About Wendy Buckingham and Life Coaching Professionally 

Why I created Life Coaching Professionally?

Well, After a 20+ year career in life coaching and helping people plan and achieve their goals, plus  mentoring new coaches, I felt it was time for a new direction. 

I've always loved to simplify information and educate others in a user friendly way so doing this around life coaching was the obvious choice. 

So, I have combined my background in journalism with my coaching experiences to create an independent platform of information that supports aspiring, new and established life coaches who want to further their skills and build their practice.  

Why my independent life coaching information is so important

One of the biggest motivators for creating this coaching resource was that everywhere I looked for information on coaching, it was being presented by coaching schools, or coaches whose main, and often hidden, agenda turned out to be to enrol people in their programs rather than inform. 

This meant that many seeking information are only getting what that particular school or coach chooses to tell them from their perspective, rather than a balanced picture.

Over the years I heard many sad tales from coaches who had wasted their money and not got the training they were hoping for or would support them in their coaching career.

As a result of this research, one of the first sections I created was  dedicated to checking out life coach training schools by asking the right questions. I was also aware of how vulnerable coaches are to poor advice when it comes to seeking marketing help, so as one of the early projects I also listed 12 Proven Marketing Ideas and how to go about them, from my own experience, as well as some advice on seeking the right marketing help.

More recently, to meet the perceived need for coaches to have a specific niche or specialty I developed a coaching niche section to help with this choice  

Life Coaching Professionally has grown from those early days into the content rich and comprehensive information resource it is today and I am constantly updating the information to keep it current. Visit my Home Page to see all the areas I cover. 

My Specific Life Coaching Training 

I really believe that you need coach specific training to call yourself credible professional life coach, regardless of what other qualifications you have. My trainings were both personally and professionally beneficial in ways I could not have imagined. 

CoachU

My major coach training and certification was over 200 hours with Coach U between 1998 to 2000.

This was the original life coaching school in America, founded by Thomas Leonard who created and developed the concept of life coaching as a profession.  

The best part of the CoachU training was that we had to experience these processes as part of our training, rather than just learn about them, which was invaluable for our own understanding and growth. 

My training taught me how to gently take the client through whatever issue, work related or personal,  was causing the challenge.  We learned to identify the "need" that was driving the clients behaviour and listen for what was not being said. We also learned to identify when coaching is not the right path for the client and when to recommend them to a therapist.

Even though I had a lot of personal growth education in my background, what impressed me was the CoachU's personal foundation training which taught me some fantastic processes that I had not come across before. These have been magic to use with myself and my clients.

Later I became a Tele-class Leader with CoachU (no Skype or Zoom then) which was put me in good stead for subsequent distance learning events I ran within my own coaching practice. Mentoring new coaches, building their confidence and holding their hand through the challenges of working with their first clients was one of my favourite things.  I am now do this as an active contributor and moderator on the Coaches Helping Coachers FB forum. 

Results Coaching Systems

My other training was with Results Coaching Systems now part of the Neuro Leadership Institute whose founder David Rock has become an authority on brain science in coaching.  

The Results coach training I took with David was focused mainly on goal achievement and had a format of the client committing to a fixed number of sessions - usually 12 - with an introductory free session that examined where the client was in the various areas of their life and inspired them on what they might want to work on.

I also took several Results courses covering team and group coaching which were really valuable in allowing me to broaden coaching scope.

Results Coaching was far more linear and process focused than CoachU in its approach. However, I found the combination of the two formats really useful in enabling me to coach with personal depth and, at the same time, present a very marketable structure to prospective clients. 

My involvement with the International Coach Federation (ICF)

The International Coach Foundation (ICF) is the worlds premier governing body for coaches, setting standards and offering credentialing.  It is an excellent learning resource and I encourage you to join.

As one of the earliest members of the ICF chapter in Australia, in 1999, I held the then advisory position of Coach Credentialing Leader helping coaches understand what was involved in obtaining a credential. Although it is no longer relevant for me to be a member of the ICF, I still hold it in high regard and recommend it as a credible benchmark for coaching excellence. 

I am also really proud to be a Guest Author Expert for articles about coaching published in the newsletter of the Coaching Tools Company. If you sign up for this newsletter you will be able to sources really useful articles on all aspects of coaching as well as special offers.

More about my career background

My own career background history:

• being a secretary (in the days before they were called PA’s or executive assistants)
• teaching Shorthand and typing at evening school
• journalism (feature and special supplement writing for major capital city newspaper and magazines in Australia). These included The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian.
•  broadcasting, I had my own 2 hour slot interviewing all sorts of interesting people and celebrities on community radio in Sydney, 2RRR and 2NSB.
• business ownership of an online education company with my husband, Paul; VideoDriven.com
•  voiceover work, (apparently I have an international accent)
• Working pro bono with recovering drug addicts to help them set and achieve goals
•  coaching, training and speaking.

About Me Personally

Life has been my greatest teacher in coming to realise that it is better to run and stumble and hurt yourself, than to regret never having tried to run at all.

My stumbling has included “learning” marriages until I met my souldmate Paul and we married in1990. Between us we have four terrific daughters and a pod of grandchildren. 

Highlights in my personal life (apart from marriages, divorces and births) include:

• Emigrating to Australia from the UK.
  
• Living on a Kibbutz in Israel for a year.
  
• Trekking five days in the Sinai with a Bedouin guide, camels, but no tent.
• Publishing my book Mastering the Art of Goals Coaching.
• Turning my “someday” dream of trekking the high altitude trail to Machu Picchu in Peru, into an exhausting if exhilarating achieved goal.
• Six months working and traveling in the UK and Italy and achieving my goal of drinking coffee in St Marks Square in Venice.
• Living  and working (online) in Thailand for six months and having a real experience of that country and its culture.
• Moving to the glorious south coast of NSW and finally having a herb garden.
  
• Building and managing this trouble-free website using the fabulous Solo Build It business building system. You can read more of the journey  here. 
  
• And of course, marrying  Paul Buckingham, who is also my technical backup and a contributor to the website.
• Becoming invited to become a moderator on the Coaching Helping Coaches forum, which I consider to be the best and most authentic life coaching forum on FaceBook. 
  

I’m looking forward to more adventures in my work and my life. The best is yet to come!

Enough already! But do take some time to look around this site and discover all you can about life coaching professionally. 

I find an excellent place to start is at Becoming a Life Coach, so good hunting!

I look forward to hearing from you soon. You can contact me here.

All the best
Wendy

Click the image to explore and purchase my eBooks

Books by Wendy Buckingham

The Life Coaching Professionally Series is also available on Amazon in Kindle Format