CareerCoach development Ideas

Pitch / blog idea Career coaching 2.0

Career coaching 2.0 is about evidence-based coaching - How do you get advice that is up to standard?

  • When we recruit people, we want to use some sort of evidence about who they are
  • When we guide people in their career choices, that might affect the rest of their lives, we think intuition is OK...?
  • That doesn't seem right from an individual, societal and by consequence even from an employer's point of view. Yet, we still do not automatically reach out to professionals to coach us. There are several explanations why we don't, the most important of which revolve around the fact that we're only confronted with the consequences of poor career management years or even decades into our career. However, here are three reasons why we should.
    • 1. We are poor judges of which choices are right for us. Decades of careers research is consistent on this point: if left to our own devices, we are poorly equiped to make meaningful career choices. What motivates us is highly personal, multi-faceted and subject to change. So what might seem as our main motivator one day, might not prove to be a valuable career pursuit in the long run. Yet, we are not good at letting go of old goals and do even worse in predicting our long-term career path.
    • 2. We have not been taught how to manage our career once we get an idea of what it is that we want. 
    • 3.  The consequences of poor career management are counted in years rather than days lost, in whether or not you're still able to perform even the simplest of tasks rather than being the 1st or 2nd best performer, and in contemplations of your life has been worthwile rather than of the things you could buy with your next bonus. So while it might seem like a goood idea to focus on becoming more productive at what you do and more valuable on the job market through e.g. competence-focused self-development, trainings or performance coaching - the predominant focus of career investments today - 
    • By the way, if you're thinking right now: that won't happen to me, that probably means you have a higher risk of hitting that wall at high speed somewhere along your path. Our own research for instance shows that the only attitude positively differentiating people ahead in the race to top management is their resilience. They've lost hope, confidence and optimism and just keep hanging on 
  • Does that mean that coaching is always right for you? Or rather, that every coach is right for you? 
    • It doesn't. First of all, there are different types of coaches for different purposes and with different strengths. A study by Jesse Segers in 2008 revealed that there are largely ... types of coaching..... and each is suited for some purposes, but not for others.
      • You may come across coaches who claim to know it all. Be very, very weary of those kinds of coaches. Also ask them for their credentials and expertise, as coaching is an unregulated profession. Everyone can call themselves coach in everything. However, we've seen cases where the only credentials people had for being say a burnout coach is that they've experienced a burnout themselves. I'm not saying experience is irrelevant. But when I'm going to see someone to help me through events that might impact the rest of my life, I'd want them to base their advice on a solid specialized training and expertise rather than their own experiences. The latter might be nice to engage with, but having had a cold doesn't make you a good doctor.
      • There are some excellent coach trainings that maintain really high standards before someone can call themselves a certified coach, such as that of the ICF. Besides that, also check whether they apply any specialized and evidence-based tools. It's our experience that there are few coaches who use tools dedicated for the job. Some use nothing and just use their coaching techniques to help you guide yourself. A really good coach can get a lot out of those techniques, but it still relies on what you know or think about yourself, rather than on an objective analysis of your situation. Others use tools that are either not fit for the job or not evidence-based. The way science works, this should actually be interpreted that they are likely or proven not to work, as we never conclusively prove something to work. We just find support to say that a certain technique's effectiveness should not be rejected - for now. So ask your coach whether they use coaching-specific tools, that use objective measurements compared to a representative norm group and that are based on a body of scientific evidence (one or two studies by the developers of a tool is not a good indication of its effectiveness). 
    • Besides that, we've also learnt that even for career coaching - our area of expertise -  different coaches are knowledgeable about different parts of the career coaching life cycle. Ideally your career coach is an expert in every aspect of career coaching, but that's not always the case. So another thing to keep in mind is what specializations your coach has. Some might be experts in landing you a new job or promotion, but lousy at guiding you in discovering which job you should have in the first place. Others might be highly experienced in getting people through a burnout, but not so much in helping them find their second career after that episode or in getting them reintegrated at a new job. As such, at the beginning of your coaching trajectory, it's a good idea to first do a check-up of what your coaching needs are and then to find a coach specialized in all its aspects. 
  • Wouter Van Bockhaven
  • Nov 23 2017
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