“Just tell me what to do!” Why your career coach won’t tell you (but how they can help)
We go to see a careers coach when we’re feeling stuck. We’re looking for answers: which career to transition into, how to tackle a work conundrum, how to boost our job satisfaction.
And often, after pouring out our story, all we want is for our career coach to tell us what to do. And yet, you’ll find most coaches unwilling to give advice. Why?
Well, there are many reasons...
Your coach only has a limited snapshot of your problem. It’s likely that you’ve been struggling with your issue for months (if not years!) before seeing a careers coach. As such, you’ll have a deep understanding of your problem, and will have analysed it from myriad angles. This is very different to the level of detail that a coach can get in an hour or so, or even over the course of a few sessions. As such, for a coach to swan in and breezily tell you what to do would be showing a lack of respect for your intelligence. If there were a quick and easy answer, you’d have thought of it.
Your coach is unlikely to have detailed knowledge of your industry. The range of occupations in the world of work is vast, and there’s no way that any coach could have a detailed understanding of every industry. Even if they do specialise in a certain area, it’s hard to stay completely up to date if you don’t work in it. This means that any advice may not be based on the latest information. What they can do is to help you find the information you need.
It’s disempowering. Going to an “authority figure” and being told what to do evokes a parent/child dynamic. You might not particularly care about this, and just want a solution to your problem. But this doesn’t equip you with the tools to manage your problems the next time that they arise, leading you to depending on someone else to solve your problems. And we often don't particularly thank our parents for their advice!
You’re more likely to act on ideas that you come up with. Think about all the times when you’ve given advice to someone close to you. I bet that you’ve often experienced one of two responses. Firstly, the “yes but” response: the reason why they couldn’t follow your (excellent) suggestion. Secondly, agreement that your suggestion is indeed excellent… but as the weeks go by, it becomes clear that they’re not going to act on it. Both of these outcomes are stalemate: the very reason you’ve come to see a coach in the first place! What might be more useful is to think about what’s getting in the way of you making a decision, and how you can overcome those barriers.
There may not be a “right” answer to your issue. For complex dilemmas, there are likely to be several satisfactory options. There will be many jobs in which you’d be happy, for example. What might be more important is, for example, becoming comfortable with making a decision and acknowledging that it comes with the loss of “what might have been”.
So, how can a career coach help?
Well firstly, to be clear, we do sometimes give advice, although this tends to be more on the information front. For example, if you’re unsure of where to look for jobs in a certain industry in which we have experience, then of course that would be something to share. But as mentioned above, our knowledge might not always be up to date, and so your coach might work with you to brainstorm who else you could ask, or where else you could look.
However, it's often on more complex dilemmas that we really want to be told what to do. In these cases, a coach can help you to:
Consider what’s important to you when making your decision, and how this aligns with your overarching goals,
Clarify and think through the different options open to you, and the implications of each,
Devise ways to investigate and gain greater insight into your options,
Dispel unhelpful beliefs and career myths that might be getting in the way of your decision making.
Be held accountable, feel supported and make progress.
So, in conclusion, whilst it’s really tempting to press a coach for a direct solution to your problem (and they can often feel the temptation to give it!), it’s unlikely to be helpful. We go to see a coach when we’re dealing with complex problems, and there’s often not a simple solution. The coaching relationship is often considered as a learning relationship. A great tutor wouldn’t tell you the answer (and in many subjects, there isn’t one correct answer), but would work with you to build your skills, knowledge and confidence. In the same way, a career coach will work to empower you to make informed decisions which align with your goals and aspirations.