How can internal coaches enable more holistic career coaching conversations? Rob Nathan reports

 

When Sarah, in her late 20s, came to me for career coaching, she told me how Covid had impacted her values. Separated from her parents during the height of the pandemic, she’d realised how important it was for her to be in regular contact with her family. Realising what really mattered in her life helped us identify a key need for balance and flexibility.

Sarah is not alone. The pandemic has revolutionised the conversation on wellbeing at work, leading many to reflect on life and work priorities, and often to revise these. Consequently, managers and internal career coaches need to be more mindful of the connection between the different parts of the lives of those they coach.

The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2024) points out risks to mental health at work, including:

  • Underuse of skills or being under-skilled for the work
  • Lack of control over job design or workload
  • Organisational culture that enables negative behaviours
  • Limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision
  • Conflicting home/work demands.

Holistic career coaching can remind people of their whole life strengths and needs, helping them to regain a sense of autonomy, and make plans supporting personal agency and control.

 

Strengths-based career coaching

Culture at work has traditionally focused on what’s wrong or deficient in people’s performance, rather than looking for strengths and a work environment to enable flourishing. People who don’t fit into cultural norms may start concurring with a belief that they have little to contribute, with their performance and engagement suffering. 

Everybody has the potential to do something amazing – understanding their strengths to deliver gives them energy and propels any business forward. 

Rath and Harter (2010) quote a Gallup survey which found that identifying and harnessing the strengths of employees is a strong component of engagement and career well-being. Where employees are engaged and thriving, and using their strengths, burnout levels are practically non-existent. Those who reported to be using their strengths were found to be six times as likely to be engaged and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of career well-being than those who were not. These individuals claimed to work up to 40 hours a week and enjoy their work, while those with no opportunity to use their strengths reported feeling burned out after just 20 hours of work per week. 

 

Holistic career coaching

Holistic career coaching recognises that strengths, skills, knowledge and experience come from whole life experience, and not just from work. 

Holistic career conversations acknowledge that to achieve well-being at work there needs to be a focus on ‘whole life’ issues. 

At Career Counselling Services (CCS), we define holistic career coaching as a process which enables people to identify and utilise their resources to make career-related decisions and manage career-related issues (Nathan et al, 2025). ‘Resources’ refers to qualities within the person, such as skills, strengths, personal qualities, self-belief, experience, motivations and values, as well as external resources such as networks, infrastructure, finance and support from others (including people who believe in you). Offering a holistic career-related approach implies the need to acknowledge and respect any personal issue which arises in a work-based conversation.

Holistic career coaching is different from the way in which career coaching is often understood, especially within employment settings. The latter may involve talking about aspirations along with a focus on development or progression. However, there tends to be little or no attention to what the person may be experiencing personally in or out of the workplace. Since this can include challenges to mental and physical health, family responsibilities, significant transitions and personal crises, anyone conducting career coaching cannot ignore the potential impact on motivation, engagement, well-being and performance.

 

Spot the need for a holistic approach

Some of the following statements might emerge at an early stage in a career conversation, or perhaps later, as underlying issues surface:

  • My personal circumstances have changed and I want to get the right work-life balance, but still want to be achieving and adding value at work 
  • I want to work on more meaningful projects
  • I want to align my personal goals with my employer’s goals 
  • I’m not growing in my current role. I feel stuck
  • I’m feeling disillusioned with the lack of impact my role is having. I don’t feel I’m making a difference and I want to
  • I’m exhausted. My elderly parents have become ill/needy/dependent
  • Since returning from secondment, I’ve been unable to get a permanent internal role. I’m not working to my potential and I’m not demonstrating my strengths. 

 

Conflict

Many clients present with a conflict around what they really want. They may feel frustrated with their lack of progression but also have a developing need to express their autonomy.  An understanding and empathic career coach or manager can make a huge difference to someone experiencing these conflicts and perhaps enable that person to become clearer. Often I find that clients want to do something more meaningful. With greater age and experience, that need may become more urgent, as their external world matches less and less their internal reflections, as was the experience of 39-year-old Layla:

“Although I enjoy a lot of what I do, I don’t want to do it forever. And I had a burnout two years ago. I feel like I’m firefighting all day. There’s more and more pressure that I’m holding. There are 200 emails in my inbox almost every day. There are deadlines – clients who are being demanding. I need more time to train new people properly. 

“I went through a divorce eight years ago. My employer was incredibly supportive and gave me as much time as I needed. I decided to change things after my burnout and my employer agreed to give me a three-month sabbatical. 

“I am a different person now – I am more aware of my values and how I want to work. Now, I lead much more by intuition and empathy. I have a curiosity for people, I want to support people and help them to avoid burn out. At 29 I wanted to be recognised and be seen. This is not so important today. I realise that I have an empathic side. I’m good at holding the space for people.”

After her burnout, through coaching, Layla evaluated what mattered to her, resolving to realise more her creative and autonomous self. She was also becoming less ‘attached’ to the need to strive and be recognised by her employer. She was going through an inner transition towards matching her inner self with her outer actions.  

 

Holistic coaching: dos and don’ts

Don’t:

  • Panic at the expression of emotion and offer inadvertent advice giving or solutionising
  • Allow sympathy to turn into reassurance – empathy is far more powerful
  • Get caught up in clients’ impatience and desire for a short-term ‘fix’
  • Stray into life issues for which you may be unqualified and where other specialist help may be needed
  • Seek the right answer rather than just supporting people on their life journey, with a focus on work

Do:

  • Acknowledge and respect any emotion or personal issue that arises in a work-based conversation
  • Put self-care at the centre
  • Contract clearly and maintain boundaries
  • Focus on both long-term and short-term vision
  • Be clear about your own career ‘issues’ so that you avoid bias creeping in
  • If you use any tools, weave them into the coaching process, and don’t become the focus of the coaching
  • Focus on environmental factors, whole life strengths and self- as well as career-care

 

 

References

  • Nathan, R., & Hill, L.(2006). Career Counselling. Sage
  • Nathan, R., et al. (2025). The Holistic Career Coaching Handbook. Routledge
  • Rath, T., & Harter, J. (2010) Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. Gallup
  • World Health Organisation. (September 2024):
    www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work

 

 

About the author

  • Rob Nathan’s latest book, The Holistic Career Coaching Handbook, co-authored with Tamsin Crook, Frances Cushway, Gilly Freedman, Kate Mansfield and Aretha Rutherford, is due to be published by Routledge in
    April 2025. 
  • With his colleagues at Career Counselling Services, Rob runs an ICF Accredited Advanced Course in Holistic Career Coaching. Coaches gain a licence to use 30 holistic career coaching tools and the BalanceTM questionnaire.
  • https://career-counselling-services.co.uk/advanced-icf-career-coaching-certificate/