefully, coaching for global change, wellness coaching, and the coach approach in leadership. He has written dozens of articles and taken part in numerous television and radio interviews. He is also the author of Becoming a Professional Life Coach: Lessons from the Institute for Life Coach Training and Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills, and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice… and Your Life.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (December 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393704343
• ISBN-13: 978-0393704341
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #550,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Patrick Williams, psychologist, author, and master certified coach, has his masters in Humanistic Psychology and doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology, where he also studied psychosynthesis. He is a pioneer in the field of Life Coaching and founder of the Institute for Life Coach Training (www.LifeCoachTraining.com), and his non profit organization Coaching the Global Village
(www.CoachingTheGlobalVillage.org)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Content did not live up to its introduction, January 29, 2006

By 

Southern Reader "Reader who likes to learn" (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills, and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice...and Your Life (Hardcover)

Unfortunately I purchased 7 copies of this book for a coaching program I was doing before I had read it. The cover information and introduction were intriguing.However, I found the content thin and failing to deliver on the promises laid out in the introduction of the book as well as the introduction of each chapter. I liked ideas that they told me they would tell me about; the authors delivered thin regurgitated material.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars big book- dissapointing content, February 13, 2007

By 

Elizabeth Ellis, CPCC "Whole Life Coach" (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills, and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice...and Your Life (Hardcover)

I was puzzled by much of the content of this book- probably based in part on the high expectations I had after reading some reviews here. Coaching as I know it focuses on the client's values and the agenda comes from the client rather than the coach. This book is full of exercises and "good ideas", but it seems to be infused with many of the writers' own personal opinions, agenda, and biases.

I am concerned that those who are new to coaching will be tempted to "lead", "know", analyze or attempt to "fix" their clients, rather than partner with clients with genuine curiousity to create what they want based on their own (the clients) values and agenda. Granted there are many effective syles of "coaching" and modalities. As a CTI trained life coach I admit I have a bias towards a more co-active, and less therapeutic model.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another master-piece from Pat Williams!, March 14, 2005

By 

Coach Phil "Author of over 500 articles at ww... (Eugene, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Total Life Coaching: 50+ Life Lessons, Skills, and Techniques to Enhance Your Practice...and Your Life (Hardcover)

Dr Williams has been a friend and colleague for several years and with Total Life Coaching, he has clearly established his position as the foremost leader in his understanding of life coaching skills. This is a a one-volume encyclopedia of coaching! Particularly if you are just starting to build your coaching library, this is a "must-have."

Covering 52 of the most common issues in coaching, organized along eight major themes, each chapter explains the theory, then includes examples, exercises, a short coaching "conversation" around the issue, and practical application steps to make the principle useful. While hundreds of books have been written on each of these themes, Williams and Thomas have collected much of the best information in one place, a "one-stop-shopping" over-view of essential skills and best practices in coaching.

Highly recommended! This is not a small book and it is not intended as a quick read There is real "meat" here! Buy it as a resource book (that's how it's intended to be used) and for more experienced coaches, it will serve as a valuable set of reminders and "first principles" to go back to over and over again. My only reservation about the book is its size and weight. Some people will be put off by its broad scope and massive size, but not you! Buy it and set a goal to read it straight through over a period of time, then keep it handy so you can access it frequently as you need resources, tools, or ideas. A well-done and valuable addition to the literature on coaching.