Designing and/or changing careers is exciting but it’s also challenging. There’s no quick and easy way to decide what you want to do and plan and enact how you are going to get there.
Here is a broad overview of what is involved in changing career pathways and how coaching helps you get there.
Self-knowledge
To make good decisions about your career you need to know yourself from multiple perspectives. What are your strengths, values and talents or aptitudes?
Coaching can help you uncover this by conversation and guided self-reflection. Sometimes a personality or strengths questionnaire is useful to prompt your thinking and self awareness.
My service does NOT subject to a battery of questionnaires at the end of which is a list of possible career options. Rather I work through a process of self-discovery which provides the following benefits:
- Firstly I believe the insights you gain from your own work and reflection are more valuable and useful to you than a report. Because you had to work to get them, they are part of you. You own it and can use those insights more meaningfully.
- Secondly, the process of developing your own insights is a useful and lifelong skill that is essential for successful career transition.
Choosing a career direction
A career direction often emerges out of the process of self-discovery. It can take time to achieve though. If you have been puzzling over where to head for a while it can take time to figure out why you are stuck and move past that. Again, my process works to help you find a career that is aligned with your values and strengths, is meaningful to you and fits with your lifestyle and other career requirements.
Coaching can help you figure out what you want out of a career and help you brainstorm and explore options.
However I do not provide printouts of websites and organisations and training requirements and the like. As a highly trained professional it’s most appropriate for you to do that research. Not only is it about owning the answer more, but the process of research enhances vital networking skills and helps you move out of your comfort zone and really understand the lay of the land. These skills are important skills to develop as yo move out of your comfort zone into new territory. Yes, I provide suggestions and information from my experience. But the work itself needs to be done by you.
Logistics and making it happen
Having decided on a pathway there’s the logistics of making it happen. Undertaking any specific training requirements and applying for roles, creating CVs and preparing for interviews.
Coaching here supports you with motivation and personal development skills to carry this out. For example coaching can help you address procrastination and fear of change, coaching can help you with building confidence, coaching can help you cope with change, uncertainty and complexity.
Coaching does not give you a checklist or recipe to follow or write your CV for you.
So all up…if you are after the personal development required to create and sustain a fulfilling career, if you’ve got courage, persistence and determination to try something then coaching is the right approach for you.
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