What is Career Coaching?

I have just spent a couple of days in a rather wet Yorkshire and before I took Jenny our 7 year old Cavalier, out for a walk on the Moors I thought I would jot down my formula for career coaching. 

I don’t really believe in the A-Z of outplacement. When somebody is made redundant not everybody needs to cover every stage of the process and often the timing is wrong to receive such assistance. We all have different ways of dealing with adversity or is it opportunity?

There are so many choices to be made when being made redundant and depending on your financial circumstances taking a little time can make a big difference. In 2001 when both Jo, my wife, and I were made redundant, I rushed into a job when I should have sought a coach.

So, what are the choices: a new job? self employed? freelance? portfolio career? (Which I have enjoyed for the last 6 years) or even a mixture of these? My first stage is to meet with you to see if we have a match and that we are likely to be able to work with each other. This is a choice by both parties and I have been amazed by the number of referrals I have had from other coaches which shows that chemistry between coach and coachee is so important. Note this is not a coaching session, but purely half an hour to get to know each other a little.

Assuming the informal chat went well, the intake session to establish your agenda for the remaining 5 sessions takes 2 hours and includes:

1. Life Balance Wheel – What is truly important to you in your life and establishing what could be better
2. Work Balance Wheel – What do you enjoy/hate doing and establishing what activities you would like to do going forward
3. Values – What is truly important to you. Most people have not been asked this very important question before. If your employer does not have similar values to your own, this can cause stress and discomfort
4. Unique Abilities – Don’t get hung up on the word “unique” ; what are you really good at and don’t be too British!
5. Prism Brainmapping (www.prismbrainmapping.com) Profile Report which is a 40 page report and we run through the headlines of behavioural strengths/emotional intelligence/resilience

Probably the most important aspect of coaching is the time you are not with your coach. My programme sessions are a minimum of two weeks apart and are normally a month apart. This gives you and your unconscious mind time to work on things. So the next 5 sessions depends on where you are placed as follows:

1. Are you still fed up from previous experiences and do they need to be dealt with first?
2. Do you have a lack of self esteem and does this need to be tackled first?
3. Assuming you are at a stage of moving forward do you have a clear view of what forward looks like?
4. If not, what type of role/sector/company would you be aiming for (Blue Sky thinking stage)
5. Then looking at your strengths/skills/qualifications, what chance do you stand of getting there (Practical stage)
6. Once you know what you are aiming for, how are you going to get there (Marketability stage)
7. Individual CV for specific jobs/pre interview dummy interviews and presentations can all be part of the coaching service

What I enjoy about career coaching is that we are all different, wanting to achieve different things at different stages of our lives. Although we may have a similar goal or issue, each coaching client gets there in their own individual way.