Career coaching in London
For over 8 years. I have been empowering people to live better through life and career coaching in London. I seek to draw upon all my experiences, personal and professional to do this. Part of my job also involves making clear when career coaching is NOT needed. Far too often, people waste time and money on career coaching not realising that what they really need is either a good recruiter, or industry specific mentoring. Much of the problem is around failing to clearly understand what career coaching is.
What is career coaching anyway?
I see the focus of career coaching to be about “finding work that is right for YOU”, and I accept that different people will have different definitions. Generally, people tend to use the terms executive coaching and career coaching somewhat interchangeably. I prefer to define career coaching as a related, but separate area. The focus of executive coaching is to uncover behavioural insights about yourself (and your team) that improve performance in your organisational role. While this may lead to exploring what career is right for you at a fundamental level, that is not the main intention of executive coaching.
Rather, it is career coaching that has this focus — the focus of uncovering what work is right for you. In one sense, all this is semantic. Yet, the terms career coaching and executive coaching exist and it is useful to be clear about what we mean. Well, at least I can be clear about what I mean by them in my own practice.
Two aspects
There are two key aspects to the question of ‘what work is right for you’. One aspect is having a sensible framework to explore the question of ‘career’. And, my self-coaching guide — ‘On finding fulfilling work’— available to download for free, offers such a framework. The second aspect is around uncovering and breaking through what holds you back from really embracing the right kind of work for you. It is about breaking through those personal blockages that stop you from seeking fulfilling work.
You may not need career coaching
In a sense, 90% of what is called career coaching can be done without a coach. Many career coaches may not want to admit this, but that is ultimately why I created a self-coaching guide. And, that is also why I have not done the same for executive and life coaching. For, these areas are far too complex to be reducible to a few lines of text, and require deeper exploration. On the other hand, much of career coaching has to do with simply having a good structure to explore the question of ‘career’ and ‘work’. The rest you can very probably do in your own time, with the help of the internet and perhaps a recruiter.
It is the second aspect then— to do with personal blockages — that is much more likely to need 1:1 work with a coach. Reading my self-coaching guide is very likely to be enough. If so, I wish you the very best! If not, do get in touch to explore if 1:1 coaching is right for your needs.