 accredited Career Coach
Career Coaching
- Do you feel that you are at a career crossroads?
- Are you unclear about what you want your next step to be?
- Or you know what you want but don’t know how to turn it into a reality.
Perhaps :
- You are successful at what you are doing but want something more satisfying, stimulating, challenging, enjoyable
- There is a dream you have always had and at last you are ready to turn it into a reality
- You want to leave salaried employment and set up in business for yourself
- You have been made redundant, are about to be made redundant or fear being made redundant
- You are a woman returning to work after a career break and you want clarity about the type of work you wish to do or retrain for
- You’re about to graduate but not sure what you want to do afterwards
According to a Guardian article “Career coaching has experienced an explosive growth in recent years. Not to be mistaken for life coaching, which concentrates on personal development (my italics), career coaching is all about equipping individuals with practical guidance on how to move up, across or into a completely new field altogether”.
In my experience of working with clients this is an artificial distinction. Most of my clients need more than ‘practical guidance’. Helping them to dismantle the barriers to changing career – often in the form of fear of letting go of what is known and secure, of possible financial implications, of lack of confidence in their own abilities or potential or just of making a ‘wrong decision’ – is usually an essential part of the process. Personal development is an integral part of career development.
I am a licensed FireworksTM Career Coach. The Fireworks Career Coaching programme (accredited by the International Coaching Federation) is a structured programme which was created drawing on research into best practice in career evaluation and transition. It provides a framework for the coaching, in the form of interesting and revealing exercises (including right-brain techniques such as guided visualisations) to focus you on your strengths and resources, access your creativity and then bring everything together to identify an exciting and viable career direction.
At the same time, it is flexible enough to adapt to each client’s individual needs and style. But the exercises are just the starting point for the individual coaching which is the most powerful part of the programme.
The exercises and activities are designed to give you the opportunity to stand back and make a realistic assessment of your whole life. To reflect on what matters to you, to uncover meaningful priorities and to look at possible new options. You will take a journey from not knowing what your next step might be, or knowing but not knowing how to turn it into a reality, through to having a clear vision of a career that is absolutely right for you and a plan for how to create it. Together we will clarify what you want in your life as a whole as well as in your work.
Some people want more than a career – they want a Vocation.
Vocation – “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need”. “Let Your Life Speak” by Parker J. Palmer
They want to "follow their bliss" but for them that includes the desire to make a difference in some way, to contribute to making the world a better place.
If you feel a yearning to identify your vocation – or want to work out how you can make a living from it – the programme will help you to do so.
The Programme in brief
The programme has been designed in three phases. The names of the phases come from the last line of a quotation from Mark Twain:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”
EXPLORE
Research shows that those who are most satisfied and motivated by their work are in careers which reflect who they really are; careers which reflect their true nature and their real passions, which draw on their strengths and employ their favourite skills, which allow them to honour their deeply-held values.
Because of this, the Explore part of your programme entails a long, hard look at who you are.
The first stage is about you as a person, your life as a whole. You’ll engage in activities that help you get a clear idea of :
- your values
- your life purpose
- your most powerful self
- your personal strengths
- your interests and passions
- your personal achievements
- everything you need in your life to be happy and fulfilled.
The next stage focuses on your work preferences. You’ll identify
- your favourite job skills
- your key work motivators
- your professional strengths
- your greatest work achievements
- your preferred working organisation and environment
- your ideal working day
- everything you need in your working life to be motivated and satisfied.
As all this information is elicited, two formats are used to capture and record it.
1) The Life Star
2) The Work Star
As we work through the Explore process, I’ll ask you to note your key learning in these Star formats. When complete, your Stars will provide a richly coloured snapshot of who you are and what you need in order to be happy and fulfilled in your life and work. You can refer to them whenever you are evaluating any career ideas or job opportunities.
By the end of the Explore phase, you will be very clear about what you must have in your career to be satisfied and motivated.
In addition to the above work, you will start another process in Week 1.
You will open an Ideas Bank. This is a place where you can capture any career related ideas which come up throughout the early weeks of the programme, including ideas that you may have in mind before beginning coaching. However minor or however wild the ideas – do not judge them but just place them in the Ideas Bank, ready to be evaluated later in the light of what we find out about you during the first phase of the programme.
DREAM
This is the part of the programme where together we generate a number of possible new career choices. It’s called Dream because the idea here is to be expansive, to think outside the box, not to be constrained, at this stage, by traditional notions of what’s possible. In truth, almost anything is possible if it’s right for you. We explore the most attractive ideas in some detail and then finally narrow these down to between one and three strong possibilities which will then be explored in detail.
DISCOVER
This is the point where we investigate the top possibility that was generated in the Dream phase. We will use a creative and empowering process which lets you turn your vision for an exciting career that’s right for you into a soundly based action plan to make it happen. <
How long does it take?
This varies widely from client to client.
Many of the Explore exercises can be done on your own. The faster you do them, the quicker we can move on to the Dream phase.
Also, the depth of reflection required to identify your ideal career can start you thinking about other areas of your life too. So sometimes the coaching takes a detour from career coaching.
But as a rough guide I would suggest you will need a minimum of three months, with three 50 minute sessions a month.
How much does it cost?
Because clients often choose to use their sessions to address other life areas as well as career change, I do not charge a fixed fee for the programme. You will pay the normal monthly fee.
To find out more please contact me by 'phone or email.
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