Career Coaching

What Is Career Counselling?

by Siri | Sep 26, 2024 | Career Coaching

When I started growing plants years ago, I threw some seeds in the pot, watered them copiously, and then impatiently waited for them to grow. Creating a balcony garden was a hit-and-miss approach.

Careers, too, are often built on a hit-and-miss approach.

When I was growing up, careers were not a matter of choice or intentionally crafting one that aligned with one’s personality, interests, or skills. It was about taking whatever job you were first hired into and building your career from that as a starting point.

My first job wasn’t even what I enjoyed, but that was the first company to hire me, and I ended up spending five years being a software engineer without my heart ever being in it. This is where Career Counselling would have been very helpful.

And what exactly is Career Counselling?

Career Counselling helps individuals make informed career choices that align with their personal and professional goals while enabling them to navigate the ever-changing job market.

Like many definitions, the above paragraph is a “word salad”. So, let’s break it down and understand Career Counselling in depth.

Why am I (a Career Coach) writing about Career Counselling?
What is Career Counselling?
The History and Evolution of Career Counselling
What happens in a Career Counselling Session?
When is the right time to seek Career Counselling?
What are the benefits of Career Counselling?

Why am I (a Career Coach) writing about Career Counselling?

A few months back, I met my neighbour while walking home. We exchanged enthusiastic, “Hi, Hellos, How are you doing?”

She then asked, “What are you up to these days?”

I replied, “I quit my job last year and am now a Career Coach.”

“Oh, career coaching? What age groups do you counsel?”

I was a bit stumped. I wasn’t thinking about my clients in any specific age range. I have worked with clients ranging from 21 years to late 40s.

I said, “There is no particular age group.”

“Oh, will you do counselling for my son?”

I was confused about why she was referring to me as a counsellor instead of a coach. So I asked her, “What would you like me to do with your son?”

She said, “He is in 10th grade and is confused about what to do next. I think Career Counselling will help.”

I said, “I don’t do career counselling, only coaching.”

“What is the difference?” she asked.

“In Career Counselling, advice and guidance is given to help the student make career choices. I don’t do that.”

We left it at that. (Yes, yes, I could have made a nice little elevator pitch for my coaching service, and I did not do that. Facepalm)

This happened in another instance when I introduced myself as a Career Coach, and the person mistook it for Career Counselling. (link for the difference between Career Coach and Career Counselling)

So, I thought it would be helpful to me and anyone else seeking to understand Career Counselling, whether they need one, and what the process involves.

That is why I, a Career Coach, am writing about Career Counselling. So let’s get on with it.

What is Career Counselling?

Let’s revisit the definition of Career Counselling that was introduced at the beginning of this guide.

Career Counselling helps individuals make informed career choices that align with their personal and professional goals while enabling them to navigate the ever-changing job market.

So, career counselling is a process in which a Career Counsellor works with clients to help them make career choices. They combine personal interests, professional and academic journeys, skills, talents, industry insights, prospects, earning potential, geographic insights, and advancement paths and work with the client to come up with career options, assess, evaluate, and make choices.

Career Counselling uses the Counsellor’s expert knowledge, access to the right information in the context of the client’s situation.

The History and Evolution of Career Counselling

The field of Career Counselling is almost a century old. Frank Parsons from the United States of America is known as the founder of Career Counselling, originally known as Vocational Guidance. The later 19th Century was a time of massive change in America. Industrialisation had changed the nature of jobs and careers. It was a time of societal upheaval.

People in the agricultural sector lost their jobs as machines replaced human labour. As people worked in relatively new industries, new skills were demanded of them. There was a gap between what people knew to do, and what they had to learn to do in order to adapt to the fast changing world.

Actually, this is not very new compared to what we are going through now. The advent of AI has revolutionised and created an upheaval, making many of us question whether we really have the skills needed to survive in a world that is changing so rapidly.

Coming back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Frank Parsons, a social worker, established a settlement house for young people who had been displaced by this change. This agency’s primary goal was to upskill and place these young people into employment.

Career Counselling originated as vocational guidance and expanded to include educational guidance for students. Further, as the profession matured, training institutes were founded in America to train Career Counsellors. The number of unemployed people increased (veterans displaced, disabled and returning from World War II), and America plunged into the Great Depression.

Career Counselling evolved in the 1960s to explore more broadly individuals’ hopes, aspirations, and dreams in the context of careers, jobs, and work.

As the Information Technology age set in, the profession evolved to a lot more regulated and standardised approach to Career Counselling, setting policies, guidelines and boards.

The Career Counselling movement has spread from America and many countries have adopted and integrated this approach into their educational systems at different rates and depths.

What happens in a Career Counselling Session?

Broadly, a Carer Counselling Session has four stages the client progresses through.

Discovery and Exploration of Self
Insights from the External Environment
Career Options Evaluation
Setting Goals and Action Planning

Discovery and Exploration of Self

The Career Counselling process begins with a series of assessments that expand and deepen the individual’s self-understanding.

Assessments are a great way to begin exploring yourself and your career choices. Different assessments have different areas of focus. Numerous assessments are available in the market that help Career Counsellors work through discovery and exploration with their clients.

Typically, the Counsellor chooses a set of assessments that focus on and bring insights from four areas.

Interests
Skills
Personality
Values

Interests

These not only include career or academic interests but also hobbies. Interests are activities that a person is drawn towards and does not typically have an external pressure or push to do these activities.

For example, I am interested in origami, and there was no external pressure or messages to create paper crafts in a certain way. As a kid, whenever I found spare paper, I made origami with it. So this is one of my interests.

Skills

Skills are learned and intentional behaviours and abilities. There are a wide range of skills that are necessary to cultivate and nurture for an individual’s life and career.

Skills can be technical, interpersonal, thinking, leadership, management, creativity or time management. A Career Counsellor would be a set of instruments to elucidate the skills the individual already possesses and has cultivated.

Personality

Personality refers to the enduring sets of behaviours and characteristics of a person, which are demonstrated by how the person thinks, feels, and behaves. Personality is a product of both nature and nurture. In career counselling, various assessments are used to assess a person’s fit for various career paths.

For example, when I went through assessments as part of my career counselling session, it came out in a personality test that, though I was comfortable working with details, I got bored with repetitive tasks and activities. That insight helped me realise why I was frustrated doing a certain kind of work, and it gave me clarity that in jobs with repetitive, monotonous work, I would be burnt out, frustrated and wrung out very soon.

Values

Values are the key determinator of things that you believe are important to how you live and how you work. They typically define our priorities and have a big impact on decision making and the paths we go down in our life. They also influence the things we are willing to do and what we are not willing to do.

Understanding what our values are, helps us to be aware of how they play a role in our life and work. When our values are not in alignment with how we work or live, then the internal conflict can manifest as stress, depression, burnout and external unconstructive behaviour.

In career counselling, understanding values form a key part of designing one’s career.

Insights from the External Environment

For a career that spans at least 40 years or more, we rarely consider what is happening in the external environment beyond taking the opinions of people in our circle or watching what our peers are doing.

This is a limitation that can be overcome in Career Counselling. Career Counsellors have access to information and data regarding various career options across multiple industries and the job roles that are relevant to the client.

The Career Counselors keep up to date with industry trends. They have access to industry insights and expert opinions on how careers will shape up in the future, what skills will be necessary to succeed in those careers, what the earning potential in that path will be, and what the global scope for specific jobs will be.

Career Options Evaluation

The Career Counsellor will debrief the results of the assessments with the clients and conduct an in-depth personal interview. Combining this with insights from the external environment, the Career Counselor can present the client with various career options.

The various options are explored in depth, allowing the client to reflect on, analyse, and contemplate the career options that they would like to pursue.

Setting Goals and Action Planning

Once the career options are evaluated and chosen, the Career Counsellor helps the client set short term and long term goals, that will help them to get onto the desired career path. Along with visualising and setting goals, the Career Counsellor helps the client devise an action plan so that the client can move ahead and take solid next steps.

What would be the perfect situation in which to seek out the services of a Career Counsellor?

In summary, Career Counselling is about deepening and exploring one’s facets using standardised assessments and working with a Career Counselor to integrate insights from the industry and develop a practical and realistic career path.

When is the right time to seek Career Counselling?

There isn’t a magical moment when it pops into your head, “I need Career Counselling now.”

I went to my first Career Counselling session after hearing a Career Counsellor speak at a work event. By then, I had been working for 9 years, and I wasn’t particularly seeking guidance or career counselling.

So, what made me go for a Career Counselling session?

I was getting that sense that my career was at a dead end. There were opportunities for upward mobility and different geography relocation, but I was at a point where I did not want to do more of what I did. I did not know if a career change was even possible, as I did not want to start from scratch in a new field. I loved the comfortable income and status that my job provided. I wanted to know, out of curiosity, what careers would fit me well if I started fresh.

So, I went because I was bored and also curious.

During the Career Counselling discussions, I gained clarity on my strengths, developmental areas, personality type related to work, how I liked to lead and how I wanted to be led, and a list of potential career options that would be suited to my career path.

Career Counselling is well suited if you are

A student looking to understand various options before committing to an academic path
A young professional seeking to explore options before committing to a career path
Looking for information about various career options, their earning potential, job market relevance and mobility
Looking to change your career direction at any stage of your life and want to explore options
Coming back from a career break, and would like to understand what would be a good path forward
Assessing the viability of converting your passion into a full-time job or a business to market conditions
Seeking unbiased and a “scientific” perspective on your current and future career.
Keen on understanding the skill gaps that would prevent you from going ahead with a certain career path.
Curious about what else is possible for you in the realm of work and career.

What are the benefits of Career Counselling?

There are three benefits you can achieve through Career Counselling.

Greater alignment with your aspirations and choices.
Wider and deeper exploration of oneself through assessments and targeted personal interviews.
Information about various industries, career options, job roles, geographic mobility and earning potential.

You will come out of Career Counselling sessions with much more clarity on where you are, where you want to go and how to bridge that gap.

The journey towards change begins.

Summary

So, the Career Counsellor is a great person to go to when you want some external market research insights for your career that will help you to make a choice. The Career Counsellor will also help you integrate these external insights with your own personal insights and help you arrive at a course of action that suits you.

Some situations are apt for Career Counselling, and if you think this could benefit you, you can always go for a package and see if it brings you any new insights.

Career Counselling is not a replacement for action. It helps you with the collection of information, analysing and integrating it, and coming up with an action plan. Your journey begins when you start executing the plan.

Read Next: Difference Between A Career Coach and A Career Counsellor

References

History-of-Career-Counseling.pptx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_counseling
Lots of research all over the internet.
Plus a good deal of my experience.

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Difference Between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor

by Siri | Sep 26, 2024 | Career Coaching

How long would saree shopping take? If you’d ask my mom, she might say a couple of hours. Ask my saree connoisseur friend, and she’d say three hours at least. But I take less than 20 minutes to shop for a saree. So, what is the difference between me and saree connoisseurs?

There are three differences.

I buy a saree only when there is a pressing need, and I can’t make do with borrowing sarees from my mom or friends.
I buy only from a small shortlist of shops.
I buy based on how quickly I fall in love with a saree.

When you know what it is that you want, it becomes easier to make a decision. When you buy something you don’t have a pressing need for, you spend a lot of time browsing around for “What is available?” “What is the best amongst what is available?” You may not be in touch with your intention when the need isn’t great.

Your decision to pick a career coach or a career counsellor boils down to just that, “What is your need right now?”

We need some background information before deciding whether to choose a career coach or career counsellor.

Career Coaching or Career Counselling: Which One Do You Need?

We will explore the following questions in this article.

What is Career Counselling?
What is Career Coaching?
What are the similarities between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
What are the differences between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?
How do I know if I need Career Coaching or Career Counselling?

What is Career Counselling?

When I started growing plants years ago, I threw some seeds in the pot, watered them copiously, and then impatiently waited for them to grow.

Creating a balcony garden was a hit-and-miss approach.

Careers, too, are often built on a hit-and-miss approach.

My first job wasn’t even what I enjoyed, but that was the first company to hire me, and I ended up spending five years being a software engineer without my heart ever being in it.

This is where Career Counselling would have been very helpful.

Career Counselling helps individuals make informed career choices that align with their personal and professional goals while enabling them to navigate the ever-changing job market.

There are four things that Career Counselling helps an individual with.

Discovery and Exploration of Self
Insights from the External Environment
Career Options Evaluation
Setting Goals and Action Planning

Discovery and Exploration of Self

The Career Counselling process begins with a series of assessments, debriefs, and personal interviews that help the client and the counsellor deepen and expand the client’s understanding of themselves. The assessments and interviews focus on and draw insights from the client’s interests, skills, personality, and values.

Insights from the External Environment

Career Counsellors provide insights, information and data regarding future trends, job market requirements, earning potentials, and industry trends relevant to the client. This information is rarely available to clients beyond the opinions of peer groups or informal mentors unless they seek Professional Career Counselling.

Career Options Evaluation

Based on the results from the assessments, personal interviews, and external environment data, the Career Counsellor presents the clients with various career options.

The Counsellor explores these options in depth with the client, offering the opportunity to visualise many possibilities in the future and then picking one that best suits the client’s requirements.

Setting Goals and Action Planning

Once the career options are evaluated and chosen, the Career Counsellor helps the client set short-term and long-term goals that will help them pursue the desired career path.

Here is the ultimate guide to career counselling, which provides detailed information about career counselling.

What is Career Coaching?

Coaching is a process in which the coach partners with the client to navigate the client’s inner landscape, going on a journey of self-awareness to achieve a goal. It facilitates inner change that will help the client make the desired external change.

Career Coaching is helpful to clients when they would like to look inward and work with the coach on

Explore what is causing dissatisfaction with one’s career and life
How to move through being stuck without being lost
How to set goals and achieve them without abandoning them
How to navigate career transitions confidently
How to unearth the learnings and experiences of the past and use them to navigate the present
Getting clarity on professional and personal ambitions
Identifying, celebrating and sharing professional and personal wins while being witnessed and acknowledged for the journey as much as the outcome

Here is the ultimate guide to career coaching, which provides detailed information about the process and everything you need to know.

What are the differences between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?

Think about a trip to London. You can do this trip in two different modes: Traveller Mode or Tourist Mode.

In tourist mode, you pick the top 10 monuments to see in London, look at a tour package that would give you the most value for money, buy fridge magnets and a couple of London buses, and be done with the trip.

In the traveller mode, you first figure out the important things you want to experience about London. Before researching online, you might write a few things you want to get out of the trip.

Experiencing English Food, especially the famous scones and tea you read about in Enid Blyton as a kid
Get a piece of British History, notably the East India Company
See the Prime Meridian
and so forth…

With this list as a starting point, you can tailor your London experience to your interests.

Working with a Career Counsellor is like being a tourist in London. You will get a bird’s eye view of everything London offers in a quick sequence from pre-tailored menus.

Working with a Coach is like being a Traveller in London. You will first go on a journey inwards, explore what matters to you, and then set out to change your professional and personal life anchored to your values, experiences, goals, and current needs.

There are three key differences between working with a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor.

Approach – Directive Vs Discovery
Outcomes – Singular Vs Expansive
Credentials and Professional Training

Approach – Directive Vs Discovery

Career Counselling is a very directive approach. The Counsellor leads and directs the client through a format and structure. The process involves gathering, processing, sorting, and finalising information to help the client decide on their future career path and next steps.

In this process, the Counsellor is the expert, whereas in Career Coaching, the client is the expert on themselves.

Coaching is a discovery approach. The Coach works with the client to unearth the intentions, resistance, barriers, and beliefs that stand in the way of change for the client. Coaching is about facilitating the client’s inner process of the change so that the client can make the external change they desire.

Outcomes – Singular Vs Expansive

In Career Counselling, the outcome is giving clients a set of career options tailored to them and helping them set short-term and long-term goals to achieve their desired careers. This is the objective of every single Career Counselling Session.

In Coaching, the main objective is to effect change for the client. The coach and the client set and contract the outcomes for the overall engagement. Then, the coach partners with the client to set outcomes for every session. There is flexibility in changing the outcome and direction of a session, even midway through the session. This way, the outcomes of the sessions are expansive and flexible for the client, while the coach holds the boundaries of exploration so that the client does not get lost in exploration but can get into action.

Credentials and Professional Training

The credentials for a Career Counsellor depends on which country you live in. But as a rule of thumb, the Career Counsellor should have a Bachelors or Masters Degree in Career Development (if available), Counselling, Psychology or Human Resources.

The Career Counsellor would also have professional training in career development and counselling from any recognised or accredited bodies in that country.

A Coach should have credentials from an internationally accredited body like the International Coach Federation (ICF), European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) or Board Certified Coach (BCC). A Coach might also have other degrees, professional training or work/ life experience that enhance their coaching skills and give them technical expertise to go deep into the coaching journey with the client.

What are the similarities between a Career Coach and a Career Counsellor?

Despite the differences between a Career Coach and a Counsellor, these two professions are close enough that people mistake one for the other. Here are three similarities between a Career Coach and a Counsellor.

Three similarities

Intention is to help the client feel good about their work
Exploration of options
Focus is the Client

Intention

The Career Coach and the Career Counsellor aim to help clients feel satisfied, happy and energised about their work and career prospects.

Exploration of Options

Often, it is hard for us to see beyond what is right in front of us. Sometimes, we are not able to even see that. The Career Coach and Counsellor help us see what is right there in front of the client and beyond what is visible. They help the client look ahead and see the possibilities, options and adventures beyond the past and the present.

Focus

The focus of the Career Coaching and Career Counselling sessions is on the client. The client’s needs, wants, goals, dreams and challenges take centre stage with both the professionals.

How do I know if I need Career Coaching or Career Counselling?

You’ll be looking to work with a Career Coach or a Career Counsellor when you want to make a change related to your career.

A Career Counsellor is best suited for those looking for external information about industry trends, market insight, viability, and earning potential to make a career decision. This decision could be about committing to a specific career/academic path, making a radical career change, or returning to work after a long career break and evaluating your path ahead.

A Career Coach is best suited if you want to work on your inner game and influence your external environment. Things like burnout, navigating challenging work relationships, exploring work dissatisfaction, conflicts at work, confidence issues, productivity and performance blocks, levelling up into a new role managing people, preparing for a career transition and working with feedback.

Summary

I’ve worked with both Career Counsellors and Career Coaches throughout my career. Career Counselling was incredibly useful when I was at a crossroads in my career. I was tolerant of the work I was doing and wanted to see what other careers would suit my profile and what could bring me greater satisfaction. Working with a Career Counsellor eventually led me to my training as a coach in 2014.

Moving from a freshly trained coach in 2014 to a radical career change from Corporate to a Business Owner has involved navigating various life and career decisions. I’ve been able to prepare, execute and navigate that change gradually over the past decade with the help of Coaching. What started as a seed of thought, “Oh, I like Coaching”, to starting a business and establishing a private coaching practice meant watering the seed, germinating, nurturing, waiting patiently for it to grow and continuing to tend to it. I would not have made the transition if I had not paid attention to the seed of thought and had other coaches’ coaching.

Career Counselling is like a nursery that gives you a selection of seeds to grow in your garden. Coaching is about taking those seeds, examining them to see the appropriate time and place to plant them, germinating, watering, tending, fertilising, keeping them free from pests, and nurturing the garden continuously while you navigate your everyday life.

If you’d like to discuss the decision between a career counsellor and a career coach, you can book a 30-minute free “no-obligation” discovery session. Siri will be able to answer any questions you have, and if we have time, go through a “Wheel of Life” assessment that will give you clarity on what areas of your life need focus right now.

Book Your Discovery Call

P.S. You may find words on the website that are spelled differently, like “Counsellors” instead of “Counselors”. I grew up with the British spelling system so some words will be spelt differently. If you think there is a mistake in grammar or spelling, don’t hesitate to email me (email address below the website). No mistake is too small to fix, and I’d be delighted if you took the time to give me feedback. I send a bar of chocolate for the best blooper of the month! Cheers.

Redefine Your Career Path

Ready to redefine your career path? Book a free session to unlock your potential with personalized career coaching.

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What is the Difference Between Career Coaching, Executive Coaching and Business Coaching?

by Siri | Aug 20, 2024 | Career Coaching

As a coach, these terms really confuse me. I can imagine how frustrating it must be for a client who is looking for some support and is met with tons of jargon related to coaching and coaches. Two of the most popular ones in the professional coaching space are career coaching and executive coaching.

So, let’s unpack what Career and Executive Coaching means. As a bit of a bonus, we will also explore what Business Coaching is.

In this article, we will explore

What does the Business Coach do?
What does the Career Coach do?
What does the Executive Coach do?
Do the Coaches undergo any specialized training to be called a Career or an Executive Coach?
What is the difference between a Career and an Executive Coach?
How do I know what type of coach works for me?
I need a bit of both, so which Coach should I pick?

Remember, Columbus, the adventurer who you got introduced to in this article on what coaching is. So, Columbus, after speaking to his friend, decides to first hire a coach. As part of his business plan to find new trade routes in the East through the open seas, he wants to do a small “test voyage” so that he can convince Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II that his foolhardy plan could work.

So, he needs to figure out how he can go about doing this. He thinks a coach will be the perfect person with whom he can sound things off, get clarity on this thinking, establish goals and action plans in order to get this business plan approved.

So, given that this is a professional goal he wants to accomplish, he has a few options of coaches he could hire from

Business Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Business)
Career Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coachee)
Executive Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coachee)
Performance Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coachee)
Leadership Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coachee and their team) X
Team Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coachee’s Team) X
Life Coach (Goal = Personal, Focus = Life Goals) X
Organizational Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Organization, Department) X
Agile Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Teams adopting Agile Methodologies)
Mentor Coach (Goal = Professional, Focus = Coach) X

Out of this exhaustive array of options he needs to choose from (he needs a coach to figure out who he needs to pick! We have complicated the industry so much. 🙂 ), let’s eliminate the coaches he doesn’t need so that he can pick the right one.

What kind of goal is Columbus looking to achieve? Personal or Professional = Professional
This option eliminates Life Coach.
Who is this coaching going to be focused on? Columbus Or His Crew Or His Family = Columbus
This option eliminates the Business Coach, Agile Coach, Mentor Coach, Organizational Coach, and Leadership Coach.
Is this about improving a specific skill related to his profession? No
This eliminates Performance Coach.
Is this about working on Columbus’s Business? Yes. Columbus is working on his business plan (for his business!) and wants to get sponsorship for his voyage.

So now we have 3 coaches who have made the shortlist.

Business Coach
Career Coach
Executive Coach

Business Coaching

So, straight off the bat, the Business Coach is suitable for entrepreneurs and business owners. In our case, Columbus is an entrepreneur (adventurer, master of his own ship, blah blah blah), so a Business Coach would be suitable for him in this journey.

So now that’s clear, Columbus will hire a Business Coach.

Wait, I thought we were going to explore Career Coaching and Executive Coaching. So let’s do that now.

Suppose Columbus is not the Master of his own ship. Instead, he is working for a large corporation, “Amazing Maps – The Finest Mapmakers In The World”. He is tired from the endless hustling and meetings he has to do all day. There is no time for wine and dine and just being fine. He is drawn out and wants to get out of the hamster wheel. His heart longs to sail into the open seas, with the wind behind his back and his arms spread towards the sun. Alas, this but remains a dream.

He decides to hire a coach to make this dream a reality.

So, a Career Coach is a suitable choice for Columbus, the employee of a corporation because the emphasis is on Columbus. The Career Coach will help Columbus

chart a personal course through this career journey.
get clarity on his professional and personal ambitions,
set goals and achieve them
get new insights into his beliefs, experiences and opportunities that he can use to reach his desired milestones with clarity, contentment and persistence.
navigate career transitions
encourage and celebrate milestones
challenge and help reframe beliefs that are not helpful anymore

The Coach will support Columbus in getting unstuck from where he is, navigating resistance and obstacles so that he can get his sailboat sailing on his dream voyage.

Career Coaching focuses entirely on Columbus, his professional goals, navigating the resistance, obstacles and transitions towards his desired outcomes.

Executive Coaching

Suppose Columbus is a pseudo Master of the ship. What are we talking about?

He is the Head of Innovation for “Amazing Maps – The Finest Mapmakers In The World”. He is sort of the Master but answerable to shareholders, the board room, or a bunch of suits. So he can’t go off and do his own thing.

Columbus has been tasked by the powers-that-are, to plan a voyage to go into the open seas, and to find new trade routes to the East. The previous routes through the land have been blocked off due to some teeny tiny geopolitics (that included conquest and the fall of an empire) that are outside of the scope of this article 😉

So, this is Columbus’ first assignment as the Head of Innovation. He is very nervous, and such a task has not been attempted before. If he fails in this task, they will happily throw him in prison and behead him. So the stakes are literally high in this project. Columbus would need support in thinking strategically, pulling the plan together, inspiring his team to work with him, motivate them to join him in this foolhardy project. He needs to be an effective and inspiring leader and an astute executive who will bring glory and success to this enterprise. Columbus can’t go at this on his own; he needs support, so he hires a coach.

An Executive Coach would be the right choice for Columbus. An Executive Coach typically works with high-level leaders and executives. They typically work with people in the C-suite or high up the organisation chain. People who are responsible for big budgets, high-stakes businesses/projects, large teams and some serious accountability for their work.

Since our dear Columbus is a high-level executive (Head of Innovation, reporting to the CEO) and is responsible for a high-stakes assignment with a huge budget and some serious life-or-death consequences, an Executive Coach would be better equipped to coach him.

The Executive Coach would help Columbus to

Hone his strategic thinking skills
Make intentional decisions as the consequences are high stakes not just for him but also for his team
Improve his personal leadership skills
Navigate tricky decision-making
Facilitate reflection

The Executive Coach will support Columbus as he sets on his journey of adventure with his team as a navigator and a leader.

Do the Coaches undergo any specialised training to be called a Career or an Executive Coach?

So here comes an often under-asked but important question from a client’s perspective. Do the coaches undergo any type of specialised training to be a Career, Executive or Business Coach?

To answer this question, I need to make something clear: a trained coach doesn’t mean the coach is better.

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.”

Training means nothing if you train to be a coach and practice absolutely from your old behavioural patterns. If you have no training but have worked with yourself, that counts a lot. The training to be a coach is not specific to an industry or specialisation. The coaching framework is applicable to anyone we coach, irrespective of their background, professional journey, challenges, or journeys.

But as coaches, we are drawn towards certain areas of work because of our own backgrounds and aspirations. We would like to work with certain kinds of clients, so that informs the specialisation we “assign” ourselves to. So to call oneself an executive, career or a business coach, there is no coaching-specific specialisation training. It simply is the coach’s call on what they would like to call themselves.

So how does this help you as a client to know you are picking the right kind of coach, and if the coach can indeed help you in that area?

While it is true that the coaching training (if the coach is accredited by an international coaching body), is purely on coaching skills, coaches tend to rely on their experience, skills and qualifications as well when picking and choosing the kind of process they go through with their clients in a coaching session.

For example, I have chosen to call myself a Career Coach. I’ve got 19 years of experience working in large corporates and I have grown up the corporate ladder and been able to break through the glass ceilings as a woman. I’ve been able to change careers thrice. So this gives me the requisite background and experience to have seen through a wide range of career issues, professional roadblocks and successes in my 19-year-long career working in top companies, and many a time as a “misfit” and an “outsider”.

I’ve also got the requisite coach training (close to 150+ hours of coach training so far), and I have an international accreditation (ICF ACC) that testifies that I have put in the time, effort and practice to be a coach.

Along with all this, I am a meditation practitioner, and my inner work is guided by the principles of self-awareness, inquiry, reflection and principles of non-violent communication. I read extensively (some may call obsessively!) and I write as well. So my coaching process in the session is informed by my training, professional experience, qualifications, lived experience and more so my personal coaching philosophy (link here).

So as a client, when you are approaching a coach, do some background research on the coach. Go through their experience on LinkedIn, their personal website, their profile on the coaching platform. Read through their testimonials, their writings and see if it resonates with you. Book a discovery call with them (if that’s made available) and see for yourself if you would like to work with this coach.

What is the difference between a Career and an Executive Coach?

The difference between a Career and an Executive Coach is the audience they work with, and the focus of the work in the sessions.

A Career Coach works with individuals, regardless of their professional role or business. They help them achieve their professional goals, remove roadblocks along the path, and support them in achieving whatever they wish to. A Career Coach also provides support to the individual to figure out how to resolve conflicts at workplace, performance issues, navigate promotion pathways, having difficult conversations, negotiating a salary rise, giving and receiving feedback, manage their time effectively and help them have a work-life balance.

Any professional issue is in the purview of a career coaching session, and the session is held with the client at the center. An individual can hire a career coach irrespective of their professional experience, background and industry.

An Executive Coach primarily works with people in the C-suite or management positions with high stakes in delivery, accountability, and responsibility. The focus of the coaching sessions is navigating tricky decision-making, handling stakeholders, fine-tuning personal leadership style, giving and receiving feedback, handling difficult conversations like firing people, giving performance feedback, and managing the consequences of accountability.

Typically, a company hires an Executive Coach for their executives. But an individual in that role can also go out and seek to hire an Executive Coach for themselves, which people normally do during their first jump into such roles.

How do I know what type of coach works for me?

Ask yourself these questions.

Are you a business owner or an employee? Business Coach
Are you involved in a high-stakes job with big-budget responsibility and large teams? Executive Coach
Are you seeking coaching to clarify your career and professional goals? Career Coach

I need a bit of both Career and Executive Coaching, so which Coach should I pick?

If you are working with a coach, and you are finding it helpful continue with the coach. The kind of focus areas you bring into the session can be guided by what it is that you most need at the moment.

If you haven’t worked with a coach, explore both kinds of coaches. Read up on their backgrounds, experience and book discovery calls with them. An excellent Career Coach would be able to do Executive Coaching as well. I have clients who are senior leaders or are looking to make the jump to C-suite and some of their sessions are pure-play executive coaching. A good Executive Coach should be able to help you work with your professional goals as well.

So, between the Executive and Career Coach, you could go for either one based on the person, your comfort level with that person and whether you find it helpful to work with them. The lines are blurred between the two. The distinction is there as a guide, and it is not hard and fast.

I’ve tried to make this as comprehensive as possible, and in case you have further questions that can help bring clarity to Business, Career and Executive Coaching, please write to siri@sanerworklife.com, and I’ll be sure to answer them. I reply to every single email, so don’t hesitate to email me.

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What is Coaching? (And What it is Not)

by Siri | Jul 19, 2024 | Career Coaching

Imagine you are the adventurer Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer and navigator. It is the year 1488, and you are sipping your wine and lounging on your sofa in your pyjamas, going through your stack of mail. You have a young family to support. You are considering your next move, on how to accumulate riches for your family and join the ranks of nobility.

There are so many options and yet too few that really excite you. You are stuck on how to move ahead. You look through your mail and find a flyer advertising the services of a coach, mentor, counsellor, therapist, teacher and trainer.

You take the flyer with you to a party in the evening, where you meet your friend who runs the newspaper business that publishes flyers like these. You ask her, what the heck is the difference between a coach, mentor, counsellor, therapist, teacher and a trainer?

Your friend asks, “What caught your attention in this flyer?”

You say, “The flyer says, How to go from stuck to unstuck? That caught my eye. I am considering my next voyage and figuring out how to accumulate riches for my family. I am not clear what I want to do. So this caught my eye.”

Your friend says,“Imagine you are stuck in a maze, and you can’t find your way out. Here is what these different professionals can do for you to help you find your way out.”

Teacher

You find someone who knows how mazes work. This person is a teacher. He explains to you how mazes are built, how they work and what are the different types of mazes. He teaches you the basic skills you need to understand mazes, like pattern recognition and tools to navigate them like a compass, maps, and stars.

A teacher offers you fundamental knowledge and information so that you figure your way out. You go from stuck to unstuck by trying out different things based on the knowledge and information you have been given by the teacher.

Trainer

You are stuck in the maze because you are not physically fit. You are winded and out of breath when you walk for a few hundred meters. Your hip flexors are so tight that when you attempt to climb over obstacles, you end up pulling a muscle. You are writhing in pain, and your lack of fitness is causing you to be stuck. You find someone who can teach you how to build your physical fitness.

This person is a trainer. This person will give you exercises and drills that are needed to build certain abilities and give a specific outcome. If you go through the exercises, activities and drills given by the trainers, you can develop the ability to climb 6 feet without pulling a muscle and run for 10 km without collapsing on the floor in pain. A trainer offers you a system or a method to deliver a specific outcome. You go from stuck to unstuck by using your newly enhanced fitness to navigate the maze.

Counsellor

You wandered into the maze and got stuck here because you were feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Now, being stuck is revving up that overwhelm and causing you to go into a downward spiral. You need to regain your emotional balance now if you want to walk out of the maze. You find someone who can listen to your immediate concerns in an unconditional, safe and supportive manner.

This person is a counsellor. This person will help you manage your emotions right now and offer strategies, advice, and techniques to help you regain your sense of balance. This will help you feel more calm and settled, and with a clear head now, you can figure out how to get out of the maze.

Therapist

This is not the first time you are stuck in this maze. You have wandered into this maze many, many times before, and you don’t understand how to keep finding yourself in this situation. There are some deeper underlying experiences, like trauma, neglect, and challenges, that have not been processed and acknowledged, which leads you into a cycle of getting stuck in this maze.

You find someone who can help you delve deeper into your experiences to understand the root causes. This person helps you to explore, navigate and process the deep and hidden emotional and psychological issues. This person processes and helps you resolve past traumas and challenges and works through your long-term mental health challenges. These could be chronic mental illnesses, too, that cause you to become stuck in this maze.

This person uses different techniques in a safe and supportive space to help you to heal, break old habit patterns, and build a strong psychological, emotional and mental foundation from which you can find your way out of the maze.

Mentor

You find someone who has been through the maze before and has made her way out. This person is a mentor. A mentor is an experienced person who has been through the same journey before. She shares her knowledge and gives you the benefit of their experience in terms of advice, what has worked, what has not worked.

A mentor offers you insights from their own experience, which helps you to navigate the maze effectively so that you can make your way out. You go from stuck to unstuck with the help of the mentor’s advice, insights and experience.

Coach

You don’t know where to start. You need a guide. This person is a coach.

A coach helps you to figure out and focus on where you want to go and how to get there. She does not give you the answers. She helps you to create your own map of the journey you’d like to take. She facilitates that process for you by reflective listening and asking questions that help you craft your own path.

In the process of coaching, you have transformational insights that help you to create your map, identify milestones and align your compass in the direction you want to proceed to walk out of the maze.

A coach will also be able to help you identify the other professionals you would need support from in this journey. Do you need a teacher, trainer, mentor, or therapist? The coach will be able to help you identify your needs, seek the right kind of support and tools, and walk the journey from being stuck to unstuck.

A coach’s role is to work with you and facilitate the process as you chart your own journey, create your map, set your compass, seek resources and support in the journey and reflect to ensure you can make course corrections as and when necessary. A coach also keeps you accountable and provides you with encouragement and motivation as you progress. Her focus is on removing roadblocks, resistance and obstacles that are in the way of you achieving your goals.

The coach will help you clear or circumvent anything that stands in the way of you being unstuck.

The Key Roles Of A Coach

Goal Setting

Identifying our vision for our life and career is important so that it can anchor us in our life journey. A coach helps you identify your goals—both short-term and long-term—in all aspects of your life and career.

Bias Towards Action

Clear actions help you to achieve your goals. A coach helps you to craft action plans that move you closer towards your goals.

Reflection and Review

Reflection is a crucial part of the process of achieving your goals. A coach holds space and helps you to reflect on the good and uncomfortable aspects of your journey.

Accountability

Accountability is important to ensure you stay focused on your actions and not let procrastination or resistance creep back in. A coach helps you to be accountable and design your own systems so that you stay focused on the progress you are making and the actions you need to take.

Identifies Support Needed

There are times when outside support is needed. If there are areas in life that meet with huge resistance because of a lack of skills, past traumas or health challenges, a coach will be able to figure them out and point you towards the support that would be most helpful for you to receive.

“Oh,” you remark, “so I don’t have to do it alone?”

Your friend says, “Of course not. You don’t have to do it alone. There is a wide range of support that is available for you.”

You say, “I don’t know where to start. So I think a coach is the best place to begin with.”

Your friend says, “Yes, once you figure out your goals and have an action plan, you can work with your coach to see what additional support is needed. Based on that, there are different roles, such as teacher, trainer, mentor, therapist, and counsellor, available.”

“Right ho! How do I start? Where can I find the coaches?”

Guide to Coaching

Here is your full guide to coaching. Get yourself a glass of wine (or coffee) and dive in.

Epilogue

We know what happened next. Columbus found an awesome coach! (It could have been me in a previous birth, or not!) He created a business plan. Columbus convinced the Catholic Monarchs Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II to sponsor the voyage on his third attempt. Columbus went on many voyages, made unexpected discoveries, met with disasters and pioneered the era of exploration of new lands.

Summary

So, if you are interested in personal and professional growth and seeking support, here are the professionals you can turn to.

Teacher

A teacher gives you information and knowledge that is useful in your personal and professional journey.

Trainer

A trainer provides you with specific skills that can be helpful in your growth as an individual and a professional. For example, negotiation skills, emotional intelligence skills, AI prompt engineering, Agile methodology, marketing skills, etc.

Counsellor

A counsellor can help you through an immediate personal or professional crisis by listening to you and helping you manage your emotions and stress related to your current situation.

Therapist

A therapist helps you to go deeper into the patterns of your personality and behaviour and plays a crucial role in helping you work through mental illness, chronic mental health challenges, trauma, and addictions that affect your personal and professional life.

Mentor

A mentor is focused on your professional growth. You can have a mentor in your career, be it in a corporate setting or if you are running your own business. A mentor is a person who is ahead of you in your journey. This person has been there and done that and is helping you by providing insights, advice, tips and support that enables you to reach your professional goals.

Coach

A coach helps you to reflect, set goals, remove resistance and barriers towards action, keep you accountable, and celebrate your wins. Coaching helps the individual to improve their well-being across different areas of their personal and professional lives. Coaching is not a replacement for mental health care but offers a great way to build skills to improve resilience and make progress in leaps and bounds towards your goals.

If you are looking to hire a coach, you can book a 45-minute free “no-obligation” discovery session. Siri will be able to answer any questions you have, and if we have time, go through a “Wheel of Life” assessment that will give you clarity on what areas of your life need focus right now.

Redefine Your Career Path

Ready to redefine your career path? Book a free session to unlock your potential with personalized career coaching.

Book a Free Discovery Call