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Aims | Highlights | Participants | Objectives | Contents | Date & Registration | Case Studies
Course Aims
Mid-life is a pivotal phase marked by significant personal and professional challenges, as well as opportunities for growth and transformation. This course equips life coaches with innovative tools and techniques to help clients navigate this critical period with clarity, purpose, and confidence.
Coaches serve as partners in helping clients overcome feelings of uncertainty, redefine goals, and unlock their potential for growth. By leveraging design thinking principles, coaches can provide structured, empathetic, and creative approaches to help clients reimagine their lives and create actionable strategies for achieving a fulfilling future.
This course is specifically designed to equip participants with two critical skill sets:
- Skills for Managing Mid-Life Transitions – Participants will learn to understand and address the personal complexities of mid-life transitions.
- Life Coaching Skills – Participants will gain the expertise to help others navigate mid-life transitions as effective and empathetic life coaches.
Part One: Self-Discovery and Personal Transformation for Mid-Life (Day 1 & 2)
The first part of the program focuses on self-exploration and personal enhancement tailored to mid-life contexts. Participants will be guided to deeply empathize with their own latent, unmet, and potential needs to understand better and transform their life journey during this pivotal phase. Key aspects of this phase include:
Part Two: Coaching Others Through Mid-Life Transitions (Day 3)
Building on self-awareness and techniques developed in the first part, participants will now learn to apply these skills specifically to help others navigate their mid-life transitions. This segment focuses on:
By the end of this three-day program, attendees will not only have mastered a comprehensive set of personal development tools but also be prepared to effectively guide others in crafting more fulfilling and purposeful life paths tailored to mid-life transitions. If you want to join Part ONE only, please click here to join another course.
Course Highlights
AI technologies that enhance life planning can also be effectively adapted to the coaching process, providing personalized insights, visual guidance, and strategic analysis to enrich personal and professional development for clients. Below are ways in which the same tools used in life planning can be leveraged to improve the coaching process:
- AI Analytics Tools: Tools such as ChatGPT can be utilized in coaching to identify and understand the dynamics between the coachee and their professional or personal connections. This analysis helps coaches devise strategies to improve the coachee’s interpersonal relationships and collaboration skills, which are essential for career advancement and personal satisfaction.
- AI Brainstorming Tools: Tools such as Stormz can be equally beneficial in coaching settings. They facilitate creative problem-solving sessions, enabling coaches to guide clients through the process of identifying innovative solutions to their professional challenges or personal goals. These sessions can foster creative thinking and strategic planning, encouraging clients to think outside the box and discover new possibilities.
- AI 2D-Visualization Tools: Using platforms like Dall-E, coaches can help clients visualize their achievements and set future goals in a more concrete and motivating way. These tools allow for the visual mapping of a client’s career trajectory or personal growth path, providing a clear and motivating visual representation of where they are and where they can go.
- AI 3D-Visualization Tools: Similarly, tools like AICG that produce 3D visualizations can be employed to help clients understand and navigate complex scenarios within their work or personal lives. By visualizing different outcomes and scenarios in three dimensions, clients can better prepare for potential challenges and plan their actions in a more immersive and realistic manner.
Targeted Participants
- Life Coaches or Aspiring Coaches – Coaches looking to specialize in mid-life transitions or expand their coaching techniques.
- HR Professionals and Leaders – Professionals supporting mid-career employees in managing transitions and career growth.
- Therapists – Practitioners aiming to integrate design thinking into mid-life counseling or coaching.
- Trainers – Trainers who want to incorporate mid-life transition strategies into personal development programs.
Course Objectives:
This program focuses on equipping participants with the skills to guide others through self-exploration and personal transformation tailored to mid-life contexts. Participants will learn to deeply empathize with the challenges and aspirations of clients, empowering them to navigate and reshape their life journeys during this pivotal phase.
Upon completion of this program, participants will be able to:
- Facilitate Self-Awareness in Clients: Use structured coaching techniques to help clients uncover and articulate their motivations, values, and hidden aspects of their personality during mid-life transitions.
- Enhance Coaching Problem-Solving Skills: Apply Design Thinking tools to identify client challenges and co-create adaptive strategies for personal and professional growth during mid-life.
- Support Clients in Reconstructing Life Journeys: Guide clients in reflecting on past experiences to design future life paths aligned with their evolving values and aspirations.
- Cultivate Collaborative Growth in Coaching: Develop skills to foster partnerships and co-create innovative solutions with clients, enabling shared success in navigating mid-life changes.
Course Contents
Pre-Course Preparation
Session 1: Discovering and Empathizing in Mid-Life [Life Design Tool list]
- Stakeholder Mapping: Participants will identify the major influencers in their lives and understand how these relationships impact their personal growth and decision-making during mid-life transitions.
- Self-Empathy Exercises: Through guided activities, participants will explore their own unmet, hidden, and potential needs, fostering a deeper understanding of their inner motivations and barriers specific to mid-life.
Session 2: Defining Your Mid-Life Persona and Journey [Life Design Tool list]
- Persona Development: Participants will create detailed personas of themselves to better articulate their expectations, constraints, and life contexts during mid-life.
- Personal Life Journey Mapping: This involves charting out key life events and turning points, allowing participants to visually narrate their past and pinpoint significant moments that have shaped their journey through mid-life.
Session 3: Developing Your Strategies for Mid-Life Transition [Life Design Tool list]
- Iteration Methods: Participants will explore multiple pathways to achieving their new goals, using iterative techniques to refine and optimize their approaches to mid-life planning.
- Prioritization Mapping: This tool helps to order potential strategies by impact and feasibility, ensuring that the most effective methods are pursued first.
Session 4: Delivering Your Action Plan for Mid-Life Transition [Life Design Tool list]
- Prototyping Life Milestones: Participants will develop prototypes for setting and achieving milestones related to their new goals, allowing for tangible planning and execution tailored to mid-life changes.
- ACES Analysis: This feedback mechanism involves gathering insights from key stakeholders to evaluate the progress and effectiveness of the new life strategies during mid-life transitions.
Session 5: Empowering Your Clients’ Life Paths with Design Thinking [Life Design Tool list]
- Coaching Perspectives on Design Thinking: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the Design Thinking process from a coaching perspective. Participants will learn how to apply this innovative framework to guide clients in mid-life planning, emphasizing creative problem-solving and actionable strategies to foster meaningful transformation.
- Uncovering the Unknown for Clients: Master advanced coaching techniques to help clients identify and articulate their unmet, hidden, and critical needs. These tools will enable coaches to support clients in defining what truly matters in their post-mid-life journey, paving the way for purposeful and fulfilling transitions.
Session 6: Unlocking Your Clients’ Potential Beyond Mid-Life [Life Design Tool list]
- Goal Achievement Strategies: Develop expertise in coaching clients to identify and implement the most effective strategies for achieving their goals during mid-life. Participants will learn practical methodologies to help clients refine their approaches and stay focused on their aspirations.
- Feedback and Adjustment Techniques: Enhance coaching effectiveness by mastering the art of providing constructive feedback. Learn how to guide clients in making necessary adjustments to their strategies, ensuring they achieve their goals more efficiently and successfully during mid-life transitions.
Follow-Up Sessions
Course Leaders and Training Facilitators
Our training team is composed of seasoned, internationally certified Design Thinking facilitators. Throughout the training process, they will share proven strategies and hands-on expertise in applying Design Thinking to career and life planning. With their professional and actionable methods, participants will swiftly incorporate the fundamental principles of Design Thinking into their career and life planning, thereby elevating both the innovation and practicality of their approaches.
Course Leader: David Chung, Dean of DesignThinkers Academy China
Date, Time, Tuition Fee and Certification
Duration: 3 Days
Date: 29 Mar, 5 Apr, 12 Apr 2025 (Saturday)
Time: 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Language: Cantonese (粵語) with English Materials
Mode: Physical Class (will be arranged in Kwun Tong District, Hong Kong)
Tuition Fee: HK$9,000 | HK$8,500 (up to one month prior to the start of the course)
Online Registration and Inquire


Certification: Upon completing the course and all related exercises, participants will receive a Digital Certificate of “Design Thinking for Life Planning” and a Digital Badge from the DesignThinkers Academy. These credentials are securely issued through a blockchain-based global certification management system.

Leveraging Design Thinking for Career Development and Transition: A Global and Local Perspective
Design Thinking has been effectively employed worldwide for career development and transition across diverse sectors. Notable figures such as Joe Gebbia in Hospitality, Jane Chan in NGOs, Kiran Sethi in Children’s Education, Paula Davis in Coaching, and Martha Moore in Apparel have leveraged this approach.
Also noteworthy is its prevalent use in Hong Kong for career progression and pivoting among individuals with varied backgrounds. In response to this, we have orchestrated a series of seminars and webinars on “Design Thinking for Life Planning and Transition,” featuring dialogue with 13 distinguished Design Thinkers from Hong Kong. They are 吳克儉院士、林小湛教授、林偉雄院士、李潔蘭校長、鄧哲平先生、梁智軒博士、葉文謙先生、陳呂令意校長、唐文標律師、尹繼賢博士、林偉強博士、孫美妮女士 及 黎嘉豪先生 (Ordered by sequence of the interviews). We want to express our deepest gratitude to the following guest speakers for their voluntary contributions.
