Habit Coaching: The Missing Link in Your Coaching Toolbox

As a coach with some experience under your belt, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the frustration of knowing exactly what your clients need to do to succeed, yet watching them struggle to follow through. You care deeply about your clients, you’re passionate about helping them live happier, healthier, and more productive lives, but there’s that nagging feeling of imposter syndrome creeping in when they don’t seem to make the progress you know they’re capable of.

You’re not alone.

Many experienced coaches face the same challenge — how to bridge the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. This is where habit coaching comes into play, offering a science-backed, systematized approach to help your clients build sustainable habits that lead to lasting change.

What Is Habit Coaching?

Habit coaching is more than just advising clients on what to do. Rather, it’s about helping them assess their current context, design their environments (built/social/digital/mental) and systems to make their desired behaviors easy to do (and the undesired ones hard), and then to co-create a plan that they can put into action and experiment with. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, famously said, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Habit coaching is the art and science of creating those systems.

A habit coach understands that behavior change is complex and that willpower alone isn’t enough. Instead, they focus on the activators, client’s abilities, rewards, and contexts that form the backbone of habits, guiding clients to design their environments and lives in ways that support their goals and identities.

Why Coaches Should Consider Becoming Certified Habit Coach Professionals

1. Turn Knowledge into Action: As an experienced coach, you already know what your clients need. Habit coaching equips you with the tools to help them take consistent action. By understanding the mechanics of habit formation, you can guide your clients to not just set goals, but to embed those goals into their daily lives.
2. Understand Decision-Making: Our program dives deep into how we make decisions — an essential aspect of habit formation. Understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind decision-making allows you to craft more effective coaching strategies that resonate with your clients’ natural decision processes.
3. Master Behavior Assessment: Before you can change a behavior, you need to understand it. You can’t solve a problem until you understand the problem. Our program teaches you how to accurately assess behaviors, giving you the insights needed to identify what the true problem is that is holding your clients back. This foundational skill is crucial for designing targeted interventions.
4. Learn the Mechanics of Behavior Change: What makes a behavior happen? In our certification program, you’ll explore how activators, context, ability, and rewards drive behavior, turning these abstract concepts into actionable strategies. You’ll gain a deep understanding of how behaviors turn into habits and how to help your clients reshape their daily environments and routines for better outcomes.
5. Combat Imposter Syndrome: Many coaches struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling that despite their knowledge and passion, they’re not making the impact they should. Habit coaching offers a proven methodology that builds your confidence as a coach by providing clear, actionable steps to help your clients succeed.
6. Deepen Client Relationships: Clients who struggle to make lasting changes often feel frustrated and may even doubt the coaching process. By offering habit coaching, you can provide them with the practical tools they need to be successful, deepening their trust in you and enhancing the coach-client relationship.
7. Stand Out in a Crowded Market: The coaching industry is growing rapidly, and it can be challenging to differentiate yourself. Becoming a Certified Habit Coach Professional sets you apart as someone who not only understands theory but can also deliver results. It’s a niche that addresses one of the most common client challenges — creating lasting change. And by becoming Certified, you’ll become part of an elite global community!
8. Boost Client Success and Satisfaction: When clients see real, tangible progress, they’re more likely to continue working with you and refer others. Habit coaching helps you deliver those results, turning satisfied clients into loyal advocates for your business.

How Habit Coaching Works

Habit coaching involves a structured science-based approach that includes:

• Setting the Direction: Understanding what the client wants to specifically achieve and identifying which specific behavior(s) need to change.
• Assessment: Identifying the underlying problem (activation, ability, context, reward) that is keeping the client from doing the behaviors in that are in line with their desired identity and goals.
• Strategy Development: Designing a plan with behaviors specific to the client that they can experiment with and iterate upon to achieve their desired outcome, as well as planning for obstacles.
• Accountability: Regular check-ins, data collection, and tweaks to ensure the client is progressing and overcoming obstacles.
• Motivation: Reminding clients of their WHY and encouraging them to adopt an experimentation mindset, especially when they encounter challenges — there is no failure, only data points from which we can learn and iterate upon.

Why Now Is the Time to Specialize

With more people seeking coaching than ever before, there’s a growing demand for coaches who can help clients not just understand what they need to do, but actually do it. By becoming a Certified Habit Coach Professional, you can meet this demand and elevate your coaching practice to new heights.

If you’re ready to transform your coaching business and help your clients achieve the lasting change they desire, now is the time to invest in habit coaching!

Interested in learning more? 🚀

Together, with Behavioral Designer and Habit Expert Samuel Salzer, I founded The Habit Coach Professionals for this exact reason! We take coaching, and the privilege to transform someone’s life, very seriously. And we believe that to change the world we must become masters in changing behavior!

The Habit Coach Professionals 10-week Level 1 Mentorship & Certification Program offers a revolutionary way to learn effective tools and insights from psychology and behavioral science in a fun and interactive bite-sized lesson format. We provide you with insights and tools from behavioral science to help you and your coaching business thrive. To help YOU and your clients, learn how to make the healthy choice, the easy choice! Will you join us in the #HabitCoachRevolution? Learn more here.