Kathy Morris, Legal Careers Advisor | Under Advisement, Ltd.
Tempura
In the broad field of coaching—whether it’s career or executive coaching, project managers coaching their teams, or health or life coaches—there are a number of best practices that most coaches would agree are integral to their success with clients. They include remaining focused on core issues and key timelines; capturing action step commitments and regularly reviewing target goals; troubleshooting problems; working collaboratively; and advocating for clients’ self-awareness and independence. All are incredibly important staples of the coaching process.
Today’s career coaching clients, however, may be experiencing considerably greater stress and anxiety. For example, some may have recently lost a job and feel significant financial and social pressure to find another quickly. Others may have reached a breaking point due to the pandemic or an even more prolonged period of discontent in their career. Whether clients are changing jobs or careers, their very real sense of urgency may now necessitate a more direct style of coaching, along with an emphasis on some less expected skills, to help them secure timely employment in a truly satisfying role.
This is not to diminish the importance of more universal best practices, or to imply that coaches ought to adopt a draconian posture with clients. Rather, coaches who can quickly elicit or even artfully intuit clients’ needs and use an array of coaching strategies and styles will be best positioned to help clients achieve their goals—in their life’s work and in their lives.
1. Directness and Specificity
Many coaches err on the side of being indirect and restrained with clients in an effort to be supportive and non-judgmental and to let clients take ownership over their own process. But particularly in career coaching situations in today’s market, this approach may not be what every client needs. Rather, some need to be asked more targeted, probing questions and be given more direct suggestions. A coach may choose to be artfully blunt, though not caustic or demeaning, needing to be heard but never trying to force a client to follow a path the coach deems most suitable. Coaches may opt to provide clients with their clear-eyed, unambiguous views. This more active approach can empower clients to reach for concrete solutions that yield positive outcomes—especially when time is of the essence.
2. Attention to Timely Skill Sets
The current hiring process for many jobs leans heavily on socio-emotional skills because, increasingly, employers are prioritizing what used to be called “soft” skills in the workplace—including collaborative communication, enthusiasm, curiosity, flexibility, resilience, leadership, and emotional intelligence. Coaches should encourage clients to cultivate these skills (particularly if their absence might have contributed to unsuccessful interviewing or a poor experience at a previous job), and teach them how to convey those abilities compellingly to potential employers. This will also provide opportunities for clients to showcase strengths they may have overlooked.
3. An Emphasis on Storytelling
Sometimes, a coaching client’s career path is diffuse and difficult to follow. Even if they have amassed many distinct and valuable skills, the specter of job-hopping or a long journey that seems to have come to a dead end can be hard to refute. It becomes important to help a client develop a narrative—for their résumé, cover letter, and to convey orally—that encapsulates their career in a true, well-told story. This will also encourage behavioral questions at interviews that can be answered with, yes, additional short stories to engagingly turn interviews into offers.
4. Validation of the Pursuit of Happiness
As evidenced by the so-called “great resignation” and “quiet quitting” movement, many people are unhappy at work—and the onus is largely on employers to find ways to keep workers present and engaged. Yet, many job applicants are still concerned about even mentioning work-life balance for fear of conveying a lack of seriousness or a poor work ethic. Career coaches need to reinforce clients’ desires to find and sustain intrinsic contentment in work, to enjoy ongoing wellness, and to sustain a meaningful work-life integration. These bigger-picture issues can be critical factors when clients look for a new job and beyond.
5. Opportunity for Continuation Coaching
Some coaches believe that once the original objective is achieved (whether it’s a new job, a winning marathon time, a health goal, or a life epiphany), it marks the end of the coaching engagement. But for some clients to successfully move on, additional guidance can be helpful. A dedicated coach sees a clear end-point for the coaching relationship, but may place that end-point several months into the future to give the client the opportunity to ask questions or iron out potential issues as they adapt. This kind of transition coaching may be even more important in today’s remote, hybrid, or flexible work environments, which can present unfamiliar challenges of their own.
Over the course of a coaching relationship, I emphasize to clients the imperative that they be agile, not fragile, a framework under which all of the above five strategies fall. An intrepid self-image is germane to a career search (which generally involves some degree of rejection), but also enhances our coaching clients’ ability to withstand challenges and setbacks, wield diverse skills and experiences, and gain self-awareness all the while. While legal career advising is certainly a niche area, coaching that helps clients develop a nimble, growth-oriented mindset is evergreen, and ever more integral to helping people make impactful changes in their careers and their lives. It also stretches us as coaches to deepen and display our own agility, without fragility.
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