My wife and I are sitting in a small coffee shop overlooking Waikiki Beach as the young lady who is serving us is somewhat complaining about her choice of careers. I take it she does not like being a coffee barista!
So, how are you doing with your career?
Is your career important to you? Do you want to be real high flyer in your chosen field, or are you satisfied with being comfortably mediocre? If you want to develop an outstanding career then you need to put effort into it. Not just into your daily work, but into the development of your career over time. You need to ask yourself this question – do you have a vision for where you want your career to be in twenty years? How about ten years? Or maybe just five years?
If the answers to the above questions was no, then you are lacking in vision. This lack of vision could cost you dearly in the long term.
You need to aim your career so that your life pans out the way that you want it to. Your career has a central role to play in your life. It is the earnings that you accrue through your career that allow your life to be lived the way that you want it to. It is true to say that money cannot buy you love, but it can buy you security, comfort and a great big house!
You do not need a ten year plan in order to be average, but you do need that kind of vision if you want to be exceptional. The trouble is that it can be all too easy to get caught up in the day to day struggles of life to keep an eye on the future, yet it is the future that our eyes must be fixed on if we are to make it a successful life.
Career coaches give you the focus and drive to achieve greatness in your career. They are an essential part of life for many of the most successful individuals in industry and business.
A career coach can help you secure your vision; help you cement it in place in your mind and be a constant reminder of what you are working for and towards. A career coach can make all the difference to your career.
This is truer when it comes to a major career crossroads such as when you are looking to secure a new job with another company; or when your career is in trouble when things like a layoff strike.
Career coaches have the experience to know that the best career move is not always to follow the money trail, thus, possibly leading to a highly stressful job. Ultimately the goal with any career is to earn more than you perhaps thought possible. This is true in the long term, but it does not always pay to hold to this view in the short term.
Early in your career the smart move is often horizontal rather than vertical. Career coaches will be able to help you focus on gathering skills and experiences earlier in your career so that as you progress in your career you are able to secure the high profile positions that you will eventually seek, thanks to your years of professional experience.
A horizontal move is counter intuitive to most of us, which is why a career coach would be a great idea. They will help you see each move as part of a larger strategy to get you where you want to be, not next just next month, but by the end of your career years down the road.
So often we cannot see the bigger picture, a career coach specialises in focusing you on the bigger picture and helping you plan to get there.
A career coach can also help when you find yourself faced with redundancy. This can be a hard time for the career minded amongst us. It can be easy at this point due to the poor economy to get discouraged and lose momentum in our career. A career coach can help us take the most crushing of negative influences and create a positive strategy to help move your career in a desired direction.
Career coaches do not view being laid-off as a crisis but as an opportunity for change, for growth and for development. This kind of input into your life at such a crucial time is essential, and cannot be overstated.
A career coach helps to turn the mediocre career into the exceptional career. This is all part of their offerings, and as such it is well worth considering hiring a career coach to work through your career dreams/aspirations and to help set a vision and realistic plan to help get you there.
That’s what we do, we work with people just like you, and the guy sitting across the hallway from you, in identifying what the next best move would be for your career. We hope this post has helped identify better what a career coach can do for you when the time is right for you to make critical decisions on your career as well as your financial future.
