3 Ways Coaching Can Transform Your Career

Once reserved for sports, dance or music, coaching is now a must-have tool that can be accessed by all – young or old whether you’re a student or working or running your own gig.

Consider the 3 common challenges or dilemmas facing the working adult:

1. Work is okay; salary and benefits are good, but I don't feel like I’m growing in the job.

2. Love the work I do but the management or my immediate supervisor has unreasonable expectations and are overly critical.

3. The probation period is up and I’ve yet to be confirmed

and no reason has been given on why I’m not confirmed or why it’s been extended.

Time and again, the coaching conversations with my clients go back to one or more of the above and by the time the clients come in for coaching, it’s because they’re almost made up their mind that the job is wrong for them and they’re ready to leave even if they have no other job offer in hand.

That can be detrimental if you haven’t got your financial plan all sorted out (6 to 8 months of emergency funds, zero debts, no dependents etc). And both staying or leaving the job will wear you down emotionally and worse case, even mentally.

What can coaching do for you in such situations?

1. Identify the link between life satisfaction and career satisfaction by assessing your overall level of satisfaction in life.

Yes, you read that right – OVERALL satisfaction in life. When asked to rate satisfaction in other areas of life on a scale of 0 to 10, very often, most of my clients would score 5 or lower on at least 2 or 3 areas other than work. And why is this significant, you may wonder? Well, dissatisfaction in our lives will surface and gnaw at us at the subconscious level – it just pokes and prods you and then the moment you’re unhappy with something and articulate it, these negative emotions and thoughts that have been lurking silently in the subconscious level will pounce up and have a party. And since our longest awake hours are spent at the workplace, no surprises where the dissatisfaction starts to appear.

2. Elicit your values and beliefs.

These are critical to your career success as values and beliefs gives you purpose that drives you to take action. Values and beliefs are deeply entrenched in your psyche, a result of your collective experiences from birth and as you move into your adulthood, some of the values and beliefs may have shifted and you may find yourself being conflicted at work and life. Through coaching, you not only identify what’s important to you but also align your values and beliefs to your life purpose and work.

3. Remove limiting beliefs that get in the way of your success.

Limiting beliefs are those thoughts you have where you doubt your abilities or think that you‘re not good enough for the job/task. Limiting beliefs are a result of past experiences where you may have failed at a task or may have received negative feedback or you may have interpreted the feedback to be negative and this becomes a belief that hampers your success. It is a defeating conversation that you have with yourself and through narrative coaching, you get a chance to talk about these beliefs and reframe them to empowering beliefs.

In case you’re wondering – where is the transformation in my career through the above steps?

You no longer will be shooting darts in the dark – you gain clarity on whether the job/organisation is a right fit and make your decision on an objective criterion that also aligns with your values and higher purpose rather than a whim or emotional upset.