Career and Life Transitions: How a Coach Can Help

Not long ago, if someone said he or she was working with a coach, a perplexed look would be followed by, “What sport?” Today, the use of a coach has become more common, and coaching specializations run the gamut from personal, money, and diet to family, dreams, business, and career transitions.

The reasons individuals consider transitional coaching vary from individual to individual.  Sometimes it is purely for career transition, and sometimes it’s for personal lifestyle or a combination of both.

Coaches are utilized by many organizations for career/succession planning and development by assessing key contributors.  This type of coaching requires individual planning, goal setting, and achievement.  It is about realizing one’s full potential either within or outside the organization, resulting in a win/win for both the organization and the individual.

Coaches can help individuals find the lost passion in chosen careers or help provide the confidence to move forward into a new career.  Success is derived from honesty, self-evaluation, goals, and an action plan.

Most recently, Baby Boomers are seeking assistance from coaches to help them leave long-time careers to pursue new career and/or lifestyle opportunities.  With guidance, new interests and alternatives can be revealed and explored.   

Accomplishments don’t just happen.  There are always three common elements found in any successful endeavor:

•  setting a goal
•  designing a path to reach it
•  having the commitment to follow through

Whether you are a recent graduate, a seasoned worker, or soon-to-be-retiree, you most likely will experience or feel pressure in making changes in some area of your life or business.  Although it sounds fairly easy and doable, it is a challenge for most of us to actually implement new ideas and behaviors into our busy lives.  We can hardly accomplish what we already have to do; where will we find the time to make changes or work on something new?  How do we get started?
 
Coaching is about focusing on what you want rather than on what you don’t want.  Research findings have shown that it takes three times more energy to support a negative state of mind­—resistance, frustration, or dissatisfaction.  How can we harness some of our energy and find a new direction for it?
Is it time for you to work with a coach? What are your goals?  What have you been wishing and hoping for?  Are you ready for a jumpstart?  And are you willing to do what it takes to reach them?

Coaches can help:

•  create a personalized program for success
•  gain clarity and awareness about personal and career goals
•  sort through and analyze possibilities and options
•  identify solutions to specific work-related issues
•  make informed choices based on what is important to us
•  design a workable, structured plan we can live with
•  concentrate and stay focused on our
priorities
•  keep us on track and accountable to our agreed-upon plans
•  brainstorm and work through challenges and problems
•  make quicker and better decisions
•  concentrate on efficiencies and effectiveness
•  increase confidence and self-esteem
•  overcome personal limitations

So, whether you want assistance in accomplishing a specific goal or project, are assuming new or different responsibilities, or want to be a more effective employee/manager, a coach can help.  You may want to design a retirement plan that will allow for a balance between part-time work and leisure activities, set some new performance or profitability goals, introduce a new product, increase your production, position yourself for a promotion, streamline team efforts, be the #1 producer of the year, maximize your strengths, learn how to deal with and minimize conflicts, or effectively manage an increasing workload. Coaches can help. 

It takes time to move from having a desire or idea to reaching a point of accomplishment.  A coach can provide structure and support, and help you move forward with clear intention, focus, and commitment.

There are many resources available to find the right coach for you. Ask friends or coworkers already working with a coach if they’d refer their coach. Organizations such as the Denver Coach Federation, denvercoach.com, and the International Coach Federation, coachfederation.org, have resources on their Web sites to help you select a coach. Business organizations such as Mountain State Employers Council, msec.org, also
offer coaching programs.s

Printed with the permission of the Career Transition and Development Services at
Mountain States Employers Council,
Denver, CO.

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