How to find a life coach (and what to be wary of)
Nobody licenses life coaches in Canada, so nobody has vetted the person you're about to hire. Here's what's actually worth checking before you do.
How Coaching WorksSeptember 10, 20268 min read
You already suspect that a lot of people in this industry bought a certificate online.
You are right. I am not going to spend this article defending coaching from that, because the honest answer is that the suspicion is well founded, and because you are better served by knowing exactly how the thing works than by being reassured about it.
So here is how it works, including the parts that are inconvenient for me.
What does a life coach actually do?
A coach asks you questions about your own situation until you can see it more clearly, and then helps you decide what to do next and stay honest about whether you did it.
That is genuinely most of it. There is no diagnosis, no treatment, no assessment, no prescribed programme. Good coaching is a structured conversation with someone whose only job in the room is your thinking. It is useful when you are stuck, when you are stuck on a decision, or when you are repeating a pattern you can see and cannot interrupt.
It is not useful for everything, and I will come back to that.
Nobody is checking. That is the part to understand.
In Canada, no province licenses "life coach" as a title. There is no exam you must pass, no registry you must join, and no government body that can strike anyone off.
Alberta's own occupational guide, for the closely related job title of life skills coach, says it plainly: there is no provincial legislation regulating this occupation. Quebec's psychology regulator states that interventions such as coaching may be practised without a psychotherapist permit. The federal Job Bank listing for the role names no regulator and no licensing requirement. There is no single national statute saying so, and I am not going to pretend there is. But check the provinces one at a time and the answer keeps coming back the same.
There is a limit to that freedom, and it is worth knowing. Quebec's regulator has also warned that calling yourself a coach does not exempt you from psychotherapy law if psychotherapy is what you are actually doing. The title is open. The clinical work behind the title is not.
What the absence of regulation means in practice was demonstrated fairly bluntly in 2022, when a CBC Marketplace investigation looked into the industry. A CBC producer obtained a life-coach certification in about an hour, for roughly two hundred and fifty dollars, without doing the coursework. The investigation also found coaches offering advice adjacent to mental health without clinical training. That was journalism rather than an enforcement action, and no prosecution was reported, which is rather the point.
So the checking that a college would do for a physiotherapist, or a law society for a lawyer, is not happening here. You are it. That is workable, but only if you know what to look at.
What the credentials actually mean
The largest international credentialing body in this industry is the International Coaching Federation, and understanding how it is structured tells you most of what you need.
ICF awards three levels to individual coaches, and the requirements are specific. As of September 2026:
| Credential | Coach-specific training | Client coaching hours | Also required |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACC (entry) | 60 hours | 100 hours, at least 75 paid, at least 8 clients | 10 hours of mentor coaching, a recorded performance evaluation, and a pass on ICF's ACC exam |
| PCC | 125 hours | 500 hours, at least 450 paid, at least 25 clients | 10 hours of mentor coaching, two recorded evaluations, and a pass on ICF's credentialing exam |
| MCC | 200 hours | 2,500 hours, at least 2,250 paid, at least 35 clients | Must already hold or have held PCC, plus mentor coaching, recorded evaluations and the exam |
Those numbers are the useful part. None of that happens by accident, and none of it happens just by finishing a course.
Now the distinction that almost every coaching website blurs, deliberately or otherwise.
A school being ICF-accredited is not the same as a coach holding an ICF credential. Accreditation is something ICF grants to a training programme after reviewing its curriculum. A credential is something ICF grants to a person, after that person separately applies, logs real paid client hours, completes mentor coaching, submits recorded sessions for evaluation, and passes ICF's exam. Finishing an accredited programme does not hand you the credential. It makes you eligible to start applying for one.
This applies to me, so let me be specific rather than vague about it.
I hold the Erickson Certified Professional Coach designation from Erickson Coaching International, which is an ICF-accredited school. That is Erickson's own certification, awarded for completing their programme. I do not hold an ICF credential. I am not an ACC, PCC or MCC. I am not licensed, and I am not accredited as an individual, because individuals are not what accreditation applies to.
I am telling you that because it is the exact thing this article is asking you to check, and a coach who volunteers it is easier to trust than one who lets "ICF-accredited school" sit on the page and hopes you read it as something else.
Then go one step further, whoever you are considering. Check the claim with whoever supposedly issued it, rather than with the person making it. ICF's own coach directory carries a warning that the profiles in it are self-reported and not independently verified, and it runs a separate lookup precisely so you can confirm whether someone's credential is real. Canada's Financial Consumer Agency gives the same advice about unregulated titles in its own field: do not infer qualifications from a job title, ask what the training actually was.
What to ask on a first call
Many coaches offer a free introductory conversation. Use it as an interview. You are allowed to.
- What exactly is your training, and who issued the certificate? Then verify it afterward. A good coach will not be annoyed by this.
- What do you not work on? This is the most revealing question on the list. Anyone who says they can help with anything has told you something important.
- What happens if I bring you something that needs a therapist? You are listening for whether they have a clear answer and an actual referral practice.
- What does a session actually look like? You want a concrete description, not adjectives.
- How will I know if this is working? Vague answers here tend to predict vague engagements.
- What are your terms? How many sessions, what the commitment is, what happens if you stop.
On money, briefly. Rates in an unregulated market vary enormously, and price signals almost nothing about quality. A high fee is not evidence of skill and a low one is not evidence of a bargain. What matters is that the rate is stated plainly, the commitment is clear before you pay anything, and you are not being rushed.
What should make you walk away
Some of these would disqualify me too, which is the point.
- Any promise about the result. The result is not the coach's to promise. Nobody can tell you in advance what you will decide, or what changes afterward. Anyone who does is selling something they do not control.
- Any claim to treat, cure or heal a mental-health condition. That is not coaching, and a coach doing it is working outside what they are qualified for.
- Pressure to buy a large package on the first call. Especially with a discount that expires. Urgency is a sales technique and it has no place in this decision.
- Credentials that dissolve when you look at them. An impressive-sounding certification from a body that turns out to be the coach's own training company, or a school that cannot be found.
- A refusal to say what they do not do.
- Talking more than you do. Notice this on the free call. If you leave having heard a lot about their method and said very little about your situation, that is a preview.
One more, since people ask: can you just use a chatbot instead? For organising your own thinking, honestly, sometimes. But this is my opinion rather than a finding. A chatbot will not notice the thing you keep steering away from, and it will not remember in week six that you said the opposite in week two. Most of the value in coaching is in being noticed by someone who is paying attention over time.
When you should not hire a coach at all
This deserves its own section, because it is where the industry is least honest.
Coaching is forward-looking and works best when you are basically steady and stuck. If what you are carrying is heavier than that, a licensed professional is not the lesser option, it is the right one, and a coach who takes you on anyway is doing you harm for money. If you are not sure which category you are in, I've written a fuller comparison.
What to expect if you do go ahead
The first conversation is mostly about fit, and fit is not a soft consideration. You are going to say true things to this person. Whether you can is most of whether it works.
After that, expect to do the talking. Expect to leave sessions with something specific rather than a feeling. Expect to be asked about the thing you said you would do. And expect to know within three or four sessions whether it is working, which is a reasonable amount of time to give it before deciding.
If you want to test any of this, the way to do it is a conversation, not more reading. Mine is a free 30-minute Chemistry Call. No script and no pitch. You describe what is going on, I ask questions, and at the end you decide whether talking to me is useful. If it is not, I would rather you found that out in thirty minutes than in three months.
Interview me the way this article suggests. That is what the call is for.
Sources
Government of Alberta, ALIS occupational profile, Life Skills Coach, updated 31 March 2024. Ordre des psychologues du Québec, Pratique illégale et usurpation de titre. Government of Canada, Job Bank, Life Coach in Canada. International Coaching Federation, credentialing and accreditation pages, accessed 10 September 2026. Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Choosing a financial advisor, 20 October 2025. CBC Marketplace, Almost anyone can become a life coach, 26 February 2022.