What are the benefits of being accompanied by a coach to develop your career?

Career-oriented coaching will support you by:

1. Clarifying professional objectives

A coach will invite you to visualize your desired professional situation in the future. In this future, you are operating to your full potential, satisfied and fulfilled with what you are doing, your career is challenging you and you find “purpose” in your work. Intermediate objectives will help you nourish this career vision and help you pave your career path. It is not only a job; it is a career path!

Food for thought: Where do I want to be professionally 5, 10, and 15 years from now?

2. Creating self-awareness

The coach will accompany you in your journey to recognizing your value as a professional. You will become aware of the skills, and competencies that characterize you as a professional and add value to your work. Become aware of your strengths and weaknesses and create consciousness of the new required competencies that you will need to develop in order to achieve your desired future.

Recognize what makes your professional experiences valuable and what or which one can help you in the following steps of your career path.

Food for thought: What are my skills and competencies that make me effective and successful in what I do?

3. Creating your purpose and your professional identity

Once you have set your career vision and objectives (what you want), analyzed your competencies and skills (what you have) as well as what you need to develop, you are on the right track to start thinking about your “professional purpose” by reflecting on; what I want to do (my added value offer), to whom do I want to offer my services; (which people, teams, organizations) and how do I do it (my competences, skills, and experiences).

With this purpose, which will guide you like a compass on your journey, the next step should be to build your “professional identity”. A career coach will help you understand what makes you different and unique as a professional and how your uniqueness can help you build your professional image.

An important part is to make your professional identity visible in order to connect and resonate with the people and organizations you want to work with, especially if you are thinking of developing your career outside of your current organization. A second important element is to develop and activate a professional network. If you decide to boost your career in your organization, identify the people that can help you advance there. Do you have a mentor or sponsor? If not, who in your organization could be a good mentor or sponsor?

Food for thought: What is my professional purpose that will guide me in my career path?

4. Building a roadmap and an action plan

An essential element that characterizes coaching is provoking changes by putting them in motion through concrete actions. To advance in your career you have to design and implement a “roadmap” identifying the most favorable moments to take the next step forward and the actions that will allow you to move towards your purpose.

Food for thought: What are my next steps to advance in my career?

5. Building your confidence, overcoming obstacles

After this broad outline of the stages that the coach proposes to support their clients in their career development, it is time to understand another aspect of a coach’s role in this coaching relationship.

It is common that in the development of a career some obstacles may appear, such as; limiting beliefs that impede progress, some habits that hinder the process of advancement, lack of self-confidence, and other factors that interfere with your path towards the goals you set in place.

The coach’s role here is to accompany you in overcoming these obstacles in order to move forward. The coach works with you to develop self-confidence and motivates and encourage you during the process, acknowledging your progress. The coach will make you see your blindspots and encourage you to be conscious, responsible and committed, and recognize what limits and struggle your actions or progress. Last but not least, the coach is able to support you in finding your own resources, in order to create a process of growth to advance towards your objectives.