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Why Life Coaching?

Coaching and Learning Institute (CLI) in Portland, Oregon, provides life coaching to young people ages 12 to 20. Our teen life coaching approach has also been used with mentoring and youth-serving organizations such as Portland Impact's Youth MAP program and the "I Have a Dream" Foundation in Portland. Life coaching for teens, as provided by CLI, differs from the life coaching an adult receives from a practitioner in its emphasis on guiding young people to value self-improvement and growth. By employing a positive attitude that emphasizes strengths, coaches at CLI both inspire, teach, and empower youth.

In a typical life coaching arrangement, trained professional coaches help adult clients to define their unique needs and goals and then assist them in taking specific actions to make positive changes in their lives.

At Coaching and Learning Institute (CLI), we believe that the action-oriented features of life coaching are ideal for helping adolescents take responsibility for their lives. Unlike tutors, who support youth with remedial help, life coaches can “step inside” young people’s world view and get them invested in making change. Unlike parents, who support their adolescent children with well-meaning advice and admonitions, life coaches can be an objective sounding board to help youth make sense of the pressures they experience at this critical period in their lives.

To train adolescents to turn challenges into opportunities, we employ a process for change that never uses the words “problem,” “challenge,” or even “goal.” We have adapted life coaching techniques, which are inherently positive, to fit the visual and imaginative strengths of adolescents. Young people learn to visualize a skill they would like to develop, or a power they already possess but would like to expand. We help them to create a rich, specific image (visually, verbally, and/or kinesthetically) of the outcome they desire. We then teach them how to take small manageable steps to turn this vision into reality.

Not only do they attain their goals, but they develop the capacity to engage in this process on their own, giving them a route to competence whenever they are challenged. As they go on to achieve increasingly more impressive successes, they strengthen their self-concept. They use a growth model that is positively reinforcing rather than negative and deficit based.