Career Coaching Benefits
Working with a professional career coach will help you meet your career goals, because during the career development process you will clearly identify your professional goals and together with your coach you’ll figure out steps in the here and now that will move you in the direction of your goal.
Small steps now will create meaningful movement in the right direction, and before long you will see a clear path to your ultimate career goals.
First, to better understand the difference, career coaching (a form of life coaching) is different than therapy in that traditional psychotherapy helps a person gain self-awareness and insight about behaviors, thoughts, etc.
In therapy we draw from past experiences over the lifespan, as well as present stressors, to help a person improve a difficult situation or cope with possible mental illness.
1) Accountability
You may have a good sense of what actions you should be taking in the here and now that will help you reach greater goals in your professional life, but for some reason you just aren’t making these steps happen.
Perhaps you feel overwhelmed or the goal itself seems too daunting? Working with a coach will create an external accountability partner that will help “nudge” you towards identifying and taking the next step(s), one step at a time, and soon enough momentum is working in you favor.
2) Move Past Barriers
Focus on each obstacle, one at a time. Sometimes the overwhelming feelings associated with achieving career success could become too much to deal with and we lose focus and motivation. We might choose to give up, or get bogged down by some of the details.
Working with a professional coach will help you to stay focused on only the immediate steps in the here and now. By keeping our site on the next obstacle we avoid getting tripped up by looking too far ahead or getting stuck in the previous step.
3) New Strategies
Create strategies. Having an accountability partner and remaining focused on only one obstacle at a time are extremely important concepts, but without having a specific strategy or an “action plan” these other things can lose their luster.
Your professional coach will guide you in the process, not so much by giving you the right answers, but more so by asking the right questions to help you create a pathway to reaching your goals. Based on the particular person and situation, these specific strategies are created in collaboration between client and coach.
4) Measurable Steps
The ultimate value of having a specific strategy towards reaching your career goals is having measurable steps along the way. While working with your coach the two of you will create both long and short term goals, and identify measures along the way. These could range from daily, weekly, and monthly goals but you will have a clear direction to be working towards.
In some situations this could mean increasing monthly productivity numbers at work by focusing on ways to increase those numbers on a daily (or sometimes even hourly) basis. For another client the goal may be to find a new job, in which case weekly measurable steps could include a number of resumes being sent out weekly or contacts being cultivated per month. The actual strategies and steps would be catered to help you meet your very unique and specific career goals.
5) Motivation to Keep Going
The final benefit of working with a career coach is the ability to have someone truly motivate you to a place of change. You can always spot an authentic career coach because they are generally super upbeat about the entire process of helping you grow.
Motivation come in two main forms – intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external). An effective job coach will help you to lean into both of these sources of motivation so that you can become empowered to reach important milestones. And while your coach can’t “make” you do anything, they can be the one person in your life to “tell it like it is” and help you reach deep so that you are constantly connected to your goals.
Final Thoughts
These are just some of the benefits you would gain from working with a professional life coach towards reaching your career goals. Career development is a difficult and sometimes very frustrating experience, and working with a professional life coach can be very beneficial.
Just ask yourself “am I a motivated, driven individual, working towards a specific professional goal?” If so, don’t hesitate to contact a professional coach to help you reach those goals.
