Category: career coach

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Number 1 Leadership Skill

In its 2010 study of 1,500 Chief Executive Officers from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, IBM discovered that chief executives believe that – “more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision — successfully navigating an increasingly complex world will require creativity,” according to an IBM press release. “Less than half of global CEOs believe their enterprises are adequately prepared to handle a highly volatile, increasingly complex business environment.”  But by instilling creativity throughout the organization, today’s challenges can be met, in their view.

Creativity?  Now we’re talking.  Creative problem solving abilities and creativity in general are crucial to career and any other success, in my view, so I am excited and rather surprised.  In the past, talking with company leaders (CEOs and others), I’ve often found a lot of polite lip service to creativity when the topic is raised, the way you hear people talk politely about fostering diverse viewpoints.  It always sounds so great in theory but the reality of encouraging creativity or diverse viewpoints is actually quashed in most businesses in favor of “efficiency” or “teamwork” or simply unwillingness to deal with diverse ideas or people.  Or creative thinking.  So this is new.

Lesson for Jobseekers?

The CEOs thought that creativity would help with finding new business models, challenging the status quo, innovating, and taking risks with new ideas.  While you’d expect companies to hunker down and stick to the most tried and true solutions during this recession—that’s not what these leaders are saying.  Perhaps jobseekers should keep that in mind when seeking work.  That means they might want to highlight their creative abilities and successful challenges to the norm more than just focusing on being reliable, productive workers.  Certainly that’s something to keep in mind, at least for management positions.

The rest of the list is telling as well.  Integrity was second at 52%, global thinking received 35%, influence at 30% and at the bottom, fairness and humility at 12%.   Actually those bottom numbers are intriguing—humility is not exactly considered a big positive for CEOs or for business success in this country, and apparently fairness isn’t either.  Oh well.

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Forget Time Management

If you’re stressed out and overwhelmed with too much work and getting home late all the time, if you’re worrying about work life balance, or if you’re always running around scattered because of so much to do–stop!  Don’t run out and start implementing time management systems.  Forget about time management….for a moment.

Instead rethink what you’re really trying to accomplish.  Instead of framing this primarily as a time management issue, look at your situation as a creative problem solving situation around your main goals (overall or for the day or week).  Instead of cutting out 5 minutes here and there so you can get home 15 minutes earlier so you can run off to do something else–figure out what you really want your life to look like.  Then look at what changes need to be made to start moving you in that direction. Only THEN can you meaningfully start looking at what needs cutting and what doesn’t.

In fact, sometimes making things faster and avoiding interruptions may be a big mistake as it can increase the sense of being always on the go.  It can eliminate time to be creative and fully engaged.  It can eliminate the best social elements of work (which are always important even if not part of anyone’s job description).

In other words, don’t start by trying to save time every which way or writing down your to do list in a computer program or iPhone app.  Start by deciding what you’d really like.

For example, if one thing you’d really like is an hour a day more with your kids, start solving that challenge.  That may lead to dropping less important tasks or it may involve rearranging a schedule or even batching errands together more efficiently.  The point is to know that this is a priority and you’ll do whatever works best for making sure that gets done.  It may mean slowing down rather than speeding up so you can be relaxed enough to really enjoy time with your kids.

Step one then is to come up with all your goals about work and personal life and prioritizing them.  Even better is to start with your dreams rather than the more rational idea of goals.  A great way to do this that I use all the time with clients is to journal a few days in your ideal life as you’d imagine it.  That makes it concrete, real and detailed.

If you start this way you are motivated by your passions.  But if you start trying to save time with a sense of getting more done, you may get more done but then you will likely wind up with so much more stuffed into your schedule, you are wind up back where you were, feeling as stressed and overwhelmed as ever.

Here’s a start to this approach:

  1. Dream up a vision of what your day would look like if things were as you really wanted–at work and beyond
  2. Based on that, come up with key priorities or goals you can start working on now in each of your key life areas–personal, family, work, etc.
  3. Take the top priorities and start using a variety of creative problem solving techniques (not just time saving ones) to help you achieve your goal.

I know that isn’t always easy.  But I also know if you start with reading another book (or seeing another talk on) time management and don’t do these 3 steps first or something like them, you may become more efficient and technically more productive (if you’re lucky), but not happier–and isn’t that your real goal?

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Swing Dancing and Careers

My first swing dance teacher said that learning a relatively newer form of swing dancing–east-coast swing– was great for the short term, great for instant gratification.  A great place to start dancing because you could see real results pretty quickly.  You’d be out there on the floor, spinning and turning, going from closed to open positions.  A lot of fun, with a good amount of chance for growth.

But in the long run, she said, it was generally not fascinating and challenging enough if you really wanted to swing dance regularly for years.  It didn’t give you the same opportunities to play with the music, and didn’t have as many classic moves.

So do you just do east coast until you get bored?  Or do you go ahead and grit your teeth and go directly into lindy, knowing you may be pretty frustrated for quite a while on the dance floor?

Or maybe there’s a better way. You have 2 dance learning paths–you start learning east coast in order to get out on the dance floor with some success immediately, and well before that becomes less interesting, you also start learning lindy hop during practice time and classes.

So what does that have to do with careers?

Simple–many clients I see and people I talk with are stuck with the job equivalents of east coast dancing (or a “dance” they don’t like at all!) long after it has become unchallenging, predictable and lacking in opportunity to really show their stuff (grow, learn and express new skills and passions). They may well need help in finding some new moves for their east coast career options right now (translation: They need help with job issues or resumes, job interview skills, etc.), but for the long-term, they need to have something bigger in mind. They need a second set of career plans that let them dream big and work toward that dream now.

They may think they can’t do both, but in fact we do find ways for them to continue with their east coast dance for the short term AND be preparing themselves for lindy hop in the long term.  In other words, they can have two tracks going at once so that they don’t have to wake up one day ten years from now and realize their dream hasn’t happened and still seems 10 years away.

Tips for Long Term Career Action

Ask yourself what you can start doing this week to define, start testing out, or moving ahead with your ideal career even as you continue your current job or look for a new job similar to your last one.

  • First, figure out what you will want to be doing in 1, 5, or 10 years.  If you aren’t sure, check out some of the posts here for ways to do that, such as here and here.
  • If you already have some career ideas for the future:
    • Can you volunteer for an organization involved in the kind of work you’re interested in doing?
    • Can you do an informational interview with that shop owner who has a shop similar to what you’d like to do in a few years?
    • Can you find out about the educational options for becoming qualified in whatever field you’re interested in doing?
    • Are there internships you might get?
    • Are there books to read about doing your passion–photography, being an entrepreneur, a tour guide, a chef, a painter, a CEO of an engineering firm?

List all the things you can do over the next few months, and keep coming up with more steps until you are clear on what you want and have a general plan to achieve it.

In addition, blend your east coast (short term) and lindy plans too.  In other words, make sure what you are doing in the short-term also will help you in your long term plans by:-

  • Taking courses
  • Getting mentored
  • Learning about management styles
  • Gaining the skills you need
  • Making contacts.

By going along both paths, you can get instant success with your current work, make that help you for your bigger dream, and begin acting on that bigger dream now.   My clients get much more motivated with this than with just doing a new resume for a so-so job that they know isn’t their dream.  They are flat-out happier as they do that east coast swing dance while figuring out the steps for the lindy-hop future.

–Career changers, jobseekers–Be sure to sign up for free career and creativity ezine and get your career info bonus

© 2009 Leonard Lang. Feel free to reprint or pass on this article as long as you include the copyright notice and the hotlink to http://choosingacareerblog.com
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But Is It Realistic? How People Kill Career Dreams

Whether helping people as a career coach or a creativity trainer, one of the most common self-limiting ideas I hear—actually it may be the most common—is that a goal, a career, a job, a solution is unrealistic.

And with that one word, all hope is dashed.   All creativity also goes out the window—you can almost hear it flying off.
 
I find the idea of something being unrealistic is one of the most abused terms, often an unconscious excuse to bail out of something due to fear of failure, rather than an honest and full assessment of what can be done.  That’s one of the many reasons I start out every brainstorming group and every career client by having them put aside what’s realistic (to them) for starters and have them start imagining what they’d really want to do if they could have what they wanted.
 
Be Realistic Later Rather Than Sooner
 
Later, we can see how to make it real and what the real obstacles are.  Even then, I work with clients and groups to look creatively for new ways to get past obstacles, rather than just letting ourselves get us stuck, assuming there is no way because we can’t see it right away.

This way of approaching career dreams is simple but critical. You find your big ideas, dreams and wildest ideas first, and then see try every way to make them work out.  Tha’s very different from the model most people use—assuming their big ideas are unrealistic from the get-go, based on their limited current thinking.

Some people would respond to this approach by telling stories about how reality has knocked down their plans and big ideas when they were being creative and open minded.  That certainly happens at times.  But it just tells me that we don’t really know what will happen in advance until we try things out—until we see if we can achieve the apparently unrealistic goal.  After all, none of us has a big enough mind to see all the ways things can work out—for better or worse.  Since there are always unknowns, it’s best to creatively work towards your goals and see what arises that might help you that’s unknown than to assume things won’t work.  As they say in baseball, “that’s why we play the game.”

–Career changers, jobseekers–Be sure to sign up for free career and creativity ezine and get your career info bonus

© 2009 Leonard Lang. Feel free to reprint or pass on this article as long as you include the copyright notice and the hotlink to http://choosingacareerblog.com

 

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What’s at the Top of Your Resume?

What should go at the top of your resume under your name and contact info?

A.  Your Education?
B.  Your most recent work experience?
C.  Your objective–the kind of job you are seeking?

Answer–None of the above.

Why?  Because right at the beginning you need to give your resume a direction, a focus, a theme which a potential employer can skim and know what to look for in the rest of the resume.

You also need to show that you know your strengths and how they relate to the job you are seeking.
You also need to include those keywords and phrases that computers will use if they are the first level of screening.

The section that does all that is your profile or highlights of qualifications section.  You don’t want the others first because:

A.  Your education is generally very old hat, unless you just finished college.  Even if you did just graduate, if you have solid interning and volunteer or work experience, education may not go to the top. If you worked for at least a few years, it really belongs at the end.

B.  Your work experience goes after the profile and is the source of the profile highlights,t he explanation and proof of them.

C.  Your objective has been replaced in recent years by a profile.  Employers reading dozens or hundreds of resumes and cover letters aren’t going to be impressed or very interested that you want a “challenging management position where leadership and self-starter skills are essential.” Yet that’s the kind of pabulum that traditionally is written for the objective statement.

Instead, look at what strengths you want to highlight in the details of your resume.  Then, repeat or summarize the best points in shortened fashion for your profile.  Just make sure these points touch on qualities, skills and experiences that the potential employer is seeking.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

At the top of the profile, start with a title that matches the job you are looking for–yes, it is best to customize resumes for each job.  For instance, if the job is for regional sales manager and the keywords you need include: problem solver, entrepreneurial, minimum 5 years experience in sales management, your profile might look like:

Entrepreneurial Regional Sales Manager

  • Problem-solver with 10 years experience in sales management who developed new events to motivate demoralized regional sales force.  Event success resulted in company-wide adoption.
  • Entrepreneurial self-starter, opening new markets in 4 cities that resulted in 10 new clients for more than $250,000 of sales
  • Savvy manager who has successfully led small and large (25) sales forces, promoted 4 times in just 5 years for managerial skills

Then you would expand on each of these accomplishments in your specific work experience sections.

You can also consider adding a Skills or Key Competencies or Areas of Expertise section right after the profile information.  These too can be keyword rich according to the job description and your knowledge of what’s required for each job you seek. Again keep it specific—not just good communicator, but Consensus Builder or Conflict Resolution Expert or Motivator.

This is just one way to write a profile.  It could be more of a paragraph.  It could include more emotional terms– “passionate about…” but it needs to remain clearly focused and accomplishment oriented.  Remember that you are offering solutions to a particular employer, not reciting your history.

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Start Seeing Career Opportunities

Out of work?  Looking for a new career?  Then start seeing opportunities.

I just read about a fascinating experiment by psychology professor and bestselling British author Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles

He wanted to see if people who had lucky lives and those who were unlucky responded differently to unexpected opportunity.

He put ads asking for people to respond who considered themselves exceptionally lucky or unlucky.  He wound up with 400 people over the years from 18 to 84 from all walks of life.  The lucky had stories about lucky meetings with famous people, like Warren Buffet, that changed their lives or chance encounters that led to their marriages.  The unlucky told about disasters like their planes being struck by lightning.

Yet through it all, Wiseman wondered if the lucky were DOING something differently from those who were unlucky.  In other words, they didn’t just have luck happen to them, they did things that led to luck    ”… Although lucky and unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their fortune,” in Wiseman’s view according to an article he wrote about his experiment in The Skeptical Inquirer.

One factor was seeing more opportunities than others.

In an experiment, Wiseman gave volunteers a newspaper and asked them to count the number of photographs.   But inside the newspaper were unexpected opportunities—on page two he had a half page notice in 2-inch high type (hardly difficult to find), saying “stop counting—there are 43 photographs in the newspaper.”  The self-defined lucky people tended to find it, while the unlucky ones tended to miss it. Then, later in the paper there was another big announcement that said they should stop counting and tell the observer that they had seen this announcement to win $250.

You’d think that would get someone’s attention.  But not for the unlucky souls.

Wiseman concluded from this and other tests and experiments that the lucky people aren’t so focused on a single objective (like counting photos) so they can notice new and unexpected opportunities.  It’s the opposite of what we are usually told about getting ahead and certainly getting a job in a tough market.

His personality tests also showed that the unlucky were more anxious and tense.  Again, if you are in a job hunt or are desperate for a career change you are likely to have increased tension and anxiety as you do your job searching or career idea seeking activities.  As Wiseman writes, lucky people “look through newspapers determined to find certain type of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs.  Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.”

The good news–Wiseman found he could help people understand this and 3 other factors, and that people understanding this led to improved luck.

In this case, the lesson is very clear for career changers and jobseekers (and everyone else, too).  It’s not to be distracted and unfocused. But it’s also not about always concentrating on opportunities and goals. Instead it’s about staying relaxed and open ,being willing and confident enough that what you are doing will produce something good—though your idea of what that is may be only one good outcome.

It’s not in his research, but from experience, I’d suggest it’s also about gently holding an intention in mind—for instance, to find out something that will help you with a career choice or to find a great job opening.  That intention doesn’t mean you are constantly waiting for every chance to hand out a business card or ask about career opportunities. Instead, it just prepares your mind to hear and see when the equivalent of the ad for the $250 prize shows up even though you are looking for photographs.

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Get Answers to Questions about Specific Careers, Jobs

What’s the most direct way to get the inside scoop about the details of a specific career, an industry, a job, a company?

  • The internet?
  • Bureau of Labor Statistics?
  • Library databases?
  • Twitter?
  • Your best friends?

All of those are fine, but nothing beats the inside story from someone doing the job or hiring for the position you are considering.  How do you get that?

Just ask.  Ask for an informational interview.  It’s a no-cost powerhouse technique for getting up-to-date information.

With an informational interview you can find out:

  • What the opportunities are in an industry or companies
  • How to get into a field, job, or industry
  • What education or experience you might need
  • What’s the day to day like.   Many glamorous sounding fields have a lot of work that is not so glamorous (Even film superstars repeat small parts of scenes over and over).

Informational interviews are so great because you aren’t looking for a job during the interview, and the person you’re interviewing isn’t directly looking at you for hiring (though that might be a subtext).

In other words, whatever basic question you have about a career or job can be asked.

Who Can You Ask?

Use the broadest range of your network.  If no one in your network directly can answer the questions you have, ask them if they know anyone.  You’d be surprised at what you turn up.

You can also use social media, especially requests on LinkedIn or on Twitter.  You can also use LinkedIn to find people you don’t know but who are exactly the people you need.  Then see if you have anyone in your network who is directly connected with them.

Why will someone I don’t even know take the time to talk to me?  To answer a question with a question–would you take the time if someone asked you for just 20 minutes and sought out your advice and expertise without expecting anything else (like a job or reference)?   If you could fit such a request in, you probably would.

I know I have, and I’m not unusual because people I’ve asked have talked with me.

When Looking for Work (or More Clients)—My Experience

I’ve frequently been asked for informational interviews about coaching and training, and have enjoyed the discussions.  Hopefully, I at least gave the interviewer at least one point of view about the joys and obstacles in my field.

I’m currently going through a new round of interviewing people–not to change careers–but so I can learn how the changing health care environment might affect my leadership coaching and facilitation clients in health care.  I am also receiving invaluable information about the current hot buttons in health care, the language people are using, and how people look for services like mine.

Similarly, you can go on informational interviews that can extend your knowledge of how you can do a better job of looking for a job in a given field.  You can find out what people still need to hire for in your field, what kind of companies might be looking.  In addition, though you most definitely are NOT looking for a job during such an interview, you are almost automatically expanding your network.  It’s fine to let people know you’d like others to talk with and that you are looking for work just in case they do hear of something.

In other words it can be a solid part of your job search.  Of course, if they are impressed with you, they will remember you.  If they remember you, then if they or their company are looking for someone, you will have an advantage over other unknown applicants–or even be called in before any job posting.

Again, you are not directly seeking work during the interview, so don’t try to pretend you’re interested in an informational interview when you’re not or it will backfire.

In future posts, I’ll talk about how to conduct a successful job interview.  If you have experiences you’d like to share or questions, please add your comments to this story.  I’ll reply.

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More than a Network: Your Career Coaching Team

In most cases, when I hear people talk about networking they mean connecting with people who can get them to the right people, companies or information they need.  That’s useful. (You might also want to check out this career ideas post about how to network at events )

But these connectors are only part of what you need to really succeed in your career, job, or job search.   You need a full-scale community of support.  People who do more than just connect you. 

At the heart of that community are your VIPs for your career.  You might think of them as your unofficial career coaching team because they are performing some of the key roles of any quality career coach. 

Your career coaching team should include people who fill 5 of these career coaching roles:
1.    Connectors—People who can get you to others you need to meet to get moving, get ahead or get a job.  What most people see as their main career building community.

2.    Advisors—People who are good sounding boards and can help you with big picture thinking and with thought-out opinions about what you want to do.  These people are not afraid to disagree with you, but are still strongly supportive.

3.    Idea people—Creatives with great new ways of looking at things to get you out of your rut—not necessarily advice, but new frameworks and perspectives.

4.    Emotional Connectors—People who help you reconnect with your own passions, motivation, and optimism.  After you talk with these people you are charged and ready to act.

5.    Success Partners—Another name for a success partner is an accountability partner.  You typically need only one.  I’ll be writing more about how to have success with a success partner in an upcoming post (or if you have Guide to Lifework you can read about them in detail there).

Can one person play more than one role at different times?  Definitely.  But it’s best to have a number of people who you can call on for each role (except the Success Partner).

To get going, look carefully through your list of contacts and note in one central place the names of at least one key person who can serve in each of these roles. 

Having this list will remind you of the community you have to help you no matter what happens.  It will also make it easy to remember who you can contact, which mamkes it a lot more likely you will benefit from other peoples help. 

For instance, when you’re feeling discouraged, you may not think of some of the people you listed as emotional supporters, but if you have a list, that will prod you to call one of them.  Or if you are stuck for new ideas, you may keep banging away on your own, but you can look at your list and realize you can contact one or more of your idea people. 

Once you have this list of career VIPs, you can expand your list well beyond them.  You can also work with social media friends for a range of advice or ideas or connections too.  But don’t assume the “wisdom of crowds” as good as that can be, can replace that one-on-one support that these key people of your community can provide.

© 2009 by Leonard Lang.  Feel free to reprint this article by including this entire copyright notice, including a link to this site (http://choosingacareerblog.com).

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5 Basics Tips to Prepare for Layoffs

A friend of mine just missed getting laid off as 23 of his coworkers were let go with no notice.  In fact, the company had indicated it wasn’t having a tough time.

So how could he or his coworkers have been more ready?  How can anyone prepare for layoffs?

1.  The best preparation is to find ways to avoid them.  Companies can take the first step, so if you are an exec or manager, think of ways to creatively keep all those good employees you have.  Check out this article for more on that.

2. Don’t get caught off guard.  Notice what’s happening– in news reports about your company, in stock prices if your company is publicly held, in loss of clients, in industry trends.  Don’t get caught in a Chicken Little water cooler panic, but do look at the facts. 

3. If you have a decent or good relationship with a boss, definitely have a sitdown talk about your role and your department’s role as the recession lingers.  It doesn’t have to be about whether or not you are getting laid off, but getting a sense of what’s likely (by what the person says and doesn’t say, by the way).  You may also find out how you will have to take on roles you do not want and so it will be time to look for a new job anyhow.

4. People are irrational in interesting ways.  They will look at you as more employable if you now have a job than if you are unemployed.  So if you are thinking you might like another job, or if layoffs seem somewhat likely, then the time to start searching is right now–before the layoff.  Make the decision to find other work.

5.  Starting a job search in advance means doing ALL the things you’d do if you were already laid off, except getting unemployment insurance.

This includes the basics for starters–make an up-to-date resume (see article on visual resumes here), cover letter (or template you can customize as needed), and start expanding and tapping into your networking list, if only to see how everyone else you know is doing and what you can do for them.  If you don’t know about all the online resources, start finding out by searching online, getting help at your library or talking with state support services.

Do not work on these things or store resumes, etc. at work.  Look at this job search as a second after- hours job. 

Finally, as part of your networking, make sure you have a good support community of people to help you keep on track and motivated.  If you do get laid off, don’t waste time blaming yourself for not seeing it coming, just get moving ahead.

 

 

 

 

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Career Ideas–Understand Failure

One of the most famous stories about seeing failure in a new light is about Edison.  A reporter is said to have asked how he felt about having failed in thousands of experiments trying to make a lightbulb. Edison replied, I haven’t failed once. I found 9,999 ways to not make the lightbulb.

Einstein too had many failures, including a critique of Neils Bohr’s work which didn’t take into account Einstein’s own theory of relativity. As a career coach (with plenty of my own “failures” along the way, including how I chose my previous career), I often deal with clients who see their careers or their current career as a failure.  Sometimes it’s because they just got fired.  Sometimes it’s because they are stressed out in the wrong job.  Sometimes it’s because they don’t know where they are going in their lives and already middle aged. To deal with such perceptions of failure with my clients, I need to do 2 things.

First, isolate what the failure really is, and see if the person is not overgeneralizing much about a mistake, blowing it all out of proportion, and leading to bad decisions such as suddenly leaving a job. For instance, when they say they never do job interviews right, I want to know what they mean by right and wrong. Maybe they just mean that they tend to answer one question out of dozens during the interview in a way that hurt their chances, something that can happen in the best of interviews. Maybe they mean they offended someone by their view on how things should be done. We can review these answers and see if they were excellent answers that just didn’t match with the particular interview.  These answers do not mean the person is a failure at interviewing and needs to go hide his head. In fact, interviews are two way streets where you are evaluating the employer as they evaluate you. With a two way process, the answer that “failed” with the interviewer may be the one that helped you realize this wasn’t the place for you.

Second, even if the specific “failure” or mistake was real and significant, the next question is not–Are you ever going to get interviewing right, but What did you learn. It’s hard to learn new things if you don’t see something as needing improvement, and when we see failure it really focuses our attention. So failure is success, as Edison realized, in that it is a core component of succeeding and learning.  In coaching yourself, look at your failures to see if you are overgeneralizing (for instance, I didn’t finish the project on time again so I’m never going to succeed in this job). Narrow down to what the problem actually was and then go ahead and see what you can learn and do differently from then on. With all that in mind, check out this video from Honda about failure and how innovation and change depend on pushing things until they fail in order to really learn something new.

 

If you haven’t already signed up for my free biweekly ezine on careers and creativity, go on over here and you’ll also get bonus materials including keys to lifework, the 4 foundation questions for career success, and a way to decide if a coach is the right one for you.

Text © 2009 by, Leonard Lang.  Feel free to pass on this article as long as you include the copyright notice and the link to http://choosingacareerblog.com

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Obama’s Online Portfolio–Visual Resume

Yesterday, I wrote about job search and related visual resumes or portfolios online, and today I see from Allison Doyle of about.com on Twitter that our new president, who’s team is always on the cutting edge of online things, has a visual resume.  You wouldn’t compare yourself to him in terms of background for a job search (unless you want to be president maybe), so no need to compare yourself in terms of all the videos and the depeth of his resume site from a tech perspective either.

WIth that in mind go on over to his visual resume.

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Career Coaching–It’s All About the Questions (mostly)

This week I spoke with a few people about coaching and how problems get solved in career coaching.  People asked how I work or what I would do as a coach if faced with this situation or that.  One wanted to know in detail about my processes.

It’s always great when people have these questions because it forces me to get clear again for myself as well as them about the process of coaching.  It’s also a great chance to overcome misconceptions people can so easily have about career coaching, if they’ve never experienced it.

The people I spoke with this week all got it that coaching isn’t therapy of any sort and knew that it was a tool to help people help themselves get out of ruts, get a vision, make a plan, do the plan.  What I did find myself talking about was how a lot of coaching isn’t me answering questions (though some of it is) but asking them.

After all it’s only by questions that the coach can even know what’s going on for the person in terms of their passions and interests and challengs and difficulties.  It’s also a way to help clients look at things from different perspectives.  My favorite is when someone says something like,

“I like construction except not full time so I’m thinking about some carpentry work which is pretty good.  Of course I’d love to have my own catering business, but that’s not going to happen so maybe what I need to do is…

And I just back them up and ask, “Why isn’t that going to happen?” In other words, I start uncovering the reasoning and feelings and assumptions that led to that resigned conclusion about something they’ve identified as a prime passion.  Usually, they have obstacles, but what they really love to do turns out to be very practical and possible.

Or sometimes it’s not–they aren’t going to play quarterback for the Packers at age 49 (unless their name is Favre and they keep making comebacks maybe), but I can ask more questions about what they love about catering, for instance, and find out that it’s about being involved with creating delightful things for people.  We can then go through questions and discussions to figure out what that might mean besides catering.

It’s really quite fun and engaging for the clients as well as for me of course.

Of course, there’s a lot more to coaching than questions.  It may include examples and models, can include advice, and in my case certainly includes many kinds of creative problem solving processes and activities.

But it’s imposible to do coaching without the question, and the bottom line question people are really asking me when they ask about coaching is this:

 

Can this really help me truly solve my career challenge?  Or is this likely to lead me to my ideal lifework or career?

To answer yes, the coach has to have a very pragmatic orientation, even when talking first about career dreams, as I like to do.   But it’s not possible for the coach to answer yes unless the client also says yes–meaning they have to be willing to commit to solving their problems, and to take the time to do the homework (I give lots of homework so clients move quickly on their own as much as possible). and be open to new ideas for their careers or job searches.

Check out a related career coaching post–I’m Smart, Competent–Why Would I Need  a Career Life Coach?