“Why would I need a career coach?” I hear you ask. There are a variety of ways a career coach can help you in your career, including:
Providing Guidance & Clarity: to help you clarify your career goals and develop a plan to achieve them by providing expert advice on job search strategies, resume writing, interview techniques, negotiating remuneration packages and networking. A career coach can also open your eyes to considering job opportunities you may not have considered before, and show you how to transition your career.
Boosting Confidence: by helping you identify your strengths, and appreciating your value proposition and seeing where you add value you can gain confidence in your abilities. This is particularly important during career transitions or in overcoming any challenges that may be holding you back.
Offering Accountability: just like a personal trainer, a career coach can help you stay accountable to your goals by providing regular check-ins and support. It’s also important to track your progress, adjust plans as needed, and celebrate your successes along the way.
Independent Sounding Board: a career coach can offer objective feedback help you identify and increase your awareness of your blind spots, and develop the skills you need to overcome them. I also help people prepare for conversations with their managers, team members, Boards to effectively position ideas and influence decisions and outcomes.
Overcoming Career Plateaus: if you feel stuck in your current job , it’s important to understand why and see if changes can be made where you currently are, or if it is necessary to move on. It might simply be that you are ready for opportunities to grow and develop and learn new skills, or that you need to start exploring a new industry. It might be that you need to find what’s missing in your current role and see what you can start to do to fill that void.
Getting Market Ready: how long has it been since you’ve had to update your resume, put a cover letter together and present at an interview? Many people send the same resume out for each job they apply for and simply adapt the cover letter, and then wonder why they don’t get results. Sometimes it’s just a subtle tweak that makes all the difference, but it’s knowing what to tweak!
Making Career Decisions: Do I stay or do I go? Which job offer should I accept? Do I want to step into a leadership role? How much money should I ask for? Should I apply for this job? There are so many decisions to make along the way, and knowing what to base these decisions on can save you time, money and heartache, not to mention your mental and physical health. A good career coach can equip you with the tools you need so that you can make these decisions with confidence throughout the rest of your career. A lot of the work I do is underpinned with helping people also make the right career choice so that it has a positive impact on their health and wellbeing, including their relationship with their partner and family.
Overcoming Past Career Traumas: Many of us have at least one unpleasant experience from our past roles, and without realising it, this might be holding us back. In discovery sessions with clients they often ask for help in letting go of any baggage from the past so that they are free to move forward and create the career they truly want. There might be repeated patterns of thought and behaviour that are not serving you.
Having More Influence & Impact: I’ve worked with people wanting to present ideas with more influence within their organisation, through to Managers preparing for their performance reviews with their CEO, and CEO’s raising sensitive issues with their Chair. It’s worth taking the time out to strategise how to present information in a way that will be received openly and constructively, and ultimately influence how that person will react and engage.
Avoiding Career Burnout: When people are in high pressure jobs, it is very easy to push everything aside and push on. You ignore the little signs from your body to take action, until the little signs become bigger, and with many people, it takes a wake-up call for them to see what’s happening and implement strategies. However, it’s not until someone starts asking you questions that you focus back in on your body, your sleep patterns, your energy levels, that you realise it’s time to make some changes. I think COVID has shown us that work can look differently these days, and we can take control of our work day.
Personal Growth: Often people who have had career coaching say that it is like life coaching, as the starting point is gaining a clearer understanding of who you are and what you want from life. What your version of success looks like, and what lights you up. We don’t switch off half of ourselves when we go to work, so if we have certain limiting beliefs holding us back in our life, they are also holding us back in our career too.
…. and a hundred other things like:
- being in the driver’s seat of your career
- career risk management
- preparing for interviews
- how to pivot your career (either role or industry)
- how to handle remuneration negotiations
- developing a portfolio career
- venturing out into your own business
- stepping into your power as a leader
- improving productivity and performance.
(take a look at some career coaching programs here)
So if you’d like to discover how a career coach can help you in your career, invest in a chat to explore whether it’s right for you.
