What do you want? Where do you want to be? What is stopping you from moving on?
September, October and January appear to be crucial months when people contact us because they feel stuck in a rut in their careers. Instead of feeling energised after their holidays, they feel drained. Often, they feel that they have lost sense of who they are and what they want. They can’t work out a strategy to move on because they don’t know where they want to get to.
One of our tasks at this stage of the relationship is to help clients develop an objective insight into their current situation. We explore their skills, values, interests, achievements and what they want from their working lives. We help them to understand how they might make better use of all the resources in and around them. We challenge irrational thinking like “I’ll never be a good teacher, I can’t get out of law, I’m useless at managing, I hate public speaking, I am not creative enough”. In addition to our coaching sessions, we might use psychometric tests, homework exercises, 360 degree feedback and sometimes even a videoed session to help the client gain an accurate self-understanding.
For some clients, this is all that is needed. They have a change of attitude and renewed enthusiasm. For others, this is just the first stage of career planning and they do more work to evaluate their options, identify negative thinking patterns, take decisions, make goals and build new networks.
Please talk to us if you feel these conversations would benefit you or anyone you know.