At the heart of career coaching is the question, “How is this decision going to be made?” If the question is, as it is for many, “What do I feel called to do?”, the straight-line thinking usually adopted in business will rarely work. Exciting career change involves taking at least one risky step, which usually means asking the question, “What if…?” It’s a question that requires divergent, right-brain thinking, and often a dumping of conventional wisdom about what’s out there, and what kind of people enjoy exciting careers.
One step beyond
Decision-making is a form of controlled discovery. But it only works where career changers are prepared to go to the edge of their comfort zone and sometimes beyond. All three case studies here did exactly that, rejecting initial advice from recruitment consultants about the realistic, “no-brainer” next step. Instead, they pursued active enquiries with actual post-holders, often exploring several fields of work at the same time.
It’s all about moving into active mode; taking control. In passive mode many of us can’t seem to find the energy to take the obvious first step, even when we have great contacts. It is the job of the creative career coach to pin down what gets in the way (fear of rejection, poor self-image, a need for certainty or concrete outcomes). The coach needs to be a mix of magician and touchline encourager.
Baby steps
The real work isn’t focused on activity at all, but what prevents it. What gets in the way of that first phone call? Interestingly, the steps to success are usually baby steps. Very often all that is required is to ask a friend or colleague for one piece of information. The real art is helping clients to set goals without getting in the way of them. We are all gifted at blocking our own best ideas; it’s too easy to find an inner negative voice. Change makes us more vulnerable to fear of rejection or ridicule.
I often ask clients to define their best and worst outcomes. The best is usually modest (an enjoyable job that hits most of their career drivers), while the worst can be catastrophic. We give far more energy to the dark picture – the one that whispers to you at 2am, “You’ll never get a job…” There are external factors too (the economy, location, industry decline), and real constraints (age, health, qualifications), but none are as powerful as the individual’s mindset.
Get real
Clients are most responsive in the opening stages, when they are reflecting on who they are. The critical stage is to get clients to begin looking outwards to find out what the world of work has to offer. Career coaching is goal-oriented, and requires clients to manage their own futures. To do this, clients have to turn their attention outwards to real organisations and real jobs: a vital research step not to be confused with the job search.
We can work it out: change strategies
- What’s the problem? Flag up the issue at the start of the process: “By session four you might be saying to me…”
- Prepare for setbacks Coach clients to deal with rejection. It is, after all, the most common experience of jobseekers since they are likely to be rejected far more than accepted.
- Find support Encourage the client to set up a support group of two people who will encourage new ideas, remind them of past successes and encourage networking.
- Get started Ask the client to come up with a reason to begin informational interviews. Once they have spotted an area of work that looks interesting, it’s only a matter of time before paper and screen sources of information won’t deliver enough. If the client prompts the idea of speaking to real people, it works.
- Find quick wins If the client starts with people they know well enough to phone without a moment’s hesitation, they can get positive results. Encourage them to commit to contacting three named people they know and trust.
- Out of their shoes Discover how the client would undertake this activity if they were doing it for someone else; stepping out of their personal situation prompts a wide range of new ideas.
- Create connections Form a strong link between the client’s passions and their research. If it’s a field of work they really care about, they will find a way of discovering more.
- Build on synchronicity Connections and opportunities will sometimes just happen. Encourage your client to push on doors that appear to be opening unassisted.
- A little help… Make connections directly for the client. Set up meetings with past clients, friendly employers and recruitment consultants.
What we love to do, of course, is to turn the world into easy choices. The nation’s favourite is to play the real/ideal game: “Either I have a job I love or I get a job that will pay the bills.” If you turn the world into black and white then grey becomes inconvenient, but practitioners will tell you that gradual career change is far more common than overnight transformation.
Case study 1: Selling the positive
Will Beale studied natural sciences and chemical engineering before joining Unilever. He worked in research, manufacturing and new product development but after 10 years had a strong impulse to find his ideal career path, and turned to John Lees for coaching.
Will began the process feeling apprehensive, but finally threw himself into it: “I spent three months undertaking informational interviews with about 40 people in my target fields. I learnt a lot but it was also quite a tough time, especially for my family,” he admits.
Will applied for a wide range of jobs in business, NGOs and the public sector. “John sometimes advised me not to apply for jobs because they would not move me forward,” he notes. His dream was to work for an organisation actively contributing to animal protection. When a job at WWF (the World Wildlife Fund) entered his sights he felt he had found the perfect match: “It seemed ideal but honestly I did not expect to get it. However, by this time my application, interview and negotiation skills were well-practised, and I knew how to sell the positive about myself.”
Will became head of programme management at WWF-UK and has moved from quality management to building excellence in conservation management. He continues to enjoy his work enormously and recognises that the change he has made is part of deeper life choices. “It’s an analytical role but requires a lot of people skills,” he says. “I have travelled widely (while endeavouring to minimise flights) and have a much broader perspective on the world. Through the whole process of change, my personal faith was very important in sustaining me towards finding my mission in life.”
Case study 2: Healthy optimism
Chartered accountant Simon Barber left United Utilities (UU) and a long career in the commercial world, where he had a senior role in UU subsidiary Your Communications, to join an NHS trust as chief executive.
Simon found John Lees via Career Management Consultants. “I felt that my skills and experience could be useful to the public sector, ideally in the NHS, and that this would be more personally rewarding,” he says. “John advised me to take my time and really use the opportunity to examine where I wanted to go next, to identify what I enjoyed doing and what really drives me. I think John thought it was a tall order to move role and sector, but he never wavered in his support.”
A clear strategy developed. “I learnt the power of developing a network, of simply picking up the phone or sending a short letter to ask how I might help in my target sector. This took me outside my comfort zone. I had been very confident in the internal network of UU, but I was reluctant to approach people I didn’t know.”
Simon learned a great deal from new contacts inside the sector, who pointed to the value of short-term assignments. The turning point came when Simon received a “no” letter about a permanent job at Manchester’s Christie Hospital. He turned the rejection into a conversation about the organisation’s needs and then into a breakthrough short-term assignment.
For Simon, “that moved the conversation from the theoretical to the specific”. He focused on the way health authorities were required to make radical changes by the Department of Health, and became appointed as turnaround director for a high-profile primary care trust, where he reduced a deficit of £42.6 million by almost £14 million in only 12 months.
Having started with recruiters telling him that a move into the health sector was all uphill, Simon became chief executive of 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust (a specialist mental health trust covering the Warrington area), beating 50 other applicants to the job, many of whom had far more health-sector experience.
Case study 3: Be who you are
Heather Grossman had been finance director of a £50 million turnover public-sector organisation for 12 years and was “overdue for a change”. At her first session with John Lees, Heather displayed dissatisfaction with the “same old” choices being offered to her by the marketplace.
Heather strongly wanted to make the transition into a broader role: “I knew I would have difficulty finding the right role because employers like to recruit people who have done the role somewhere else, whereas I was looking for something new. “John asked me to describe my perfect role where I would be working, who I would be working with, what I would be doing and helped me to build up a checklist that I could measure opportunities by.”
Heather switched from a policy of unsuccessfully applying for a wide range of roles to targeting specific organisations and asking immediately how far the organisation would welcome someone from outside the sector.The fire service was particularly attractive to Heather because her father had been a firefighter. She was impressed with Staffordshire’s record on community safety, performance and cost reduction, and felt its planned refurbishment and new station matched her experience of property development.
Heather steeled herself for an interview. As a woman with no fire service experience she expected to fall at the first hurdle: “John explained that ‘being myself’ was the most important thing at interview, and that the key to being successful was preparation; and then more preparation. “The result? I now have a role [director of assets and resources for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service] that fascinates me every minute of every day, and gives me the opportunity to work with great people. You can’t ask for more than that, can you?”
John Lees is a careers coach and the author of How To Get A Job You’ll Love (McGraw-Hill). His latest title is Why You? CV Messages to Win Jobs. See www.johnlees careers.com for a wide range of free tips and career tools.
The CIPD runs a two-day course that defines the career coaching process and reviews the valuable role of the coach in helping with important life and career issues. For details visit www.cipd.co.uk/training/mgt/mac or call 020 8612 6202.
Volume 3, Issue 3