What actually is Career Coaching?
I remember when the idea of working with a coach was first mentioned to me by my then CPO. I didn’t really know what coaching was.
I’d had mentors before, and that made sense: someone who’s been there, done it, and can share some of that wisdom. But the thought of having a coach made me a bit nervous. I thought it was mainly for the C-suite and didn’t think I was senior enough to warrant one.
It wasn’t until I actually worked with a coach myself that I started to understand how valuable it could be. I had never, until that moment, given myself that kind of space, thinking and reflection on just me, what I wanted and what I needed. And I’ve never looked back.
So, what actually is career coaching?
Career coaching gives you dedicated space to think about what you want from your career, challenge some of the assumptions that might be getting in the way, explore your options and then turn that thinking into action.
It’s not having a nice chat with someone every week about how rubbish your boss is. As fun as that might be.
Good coaching is action-led. It can sometimes be uncomfortable, because change often is. But it can also uncover insights, possibilities and decisions that are difficult to reach when you’re trying to work everything out inside your own head.
To me, coaching is a gift. An investment that gives me the space to understand myself better, keep learning, and grow in a direction I choose. Just for me.
What do people actually talk about with a career coach?
One of the questions I get asked a lot is what people actually bring to career coaching. There is a misconception that it’s for people who want to change jobs, but the answer is: it varies.
In my own career coaching, most conversations tend to fall somewhere within three broad areas: Growth, Transition and Navigation.
Growth
Simply put, a desire for more. That could be a promotion, having more influence or visibility, becoming a better leader or exploring something new alongside your current role.
Transition
Making a move. Sometimes on your terms, sometimes on someone else’s. This can include redundancy, returning to work, pivoting, or knowing you’ve fallen out of love with your career but having no idea what to do next or how to start.
Navigation
You can love your career, but that doesn’t mean work doesn’t feel messy and overwhelming at times. Difficult relationships, organisational change, the impact of AI, competing priorities. Companies and the humans in them are complex.
These aren’t neat boxes. Someone might come to coaching wanting to navigate a difficult situation at work, discover that what they really want is growth, and eventually decide that means transitioning somewhere else entirely.
Sometimes, until you’ve given yourself the space to hear yourself, you don’t know the full extent of what’s going on for you.
What actually happens in a career coaching session?
The focus is always driven by what the client wants.
A coach won’t tell you what to do. They’ll listen intently to what you want, how you speak about that want, what you might not be saying, and ask questions that help you move that goal forward.
The arc of a session tends to move from focus, to discovery, through to action.
And that action isn’t always homework!
You might leave with something very practical to do. Other times it might be a reflection, the chance to sit with something new, try it on and notice what happens.
Progress doesn’t always look like a to-do list.
And you don’t need to turn up with the perfect question or even know exactly what you want to talk about. Sometimes working that out is where the session starts.
How do I know if career coaching could help me?
It’s different for everyone, but if one of these scenarios resonates, coaching might be worth exploring:
1) Work feels HARD right now. Maybe it’s Sunday night dread and Monday morning anxiety. Maybe it’s a difficult boss, a challenging team, constant organisational change, or so many conflicting priorities you don’t know where to start. You know something isn’t working, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to leave.
2) You’re out of work and feeling deflated with the job market. You’ve had someone write your CV so AI doesn’t reject you (Spoiler alert: That’s not a thing), you’ve applied to loads of roles and fallen into many black holes, and you’re genuinely concerned you’ve spent the last 10+ years learning a job AI can “apparently” do better.
3) You want something to change. Maybe you want more from your career: progression or promotion, a seat at the table, more influence or confidence. Or maybe you’re not unhappy, but you’re incredibly bored. You’ve fallen out of love with what you do and would like to do something different, but you have no idea what or how.
Do I need to be ready to change?
Honestly, yes.
A coach can’t and shouldn’t do this for you.
Coaching is an investment. Yes, financially, but also in your time, attention, and commitment.
That doesn’t mean you need to arrive knowing exactly what you want or having everything figured out. That’s part of what you’re there to explore. But you do need to be willing to question things, be challenged, and try doing some things differently.
You don’t need to turn up ready to overhaul your life. Change is often much smaller and less dramatic than that. Trying something, noticing what happens, learning from what doesn’t work, and gradually doing more of what does.
How is coaching different from mentoring and therapy?
Remember those mentors I mentioned at the beginning? Mentoring and coaching aren’t the same thing.
A mentor will usually draw on their own experience. They’ve been there, done it, and can share what they’ve learned along the way. A coach is less likely to give you the answer and more likely to help you work out what the right answer is for you.
Therapy is different again.
Therapy is generally about supporting your mental and emotional wellbeing, helping you understand and work through past experiences that may be affecting you. Therapists are specifically trained to work with mental health, emotional distress, and experiences such as trauma in a way that a coach typically isn’t.
That doesn’t mean coaching never looks backwards. Your past experiences inevitably shape how you think and the choices you make. But the focus of coaching is usually on what you want to change, develop or move towards from here.
There can be overlap between the two, but they’re different kinds of support. A good coach will recognise when something is outside the scope of coaching and would be better supported by a suitably qualified therapist.
What should I look for in a career coach?
Coaching is an unregulated industry. Anyone can call themselves a coach and promise a full life transformation!
If you do consider working with a coach, make sure they’ve had professional training.
And like any one-to-one relationship, chemistry is key. Meet them. Make sure you feel safe and comfortable in their presence. They need to be someone you can be open with, but also someone you’re comfortable being challenged by.
Most coaches offer a free discovery call, and this is a two-way conversation. It gives you the chance to test that chemistry and make sure they feel like a good fit. It’s also a chance for the coach to make sure they’re the right person to support you.
How I approach career coaching
Firstly, I am always led by the client. What they want to achieve, coupled with their individual preferences, informs the direction and approach I use. What remains constant is the environment I create: calm and safe. I want clients to feel they can bring their whole self to each session, because when you feel safe enough to be really honest, both with your coach and yourself, that’s often when you start to hear things you haven’t heard before and have those real aha moments. My role is to help create the conditions for that thinking, not to decide where it should take you.
I also bring 20 years of working in Talent inside fast-moving organisations. And one of the things that’s taught me is that careers don’t develop in a perfectly fair, logical system. There are politics, agendas, competing priorities, and, occasionally, games being played. Companies have their own goals, and your career development won’t always be one of them. That doesn’t make them the enemy; it’s business. But it does mean I believe you need to understand the environment you’re operating in and be prepared to put your own career first.
Work takes up too much of our lives for us to just put up with it.
For me, career design is about building a career that works for the life you want, rather than continually trying to make your life fit around your career.
If any of this resonates and you’d like to learn more about working with me, you can explore my 1:1 career coaching or book a discovery call.
