EXCERPT FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_skills_in_Canada

Roles of the Life Skills coach

The Canadian Alliance of Life Skills Coaches and Associations (CALSCA) offers the following definition of a Life Skills coach:

“A Life Skills Coach is a trained para-professional who is able to facilitate groups, model and evaluate skills and support individualized learning. Coaches work from their hearts, demonstrating with their lives, their growth, and through their range of emotion and depth of experience, the effective use of the skills that they offer to their participants. Coaches put themselves on the line, human to human (Allen, Mehal, Palmateer, & Sluser, 1995; Conger, 1973, p. 3; Curtiss & Friedman, 1973; Curtiss & Warren, 1973).” [25]

Life Skills coaches’ facilitation tasks include facilitating problem-solving, creating a safe climate/environment, and managing conflict. Life Skills coaches also teach and model helpful group behaviours and balanced self-determined behaviour (BSD), share their own experiences and self disclose as members of the group, and share their resources and knowledge of processes in the service of the group goals. Furthermore, Life Skills coaches help group members accomplish their goals, and they encourage the group to reflect on and discuss its development and ways of working together.[26]

Life Skills coaches have expertise in both content and process and are flexible in moving back and forth between the two.[27] Life Skills coaches are also flexible in their choice of leadership (influencing and intervention) styles; they shift from directive, to harmonizer, to laissez faire to democratic according to the needs and abilities of the group at different stages of its development.[28] The Life Skills coach encourages group members to share the leadership role with him/her as the group matures.[29]

Regardless of the stage of the group’s development, it is the Life Skills coach’s responsibility to ensure that the Life Skills lessons are meeting the group’s needs.[30]

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