CAREER COACHING. CUSTOMISED.
Read Time: 4 mins
How change works
In the words of Simon Sinek, coaching is my ‘why’. I’ve spent most of my working life supporting people through organisational change, so I bring all that contemporary knowledge about how change works to my individual career coaching.
In organisational change management, we talk about ‘agile’ and ‘waterfall’ delivery approaches to change. Waterfall change is the traditional approach where the whole project is planned in phases from start to finish. If possible, each stage completes before the next one begins. It’s a linear approach that has the benefit of being able to identify clear long term benefits and know whether you are on track to meet them. But it also requires you to keep your eye on the prize because the satisfaction of seeing a result may be in the distant future. In psychology, we call that ‘delay of gratification’.
You might remember the famous marshmallow experiments from the 1960s. A marshmallow is placed in front of a small child. They are told if they don’t eat it by the time the adult comes back in the room they can have two. So they can choose to get a small reward now or ‘delay gratification’ and get a bigger one later. Children who can delay gratification by the time they are seven years old tend to be more successful in life.
Agile, on the other hand, is more iterative. Each iteration is called a ‘sprint’ because it is a fast run to deliver a short term solution. You don’t know, at the outset, what the end result might be because it might change along the way. The full scope of the project is unknown when you start. But it has the benefit of achieving small immediate outcomes. And as the name suggests, it is agile to changes in environment, requirements and discoveries along the way. It makes it easy to pivot when circumstances change.
The same approaches can apply in career coaching. In coaching, I refer to these approaches as “plan and implement” (a long term strategic planned approach) and “test and learn” (a short term tactical, pragmatic approach).
Test-Learn is about the here and now, Plan-Implement is about the future.
Applying change principles to coaching
There’s a bit of a tussle between fans of waterfall and agile project delivery approaches. The two methods are sometimes presented as an either/or. But when it comes to individuals, I think there’s room for both plan-implement and test-learn.
People have an underlying set of core values and interests. The purpose of career coaching is to help you uncover what those motives, values and interests are. I have found that if you can tap into this knowledge, you can better align values and interests with your career choice through guided self-reflection.
But you also have practical short term needs – having enough income to live, for example – and it’s also useful to experiment with different roles. So how do you balance your short term needs for a job with your long term plans for a career?
Think about Ikigai, Japanese for ‘reason for being’. It is a concept you might compare to the waterfall approach. When all our long term career goals align, we have Ikigai.
But early on in a career, or at a time of career transition, this might be difficult to achieve, so a more tactical test-learn response is required.
So you can take up exciting opportunities as they present themselves to you without losing sight of your bigger vision.
Having a long term career plan-implement strategy means that you can choose the right tactical test-learn responses along the way. The long term plan provides a frame or context to select the right jobs as building blocks for your career. If choosing between two options, your plan-implement strategy can guide that decision.
If you don’t have a long term plan, you could end up with a series of interesting jobs, but not a career. Maybe becoming an expert in your field is the way to achieve your ‘why’ – or making money, influencing others, creating something new or important or something else entirely.
It’s not just about planning – what happens in the session matters
Career planning is a vital piece of the coaching puzzle, but what happens in the session is critical too.
My coaching style is strongly influenced by Dr Julia Yates, from the University of London, who talks about career coaching as a ‘collaborative conversation’ that uses theories and tools to help people make positive career and life decisions.
People used to think that what happened in the session didn’t matter as long as the coach and client had a good relationship and a shared understanding of long term goals.
Coaches have been using humanistic approaches for a long time, mostly derived from Carl Rogers’ person-centred therapy model. But new research clearly demonstrates that some techniques and practices are better than others.
We now know that a great strategic career coach has more than just good listening skills. They help you self-reflect, explore your strengths, critically analyse and make decisions. Research by Hadassah Littman-Ovadia, a leading researcher in positive psychology, suggests that this type of evidence-based coaching offers a higher likelihood of landing a job.
My focus is on uncovering and exploring insights that you might not be fully aware of—helping you access knowledge and ideas sitting just below the surface using a range of psychological tools, aides and strategies to bring them into awareness.
This kind of solution-focused approach results in not only excellent practical outcomes but also renewed energy and drive. All the listening and planning in the world won’t help if you don’t have the motivation to implement your career actions.
Good career coaching is more than just listening. It’s strategic planning and implementation; it’s tactical and experimenting, and most importantly, it’s awareness building and motivating.
If you want to gain career confidence, insight, direction and inspiration, please get in touch.
