Career coaching – what skills do I need?
Dr Joan Reid
www.coachassociates.co.uk
My background
• Who am I? – coach: career, leadership and
management development
• Recent doctorate – medical careers and coaching
• Educator of medical career supporters – previously
course leader for a MA/diploma/certificate
• What I bring: understanding of career theory and
knowledge of how career provider/supporters are
educated
• Acknowledge what you bring – careers expertise and
knowledge
What is a career?
• ‘A process of development of the
employee along a path of experience
and jobs in one or more organisations’
Baruch and Rosenstein (1992)
• ‘The sequence of employment related
positions, roles, activities and
experiences encountered by a person’
Arnold (1997)
What is coaching?
‘a human development process that
involves structured, focused interaction
and the use of appropriate strategies,
tools and techniques to promote
desirable and sustainable change for
the benefit of the client and potentially
for other stakeholders’
Bachkirova et al. (2010)
What is career coaching?
‘a
facilitated learning and
development process which
supports clients to focus on
their career/job related issues
and dilemmas’
Joan Reid 2013
Current career challenges
• For individuals in organisations – who is responsible
for a person’s career?
• Shift from the organisation to the individual
• The world of work is changing
• Notion of the ‘boundaryless’ career (Arnold, 2011)
• Portfolio careers and ‘encore’ careers
• Focus on employability (particularly for young people)
- http://www.coachassociates.co.uk/blog-post-3/
What career issues my clients
bring to coaching
• How can I develop my career – next career
move, promotion, team leadership
• I need to re-assess my career/change career
direction - perhaps as a result of redundancy
• I need help to get a job – job search,
recruitment and selection process: application
forms, CVs and interview preparation/skills
And I encourage clients to develop career
management and employability skills
My doctoral research
• Medical careers and coaching – how does
coaching support doctors to make career
choices?
• Case study
• Coaches and previous clients
• Free association narrative based interviews
and a qualitative questionnaire
• Highlight some key themes from my research
Outcomes from coaching
Self-change
Self-development
Self-reflection
Face the present with
confidence
Process of self discovery
Started reflecting
Focus on things good at
Get clarity
Re-adjusted my focus
Build my own respect
Go away and think it
through
Articulate my fears
Made my own decision
Develop career
management skills
Got my head straight now
Make conscious choices
Improved my
communication skills
Considered my life purpose
Took ownership
Set up my own network
Skills pyramid from Ali and
Graham (1996)
Interpretative
Skills
More
Influence
Strengthen
Empathy
Understanding
Skills
Active Listening
Skills
Active listening skills
Active listening skills
• Observing the client’s
behaviour
• Listening to the client’s
words
• Listening to the adviser’s
feelings
• Listening to silence
• When to break a silence
• Listening – what the client
hears
Coaching skills
• Body language
• Listening to the client’s
story
• Listening to the coach
• Silence
Understanding skills
Understanding skills
Coaching skills
• Restating
• Paraphrasing
• Testing
understanding
• Summarising
• Summarising
• Questioning
• Asking questions
Interpretative skills
Interpretative skills
Coaching skills
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• Challenging
Challenging
Being specific
Self-disclosure
Immediacy
Effective provision of
information
• Self-disclosure
• Immediacy
Additional coaching skills
• Acknowledgement – more than a compliment.
• Coaching in the moment – being present with your
client, holding their agenda, using your intuition and
letting your client lead.
• Metaphor – using metaphor to help illustrate a point.
Lakoff (1993) calls metaphor a “major and
indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way
of conceptualising the world”.
• Reframing – providing a client with another
perspective.
Source: Whitworth et al (1998)
Coaches and career
professionals
Similarities
Differences
• Contracting including setting
out how work together and
confidentiality
• Coach’s underpinning skills ,
e.g. listening, questioning,
challenging, curiosity and
values
• Outcomes/goals set by the
client
• Use of resources, etc.
• Credibility and competence of
the practitioner including
accreditation
• Underpinning theories
• Careers information, advice,
guidance and education
• Trends in careers and national
educational policies
• Referral pathways
• Coaching “genre”
• Whose agenda is it? – the
interplay between the
individual and the organisation
• Role of expertise - who is the
expert?
• Knowledge of the context
Thoughts for your own
professional development
• Which skills do you already have and
use?
• What skills would you like to develop?
• How might you develop additional
skills?
• Knowledge and expertise (careers and
coaching process) – where does it lie in
your work? Is it where you want it to be?
Thank you
Thank you
www.coachassociates.co.uk and joan@coachassociates.co.uk
References
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Ali, L. and Graham, B. (1996) The counselling approach to career guidance. London:
Routledge, an imprint of Taylor and Francis Books Limited.
Arnold, J. (1997). Managing careers into the 21st century. London: Chapman.
Arnold J. (2011) Career concepts in the 21st century. The Psychologist, 24, 106-109.
Bachkirova, T., Cox, E. and Clutterbuck, D. (2010). Introduction. In: Cox, E., Bachkirova, T.
and Clutterbuck, D. (eds.) The complete handbook of coaching. London: Sage Publications,
pp.1-20.
Baruch, Y. and Rosenstein, E. (1992). Human resource management in Israeli firms:
planning and managing careers in high-technology organizations. The International Journal
of Human Resource Management 3 (3), pp.477-495.
Lakoff, G. 1993. The contemporary theory of metaphor. In: ORTONY, A. (ed.) Metaphor and
thought.
Reid, J. (2012). Medical Careers and Coaching - an Exploratory Study. International Journal
of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, Special issue No. 6, 146-165.
Reid, J. (2013) The Use of Metaphors in Career Coaching of Medical Doctors. International
Journal of Mentoring and Coaching, XI, 11.
Whitworth et al. (1998) Co-active coaching: new skills for coaching people towards success
in work and life. Mountain View: Davies-Black Publishing