As a life coaching student, having certain character strengths can help you become a coach who serves others in impactful ways. These strengths are internal traits that help you lead and grow, allowing you to provide clients with the guidance to make changes that improve their lives and well-being.
These are strengths that anyone can develop over time, not just traits that you’re born with. Even if you already have them, you can always improve them to serve clients better. We’ll walk you through 10 of the most important character strengths to focus on as a life coaching student.
*Disclaimer: Life coaches do not provide medical, nutritional, or mental health advice. Those needing support in these areas are encouraged to contact a licensed professional.
Why character matters as much as skill
Every life coach needs to develop coaching skills and techniques to succeed. While these are important, your mindset, energy, and way of being actually have a bigger influence on clients. These qualities help you build trust with clients and guide them toward transformation in their own lives.
Keep in mind that life coaches aren’t just guides — they’re also mirrors. As a life coach, you hope to inspire your clients. Building strong character means you can serve as a role model, motivating clients to work on developing these personal strengths as part of their own growth journey.
10 character strengths to develop on your coaching journey
As you go through life coaching training, you can focus on building good character strengths and virtues that you’ll need in order to help clients. Keep in mind that you’re not just limited to developing these as a student. You can work on improving them throughout your career. Let’s explore the top strengths that all life coaching students should cultivate.
1. Hope
Having hope helps you hold vision for yourself and your clients. Being hopeful creates momentum, motivating clients to keep working on their goals despite facing challenges or tough situations. Clients look to you for guidance. Showing that you have hope helps them feel encouraged and believe in their ability to achieve their goals.
This strength can also help you maintain a belief in positive change, even if things feel stuck. If you’re trying to help a challenging client or if you’re guiding a client through a difficult or stressful situation, having hope can help you keep a positive, growth-oriented mindset. As a student, a hopeful outlook helps you maintain momentum as you work through classes and training.
2. Perseverance
Life coaching is a fulfilling career — but it’s not necessarily an easy one. Whether you’re facing challenges during training or during your career, perseverance can help you get through these situations. Showing up, despite the circumstances, helps you build a steady commitment to your studies and your clients.
You might find yourself struggling with impostor syndrome in school or in your practice, for example. Developing perseverance can help you handle this challenge and use it as an opportunity to grow. It’s also helpful for other difficult situations, like long study periods that can sap your motivation or slow progress when working with a client.
3. Forgiveness
No matter how much you study or focus on your training, you’ll make mistakes — all life coaching students do. You might experience other setbacks during your training or feel like you’re not good enough. Whenever you stumble or struggle with self-doubt, work on forgiving yourself.
Forgiveness helps you develop self-compassion, rather than getting stuck in an unhelpful cycle of guilt or self-criticism that prevents growth. Having this compassion for yourself makes you a better life coach, helping you extend that same grace to future coaching clients. If they face setbacks or make mistakes on their journey, you’ll be there to treat them with compassion and encourage them to forgive themselves.
4. Creativity
This character strength doesn’t just refer to artistic expression. It also includes skills like flexible thinking and problem-solving. Creativity helps you see new possibilities for clients, encouraging them to keep working on their goals or come up with new ways to handle their struggles or concerns.
Creativity offers other benefits for you as a life coaching student or professional, too. It makes studying or coaching feel fresh, intuitive, and responsive, helping you develop a love of learning. Instead of using the same techniques or asking clients the same questions over and over, you can come up with different ways to approach coaching in order to serve your clients better.
5. Humility
As a life coach, you’ll need to have confidence in your skills and ability to help your clients. But you’ll also need to balance this out with a healthy dose of humility. Life coaching training doesn’t end when you graduate or finish a program — it’s an ongoing learning experience.
Having humility as a student helps you stay open to learning and feedback throughout your career. It helps you develop a curious mindset rather than an ego-driven one, allowing you to provide an ethical, client-centered coaching experience. With humility, you’ll be able to handle constructive criticism or feedback and use it to improve as a coach.
6. Empathy
One of the most important things you’ll learn as a coaching student is to create a nonjudgmental environment for clients. This requires empathy — the ability to understand what others are feeling and thinking on a deeper level without judging them. Without empathy, you’ll find it harder to relate to clients’ experiences and emotions.
Empathy helps you build a trusting relationship with clients, allowing them to feel comfortable and safe being vulnerable with you during coaching sessions. This character strength helps you connect with clients in an authentic way that supports healing and encourages personal transformation.
Empathy goes hand in hand with the self-compassion that comes with forgiveness — they both involve valuing and connecting with emotions.
7. Patience
This is a valuable strength to have during the learning process and during your career. Patience is a great reminder that growth isn’t a fast or urgent process. It takes time and requires you to hold space for clients as they go through this journey at their own pace.
Being patient as a student rather than rushing through your studies helps ensure that you learn and develop coaching skills and techniques, while also building a growth mindset. Patience can also serve you well during difficult times when you’re training or working with clients.
8. Courage
It may be easy to understand why strengths like patience and empathy are needed for life coaching, but what about courage? Coaching clients involves being willing to speak up, be seen, and ask powerful questions. You’ll also need to hold clients accountable as they work on their goals.
As a life coach, you might help clients who are in challenging situations, or you may have to ask difficult questions. You might need to have uncomfortable conversations about clients’ struggles. If clients aren’t meeting their goals, you’ll need to find out why and encourage them to get back on track. It takes courage to handle all of these coaching tasks.
Courage isn’t just important for your clients’ sake. It’s also important in terms of your own growth. Being courageous means being willing to grow as a life coaching student and professional, even when it’s uncomfortable.
9. Presence
Presence means showing up fully for clients or for yourself. As a life coach, it’s important to give your clients your whole attention, rather than let distractions take your focus off of them during sessions. That means you’ll need to be fully present. As a student, presence helps you stay focused on your studies and make the most of the learning process.
You can’t fake or rush presence. It’s a character strength that you can work on developing over time. In fact, it’s a practice you should return to often. Different factors can affect your ability to be present, no matter how easily this strength comes to you at other times. Taking a few minutes to ground yourself during your training or before client sessions helps you maintain presence.
10. Integrity
This strength serves as the foundation of trust in coaching. Without integrity, you may not be able to be authentic with clients, making it harder for them to trust and confide in you. That can prevent clients from achieving personal growth. Developing integrity helps you act with honesty and alignment that encourages clients to open up to you.
With this character strength, you can build an ethical practice that you’re proud of. It also helps you attract clients who feel comfortable being able to depend on you to guide them toward making meaningful changes in their lives.
Grow into the coach you’re meant to be with Jay Shetty Certification School
Developing and using character strengths isn’t just a great way to become a successful life coach. This process also helps you show up in your everyday life as part of your own personal growth journey.
The Jay Shetty Certification School provides many opportunities to work on building these signature strengths through your studies and in your day-to-day life. This learning experience helps you step into the kind of coach you want to become and enjoy a rewarding career.
Ready to start your life coaching training? Join our program today!
