Sally Denn is a Business and Life Coach with Red Elephant Coaching, she is a master neuro linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner who offers coaching to individuals and businesses through individual sessions, courses and workshops.
Choosing or changing your career can be simple and fun!
So, who read that and thought ‘What planet is this woman on?‘ As human beings we can often associate many things with our choices and make them out to be these MASSIVE decisions, when in fact all they are, is a choice and a decision. When you put it into words it seems pretty straightforward but I know that in reality, it can be anything but simple. Part of my job as a coach, is to make things easy for my clients and to ensure that they get what they want. Within a career choice session I use a whole host of techniques to do that and I always start in the same place.
I am going to take you through the start of a coaching session on career options. These sessions may all begin in the same place but they certainly don’t all finish in the same place! The one question that I constantly ask all of my clients is what do you want? When it comes to choosing a career, or changing a career, this initial question is very relevant. So, what career or job do you want?
For some people that can be a really big question! Some may know what they don’t want or they may want to leave a job that no longer satisfies them. Other people may want to move towards a career that will really suit them, yet how on earth do you know what job or career to choose?
There is a really simple exercise that I use with my clients which focuses on 4 specific areas. We will work through the exercise together and I’ll make it as straight forward as possible.
- Grab a piece of paper.
- Divide your piece of paper into 4 columns.
- Label each column with one of the following titles: Learnt Skills, Innate skills, Passions/Love and Needs.
- Under each heading you need to list everything you can think of that fits that category, take your time and try to get as many in each column as you can.
a. Innate skills; these are the skills that you are naturally good at and, because you are so naturally good at them you may not even realise what they are! You may even want to ask others to help you list them. NB Give yourself some credit here and think about what you really are naturally good at.
b. Learnt skills; these are the skills you’ve learnt throughout your lifetime. You will have lots of these so spend some time and revel in what you have learnt: remember things like learning a language, maths, riding a bike, driving a car, geography, learning to learn…. the possibilities for this one are endless.
c. Passions; These are the things that excite you and make you want to get out of bed in the morning. They could be people or things, anything that you are passionate about can be listed here.
d. NEED; this is the only area where I am going to mention your career. These are the things that you NEED from your job. It could be the amount of money you get paid, it could be flexible working hours, it could be that you NEED to work with people (or not) as the case may be. Note the word here is NEED – this is not what you want, this is what you require from your career or job.
Brilliant! That’s the first and possibly the easiest step completed!
This next step will depend on your personal experience of the exercise. Are you overwhelmed by choice or do you feel you have only one option in your career?
For those who believe they have limited options:
Take one item from each category and try to make it the most random choice from each list. Now, I’m going to ask you to think about a job that could involve all of these four random options. This exercise is about widening your choice, so think outside the box, use your creative brain and be as imaginative as you want to be. Do this several times so that you can create a list of careers that you had never thought of before. From there you may go in all sorts of directions, it’s a start.
For those of you who feel overwhelmed with too many options:
As you created your lists what stood out as the most important under each heading? Take a moment to select the top three items from each category and think about job or career may have all of these things?
This is a simple exercise to help you explore your options. It shouldn’t be stressful but fun! If you wish to go through the exercise on a one to one basis to develop your own program I would be happy to hear from you. Alternatively, once you have explored your options you may feel that it’s time to take action! This is where a coach can be really beneficial; supporting you in finding out your best way of getting the career you want.
Good luck, enjoy exploring your potential!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief exercise and look forward to hearing from you in the future. If you would like to find out more about coaching support please visit our website. Feedback on this exercise is always welcome.
