Guide

What is life coaching?

If you have been circling the idea of working with a coach without ever quite knowing what you would be signing up for, this is the plain-English version: what coaching is, what actually happens in a session, how it differs from therapy, what it costs in the UK, and how to tell whether a particular coach is right for you.

Written by Belinda Bateson, life coach · Last updated September 2026

What is life coaching?

Life coaching is a series of structured, confidential conversations with a trained coach, aimed at helping you work out what you want and how to get there. It is forward-looking and practical. You bring the subject; the coach brings the questions, the structure and the attention.

That is a deliberately unglamorous definition, because coaching is often sold as something more mystical than it is. There is no secret method. What makes it work is uninterrupted thinking time with someone whose only agenda is your progress — which, for most adults, is a genuinely rare thing.

Coaching is not advice, mentoring or consultancy. A mentor tells you what they did. A consultant tells you what to do. A coach helps you work out what you want to do, which tends to stick rather better, because you were the one who arrived at it.

What does a life coach actually do?

In a session, a coach is doing four things, more or less continuously:

• Asking questions you would not ask yourself. Not clever questions for their own sake — the ones that go where you have been politely avoiding.
• Listening for what is underneath. Most people arrive talking about the surface problem. A good coach notices the difference between the presenting issue and the real one, and gently says so.
• Reflecting patterns back to you. You cannot see the shape of your own thinking from the inside. Hearing "that is the third time today you have said you should" is often the whole session.
• Holding you to what you said you would do. Not nagging, but not letting it quietly drop either. Accountability is a large part of why coaching works when reading a book on the same subject does not.

A coach does not diagnose you, prescribe anything, or hand you a plan they wrote before meeting you. If your coach is mostly talking, something has gone wrong.

What happens in a life coaching session?

Sessions typically run for around an hour and follow a loose shape rather than a script:

1. Where are you starting from? A few minutes on what has happened since last time and what is most alive for you today.
2. What do you want from this hour? Naming it out loud is more useful than it sounds, and it stops the session drifting.
3. The work itself. This is most of the time: thinking out loud, being questioned, noticing things, changing your mind, occasionally getting stuck and working through it.
4. What now? Ending with something concrete — a decision, a conversation to have, an experiment to run before next time.

You do not need to prepare anything, and you do not need to arrive with a tidy problem. "I do not really know why I am here, but something is off" is a perfectly good place to start, and a common one.

Life coaching vs therapy and counselling

This is the question people most often want answered before they book, and the honest answer is that the two overlap more than either profession likes to admit. The broad distinction still holds, though:

Signs life coaching might help

You do not need a crisis to justify coaching. It is often most useful in the undramatic middle, when nothing is wrong enough to force a change but something is clearly not right. Common starting points:

• A life transition — midlife, divorce, an empty nest, retirement, bereavement, a move.
• A career change you keep researching and never starting.
• Confidence that does not match your actual competence.
• Years of putting everyone else first and losing track of what you want.
• Repeating a pattern you can name but cannot seem to break.
• A decision you have been carrying around for months.
• Wanting to think something through with someone entirely on your side.

How much does life coaching cost in the UK?

There is no standard rate. UK coaches price in one of two ways: per session, or as a block of sessions bought together at a lower per-session rate. What moves the price is mainly the coach's experience, the length of the session, how often you meet, and whether any support between sessions is included.

A few things worth knowing before you start comparing:

• Many coaches do not publish their rates. That is not necessarily a red flag — it is common practice — but it does mean the discovery call is where you find out.
• Blocks are cheaper per session but ask for commitment up front. If you are not certain yet, paying more for a single session to test the fit is usually the better trade.
• Higher prices do not reliably mean better coaching. Fit matters far more than fee. The most expensive coach you speak to is not automatically the one who will help you most.
• Ask what happens if you want to stop. A coach who makes leaving easy is confident you will not want to.

Ask directly on the discovery call, and ask for the total, not the per-session figure. Any coach worth booking will answer plainly.

Is life coaching worth it?

It depends almost entirely on one thing: whether you actually want to change something. Coaching works when you arrive with something you want to move and a willingness to be questioned about it. It does not work when you are hoping someone will hand you an answer, or when you have been sent by somebody else.

It is also worth being clear-eyed about what you are buying. You are not buying a guaranteed outcome; you are buying dedicated thinking time, structure, a second perspective and accountability. For a lot of people that combination is what finally shifts something that has been stuck for years. For others, at a particular moment, it is not what is needed — and a good coach will say so.

Because the discovery call is normally free, the cost of finding out is almost nothing. Use it.

Does online life coaching work?

Yes — and for most people it works at least as well as meeting in person. Coaching is a conversation, and video calls carry conversation well. What you lose in physical presence you tend to gain in practicality.

The practical advantages are real:

• No travel, which makes a weekly hour genuinely sustainable.
• You can work with the right coach rather than the nearest one.
• Easier to fit around work, school runs and caring responsibilities.
• You take the session somewhere you already feel comfortable.

The one thing worth protecting is privacy. Pick somewhere you will not be overheard or interrupted — sessions are much less useful when half your attention is on the door.

How to choose a life coach

Life coaching is not a protected title in the UK, which means anyone may call themselves a coach. That is not a reason to avoid coaching, but it does put the responsibility on you to choose carefully. Nearly every coach offers a free introductory call — use it as an interview, and speak to more than one.

Questions worth asking on a discovery call

• What training have you done, and are you a member of a professional body?
• Who do you usually work with, and what do they typically bring?
• What does a session with you actually look like?
• What are your fees, and what is the total for what you are suggesting?
• What happens if I want to stop partway through?
• How do you handle confidentiality?
• When would you tell someone coaching is not the right fit for them?

Signs to walk away

• Guaranteed outcomes, or claims that sound like results are certain.
• Pressure to sign up on the call, or an offer that expires that day.
• Vagueness about fees, or a reluctance to give you a total.
• A coach who does most of the talking in a conversation about you.
• No willingness to refer you elsewhere when that would clearly be better.

Above all, notice how you feel in the conversation. You are going to say honest things to this person. If you already feel slightly performed-at on the free call, that will not improve once you are paying.

You can also read more about the areas I work in, how sessions work, what it costs and where we can meet, or go through the questions women most often ask before booking.