Category: Career Coaching

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Career Coaching

How To Make Career Decisions Without Going Around In Circles

Image of doors, reflecting career help choices

Are you looking for help with your career?

At various points in our lives we can find ourselves needing help with our careers. This post helps you to understand what the role of a career coach is and whether it’s the right option for you.

Do any of the following sound familiar?

  • you’ve reached burnout and need to reassess
  • you feel like something is missing and want to find out what it is
  • you’ve been following a career path, but are wondering whether it’s making the most of your strengths
  • you’re interested in a promotion, but aren’t confident enough to move forward
  • you’ve taken on a new role and are struggling with self belief

The average person changes jobs 12 times in their lifetime

2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics

How can a career coach help?

A career coach can help you to gain clarity on your next steps. Coaches help you by giving you the time and space to think, working through what’s on your mind. As a coach my role is to ask you the incisive questions that help you uncover what your goals are, what might be holding you back and how you can get to where you want to be.

A coach isn’t there to tell you what to do. If you’re looking for advice you might find a mentor helpful. Mentors are typically people who are further along in their career journey than you. They can advise you how they got to where they are and act as a sounding board for challenges that you’re facing.

What if I want help to change career?

We often undervalue our strengths and achievements. If we’re looking to change career it can feel like a very scary leap. A career coach can help you to increase your self-awareness, enabling you to communicate your strengths with confidence. Together you can identify connections between your previous achievements and the role you’d like to pursue. A coach will help you to develop a roadmap, with small steps which can help to reduce the leap.

What is an employment coach?

Employment coaches often work with unemployed people, helping them to develop their employability skills. This can include providing advice on CV writing, interview techniques and job search strategy. I also offer these services. The sessions are a mix of coaching and advice. For example, I will coach you, to help you identify your strengths and achievements, then provide guidance on CV writing good practice to ensure that your CV has the best chance of success.

How can Coach The Difference help?

I’m a qualified Executive Coach with a triple accredited Practitioner Diploma in Executive Coaching. My clients are often professionals in career transition, who have recently secured a new role, or are looking to change roles.

I bring my experience as a senior leader, managing 5 multi-functional departments to my coaching. Within this role I was responsible for the recruitment, onboarding, mentoring and development of a large number of employees. I also work as a career coach for an outplacement charity helping unemployed professionals.

I offer 1-1 coaching, which is tailored to your needs. We work together for 6 – 8 sessions, meeting every 2 – 4 weeks. Coaching sessions are usually provided virtually via zoom, enabling you to fit them into your schedule.

If you would prefer face to face coaching it can be provided in my home office, a coffee shop, or as walking coaching in the Beaconsfield area.

If this sounds interesting please book a free 30 minute discovery call. Don’t worry, there’s no hard sell, it’s just an opportunity for us to find out whether we’re a good match.

Categories
Career Coaching

Goal Setting – What Matters Most In Your Life?

goal setting in a planner
  • What would you do if you only had 10 years left to live?
  • How about 5 years?
  • What if you only had 1 year?

This goal setting exercise was given to me several years ago. It really made an impact.

I think it was so significant for me, because 10 years ago, my husband died after only 1 week in hospital. I realised at that point, just how short life can be. Initially I was offended, I thought that it was an insensitive question to ask, given my circumstances. However, it made me reflect on what was important in my life.

We can easily go through life with goals and dreams that we put off for another day, thinking that we’ll have time. Sometimes it’s fear of failure, or even fear of success that holds us back. Sometimes it’s not having a clear plan.

9 out of 10 workers would take a pay cut if it meant having the opportunity to participate in more purposeful work. 

BetterUp

Shifting the question from ‘What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?’ to ‘What would you do if you only had 10 years to live?’ gives a sense of urgency, clarifying your thoughts.

The exercise motivated me to set clear goals and gave me a focus. I began to plan, research, set myself some deadlines and make things happen.

Using this questioning approach can help you to visualise what your priorities are. Once you’ve visualised your goals you’ll still need to plan clear steps to achieve them, but it’s a helpful tool to spark ideas.

How to set goals using this technique

By asking the time bound questions from the exercise above it can help you to think about;

  • how old you would be at that point
  • what age your children would be (if you have them)
  • how long you’ll have been in your current role
  • wider life goals, beyond work

Which can help you to think about:

  • the outcomes you’d like to have achieved
  • if you’ll have greater flexibility in terms of location, travel, working hours
  • whether you’d like to have moved onto another role
  • your work/life balance

Also reflect on the following:

  • What kind of organisation are you working in? e.g. Large Corporate, Not-for-profit, SME
  • What’s the culture like?
  • Are you working independently, or as part of a team?
  • Are you leading the team?
  • Where are you based? Home, an office, abroad?
  • What are you known for?

What next?

Once you’ve identified your goals:

  • think about how committed you are to them on a scale of 1 to 10, this will help you prioritise them
  • which milestones will get you to your goals?
  • how will you know when you’ve achieved them?
  • what might get in the way?
  • who could help you?
  • what’s the first small step which you need to take?

Without realising it, you’ll have used a SMART goal setting technique, by identifying specific goals, which are measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound.

I’d love to hear how you get on. If you’d like some help, please contact me about my coaching packages.

Following redundancy, one of my coaching clients was struggling to decide which career direction to take next. I asked how they’d like to be remembered when they retired.

They wanted their legacy to be their approach to customers. In that moment they realised that it was their greatest strength, yet it didn’t even factor on their CV. They were passionate and highly knowledgeable about customer service.

They identified organisations that they could target and actions they could take to raise their profile. 4 months later they’d secured a senior role building customer loyalty.

You might also like:

Vision Boards for when SMART goals aren’t your thing

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Career Coaching Leadership coaching

Vision Boards, for when SMART goals aren’t your thing

Vision board example

There’s plenty of research which supports the S.M.A.R.T approach to developing goals. However, it’s not for everyone, so I thought I’d share some posts with alternative approaches, starting with vision boards. As a disclaimer, I’m not guaranteeing success with any of the methods I share, they’re just tools which you might like to try.

Achieving goals

There are many elements involved in successfully achieving a goal, for example;

  • Deciding on your goal
  • Thinking creatively
  • Planning how you’ll achieve it
  • Visualising the goal and the steps to reach it
  • Paying attention to/being affected by relevant cues
  • Exercising willpower or self control
  • Helpful habits
  • Monitoring progress and adapting
  • Inhibiting internal distractions (emotions)
  • Inhibiting external distractions
  • Taking action

List from Amy Brann – Neuroscience for coaches

What is a vision board?

A vision board, or action board, is a visual representation of your goals, dreams and intentions.

If you google vision boards you’ll see that there is much debate about the pro’s and con’s! So to give you a balanced view here’s some research for and against them. What there seems to be agreement about is the importance of visualising the steps needed to reach your goals, so make sure you don’t miss this bit out!

What are the benefits of using a vision board?

Sometimes coaching clients feel stuck when talking about goals. When we explore it they’re often being held back by assumptions, beliefs and the voice in their head which is saying ‘I should do x…’ Visualising their desires can help them to think creatively – they start talking about the ‘what if’s…’ Their eyes light up at the possibilities, suddenly they feel motivated to take action.

During my coach training I experimented with a vision board. This was my experience:

  • The act of creating the vision board helped me to clarify my goals and dreams
  • It acted as a visual reminder of what I was aiming for. Research into goal maintenance shows that there could be benefits in keeping a goal in mind externally, rather than relying on working memory.
  • I found it helpful to portray goals beyond my work life e.g. financial, travel, wellbeing, hobbies. It helped me to think about the intrinsic motivation behind my goals, which drove me to achieve them (the ‘why’.)
  • As mentioned above, an important step for me was focusing on elements on the board and thinking about the steps I’d need to take to achieve them (the ‘how’.)

How to create a vision board

  1. Reflect on your goals or dreams.
  2. To help you develop your vision board ideas source images, metaphors, quotes and words which reflect your goals. You might also like to portray how you want to feel.
  3. Add the images to a board, this can be a physical pin board, or a piece of card. Alternatively you might want to create your vision board digitally using Canva, Miro or Mural. Unsplash is a great website for finding images.
  4. Looking at the different elements on your board, reflect on the following:
  • How might it feel if you achieve that goal?
  • Visualise the steps you could take to achieve it, what milestones are there along the way?
  • When might you get to those milestones?
  • Who can help you?
  • What might get in the way?
  • How could you overcome it?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10 how committed are you to the goal?
  • What would move you up the scale by 1 point?
  • What’s one small step you can take tomorrow/this week/this month?

In summary, my personal experience is that vision boards can be a useful tool for unblocking thinking, enabling you to think more creatively. They can be motivating, particularly when combined with reflection on the steps that you need to take to achieve the goals.

Have you used vision boards? What’s your experience been?

Once you start working towards your goals you may face challenges which de-motivate you. You might find this blog post helpful – 5 Resilience Boosting Techniques To Help You Move Forward

Categories
Career Coaching

5 Resilience Boosting Techniques To Help You Move Forward

stairs up a mountain requiring resilience

The word resilience has become part of our daily language. In this fast moving world, people are living with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The uncertainty created by the pandemic threw many lives into chaos. The only way to survive was to become more resilient.

What does resilient mean?

‘Able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.’

Definition from Oxford Languages

People often talk about resilience as bouncing back, but to me it’s actually about bouncing forward – learning from challenges and adversity, getting stronger and more able to face hard times in the future.

Resilience starts with your mindset. Whilst you don’t have control over everything that happens in your life, you do have control over how you choose to view it.

How do you increase your resilience?

Here are 5 resilience boosting tips to help you move forward:

  1. Become more self aware

    When you’re faced with a challenge recognise how it makes you feel. If you’re feeling stressed and anxious what affect is it having on your body? Is your heart beating faster? Are your palms sweaty? Is your stomach in knots? Where in your body are you feeling the anxiety?

    By taking a moment to notice the impact of the feeling you can start to focus on changing it. Do what works for you. It might be a breathing exercise, listening to music, going for a run, getting out into nature, cooking or journaling. Find an activity that calms you and helps you to regain control.

  2. Reframe the challenge

    Notice the negative thoughts that come into your head. If you think “I can’t do it!” you’re going to feel disheartened, like there’s no point in even trying. If you tell yourself “There’s no point in applying for this job. Hundreds of people who are more successful/experienced are going to apply.” You will start to feel like you’re worthless. So you won’t apply. You won’t get the job.

    Catch those negative thoughts. Think about how you can reframe them positively. “Yes, there may be hundreds of people applying for a job. They only need one person. If you apply you may be the person that they’re looking for. If you don’t apply you won’t get the job anyway, so you have nothing to lose by applying.” You start to feel that maybe you can do it. Your resilience builds. You take action.

  3. Explore opportunities creatively

    Recently I was providing career coaching for a client who was struggling with their job search. She kept scrolling through jobs on LinkedIn, not applying for anything. She was flitting between different job titles, not really knowing which direction she wanted to go in.

    Her mind was going around in circles and it was keeping her up at night. She felt like she’d never find a job. She was exhausted, demotivated and ready to give up.

    How did she gain clarity?
    We took a creative approach, visualising what role she’d like to be doing when she retired. She was surprised by the outcome of the coaching conversation. Her ideal job wasn’t at all what she’d expected it to be. She realised that she’d progressed from one role to another without a clear goal of what she wanted to achieve in life.

    Once she had that clarity she could see how she could get there and which roles would lead her to that point. Suddenly she was motivated. She recognised that there would be obstacles to achieving her goal, but she perceived them differently. They were challenges to overcome and learn from, rather than barriers to stop her.

    Creative approaches can help you to think differently, making connections between seemingly unrelated things. When we’re creative our brain stimulates alpha waves. Alpha brain waves help to obstruct habitual ways of thinking encouraging more ingenious thoughts. Therefore, when we’re creative we’re more resourceful, and problem solve in new, innovative ways.

  4. Build your confidence

    When we’re lacking in resilience we start to focus on our weaknesses, which eats away at our confidence. So think about what you can do. Sometimes it’s useful to talk to others, as we’re often our own worst critic. Other people will be much more able to identify your strengths.

    Reflect on when you’ve overcome challenges. What did you do? How did that make you feel? What can you learn from that?

    A really simple way of building your confidence is by adding the word yet. If you think, “I can’t do it yet” it changes your mindset and opens it up to possibilities.

  5. Celebrate your small successes

    Recognise your achievements on your way towards your goals. Often we focus on a goal and once we’ve achieved it we’re straight onto the next goal, without taking a moment to reward ourselves.

    For example, many of the jobseekers I’ve spoken to have been focused on applying for jobs. Once they’ve been accepted for an interview their focus is on the interview. If they get the job their next concern is the salary negotiation – they forget to celebrate each stage. Take time to congratulate yourself, being shortlisted is a big achievement in itself. Reaching out to your network, signing up to a course, updating your LinkedIn profile – are all accomplishments.

    When you brush your teeth at night reflect on one achievement you made that day. This helps your brain to start searching for other successes and it means you go to bed focusing on the positives.

If you’d like some more support you might find 1-1 coaching helpful. Book a free discovery call to find out more.

Categories
Career Coaching

Career Coach – Are They Worth The Money?

A career coach can stop you feeling lost

Are you looking for a new role? Or a career change? When you’re contemplating a change in career it can be overwhelming. Whether you’re looking for a new role by choice, or due to redundancy it can be difficult to know which direction to take. A career coach can help you gain the clarity you need more quickly. 

Going around in circles

Prior to using my career coaching services, clients have said that they ‘feel like they’re going around in circles.’ They are endlessly scrolling through job boards and LinkedIn, debating between different roles. Not knowing which roles to apply for, so not applying for anything. They begin to feel like they’ll never find the right job and their confidence starts to drop. 

Going in the wrong direction

Other career coaching clients have said that they’re getting interviews, but they ‘feel like they’re going in the wrong direction’ because something doesn’t feel quite right. So they feel like all the hard work that they’re wasting time filling out application forms and preparing for interviews. 

Successful job search strategy

A successful job search strategy starts with a greater awareness of yourself. As a career coach my role is to work in partnership with you, to help you identify what you need from your next role. Through coaching I enable you to articulate the unique combination of values, strengths, skills and experience that you have to offer. Having this greater self awareness brings clarity to your job search. You can stop going around in circles as you know which roles are right for you.

 

By matching companies and roles against the criteria that you develop, you won’t feel like you’re going in the wrong direction. The culture will fit with your values. The role will play to your strengths. When you reach the interview stage you are confident in what you can offer the company.

“Debbie was extremely professional, demonstrated good communication and matched her style to my needs. She effectively got me to recognise my situation, what I have achieved and learnt, and how to find a way forward. At the end of the session I had an action plan and clarity. I would highly recommend “Coach the Difference” if you are stuck and need someone to take the burden from you to give you a moment to stand back to reflect and review. With her help you, and your willingness, you will find a way forward. Good luck.” – Lucy Milton

Is a career coach worth the money?

You might be feeling unsure about asking for help due to pride. You may be thinking ‘Surely I can figure this all out myself?’ The truth is, that a lot of us need help to see beyond how we see ourselves. I provide a safe space for you to talk openly. As a coach I’ve been trained to work with you to identify your values, strengths, skills and experience. 

I don’t guarantee you a job. I am however, dedicated to your success. You will gain confidence, clarity on your goal and how to get there.  Yes, there is a cost to career coaching, but when we spend so much of our time at work it’s a worthwhile investment.

“Debbie is very skilful in her approach to coaching, she sets the scene, ensures you are relaxed and focusses on asking great, deep questions to get you talking about your aspirations in life and your career. In my case, where I am in a search for a new role, Debbie helped me to explore my career passions and how that should be presented to potential employers. It was a great session, which led me to many changes in my approach and left me full of positivity.” – Gary Marsh

I offer a range of career coaching support. All packages start with a free 30 mins discovery call. You can see if I’m the right coach for you and I can learn more about your goal.