The Wheel Of Life And How To Use It As A Coach
Are you familiar with the wheel of life?
This is one of my favorite tools to use when working with clients and even personally. So the original concept of the Wheel of Life was attributed to Paul J. Meyer, who founded the Success Motivation Institute back in 1960. So it is estimated that the Wheel of Life has been around since then. Meyer was thought to be a thought leader in the coaching industry and such an amazing pioneer, he built many programs around helping people achieve their goals, manage time, etc. Hence, the Wheel of Life includes some of those critical components
The Wheel of Life, if you're new to it, is a visual tool used in coaching to help clients quickly understand how balanced or fulfilled their life is currently. The Wheel of Life consists of about eight different areas or categories. With some wheel templates you'll find that have ten different areas that are important that contribute to a balanced life. With the Wheel of Life, clients use it to rate their overall satisfaction with each area and then map it onto the wheel, which you'll see in a moment.
This gives them an immediate sense of insight into what's currently happening in their life and to see if there is a balance in their life as well as what areas may need improvement. For many coaches, including myself, the Wheel of Life is a critical component in my coaching practice. Its extremely powerful because it provides an instant overview for both the coach and the client, and it lets you know where the change work needs to take place.
I love that the wheel of life helps your client and helps you, as the coach, become more self aware and more motivated to make changes and to know where to make those changes. Having this sense of knowledge empowers the clients and gives them a sense of direction and helps you to support them deeper. So when we look at the Wheel of Life, as you see down below there are many different categories. You could also change these categories to fit your clients needs. So instead of growth you could title it personal development or maybe the family and friends category needs to be combined. You can essentially change this to match your client.
How to use the wheel of life
So to effectively use the wheel of life, you want to ask your client to review the different categories that are on their life balance wheel.
Next, you ask them to rank their level of satisfaction with each area of their life by coloring up to where they feel like they fit. So are they about 50% satisfied with that area? If so they will color up to about the halfway marker. If they are 75% satisfied with that area. They'll color up about 3/4th of the way. The best way to help a client score is to have them score between 1-10. One being very dissatisfied and ten being fully satisfied. To support my clients sometimes I will give an example, like I might show my life wheel or I might just make up a life wheel just to demonstrate what this looks like.
Next you explain the perimeter. The outside circle represents their wheel of life. So once they've totally completed it, you then ask your client to look at their completed wheel and ask, if you are driving through life using this wheel, would it be a bumpy ride?
For most they're going to say yes, because what you're going to find is a lot of clients may feel really fulfilled in one area, but may be struggling,in another area. For example their social life may feel really fulfilling, but they feel disconnected from their own personal growth.
There's going to be areas where they're doing really well and they feel really aligned, and then there's going to be areas where they don't feel so proud of. The final product of the wheel shows where they are out of alignment.
The next thing you want to do is ask your client which area would they like to work on. For me I always try to help them to see if threy pick a prominent area it could impact some of the categories they are struggling in. For example if they pick health as their area of focus, when they improve that it could improve their career category as they show up more confident and energized etc.
This allows you to see what area you will support your clients with and the change work that may need to take place to support them,
How can coaches use the wheel of life
There are many different options for coaches. You could use it personally.
I know for me, as I was starting to develop what areas of coaching I wanted to niche into, I started to leverage this wheel of life. This helped me to see what areas I felt strong in. I also use it to see where I've made my own progress and my own growth.
You could use the wheel of life with a Prospective Client. So often potential clients are unclear exactly what area they want help in your coaching with. So prospective clients can be really helpful because it highlights the areas and they don't have to be shy about announcing it. You just use this tool to help build a coaching package around them and to support them on the coaching journey.
You can use it in a client welcome package. So again, it gauges where your client is starting and then when the client is off boarding, you can now see the progress that the client has essentially made. In this case this has become a tool to gauge the clients growth.
You can use the wheel of life to set and prioritize goals. When helping clients decide which areas they'd like to set goals around this tool is extremely powerful. You can use the wheel to highlight the areas that they have lower satisfaction, and then you leverage the things that you're going to teach to build that satisfaction in that area.
You can also use this as a way to help a client build a magnetic future. So if you identify, okay, this is the area they really want to work on, the financial area of their life right now, you start using tools, different strategies to help them build a future around the financial goals that they envision.
You can use this tool to test which goals are most meaningful for a client because sometimes for most people it’s easy to focus on the area’s they are already finding success in. For example, for me, I always score really satisfied in the personal development space, but I also spend a vast majority of my time in the personal development space.
So if I was coming to work with a coach to improve my personal development, a coach may be able to actually use this tool to see that my personal development is in a great space and instead determine what other areas they could really support me in.
This tool helps the coach to test and notice which goals are going to be most impactful for the client.
You can use this as a diagnostic tool to be able to help clients. When a client is feeling, unhappy or frustrated or down, the Wheel of Life helps that client to have a great starting point, to discover what's bothering them and to be able to take action toward what it is that they want to call in. Because sometimes we're dissatisfied, but we can't even figure out why. The wheel of life shows us. Using this as a diagnostic tool, it's crazy supportive.
You build it in to your coaching program. Anytime you start a coaching program with a client, whether it's an individual or a group coaching program, this is a great way to take stock of the participants current life situation. Then that way you know where to cater and structure your coaching program to where they're going. Like, for example, I have a client who has a coaching program around finances for entrepreneurs. This is one of the starting modules that she leverages.
Workshops is another option. The Life Balance Wheel makes an excellent introduction to any life coaching workshop because it's a great tool to help clients dig in to see where their stress is coming from, where they're triggered, where maybe they're not even giving themselves credit in such as areas that they're doing really well in.
As you can see the options are endless, but I wanted to get your wheels spinning to see what was available when leveraging The Wheel Of Life.
Great reflective Questions After Using The Wheel Of Life.
Here are 12 reflective questions you could use to help your client process when working through the wheel
How do you feel about your life as you look at your wheel?
Is there anything that shocks you?
How do you currently spend time in these areas?
How would you prefer to spend time in these areas?
What would make that (Area) a score of 10?
What would a score of 10 look like? Feel like?
Which of these categories would you most like to improve? Consider what category could have the biggest impact on the other areas.
How could you make space for these changes in your life? Any action steps you could take today?
What help and support might you need from others to make changes and be more satisfied with your life? Or is this self motivated?
What change do you want to make first?
What is the smallest step you could take to get started?
If there was one key action that would begin to bring everything into balance, what would it be?
One of the things that I love most about the wheel of life, is the fact that it helps your clients have a visual of what they are experiencing. It also allows them to do some deep reflection around where they desire change. The truth is your client already has the answers within them. You're just supporting them and pulling it out. And tools like this help you to do so seamlessly
Moving Forward….
So how can you effectively leverage this moving forward? How can you begin to implement this into the work that you do? I want you to remember that this assessment and this tool is an extremely powerful and flexible modality and tool that you have access to. However, in whatever creative ways you want to leverage this, give yourself permission to do that and understand that this tool is going to provide your clients with so much clarity the ability to make changes, changes to improve their life and the motivation to keep it going. So do not sleep on it. It is a game changer for your business.
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