At the crossroads? Get a career coach

By Selwyn Parker

Things not going too well at work? Perhaps you're fed up with what you're doing after 10 years at the same job. Or you feel your estimable talents have not been recognised.

Or again, maybe the challenge has gone out of the job.

Anybody who hasn't experienced one or all of these feelings, or versions thereof, at some time in their commercial career is probably in a minority of one.

The issue is what do you do about it. According to admittedly scant evidence, most people who are disgruntled with their workaday life do one of two things.

They grizzle to whoever will listen - usually to their partners but sometimes to colleagues - but otherwise do nothing about it. Or they up and leave for pastures new in the hope that a clean break might rekindle the fires.

But there's a middle way - and it's called coaching.

Think of a personal fitness trainer and you're pretty much right, except that a fitness trainer works on your body while a coach works on your mind.

As Waiheke-based coach Kevin McMahon, who has about 15 businesspeople as clients, explains: "The goal is to help provide clarity. I believe that people have all the skills and resources to achieve whatever is important to them. I just provide the leverage for them to achieve it."

A coach is not a shrink, whoops! psychologist. Coaching somebody towards clarity of mind doesn't involve hours on a leather couch answering questions about why your mother rejected you.

Most of it is done over the phone at between $300-400 a month and the goal is to look forward, not backwards. "A coach is present and future oriented", explains McMahon. "We don't delve into the past."

McMahon, who gave up a top job at Eagle Technology Solutions to study with the American organisation CoachU, sees himself as a navigator.

"When there's a lot happening in your life, it can be difficult to be both driver and navigator," he explains. "You don't need a navigator if you're driving in familiar territory. But if you haven't driven down a road before, maybe a navigator can help."

Most clients of coaches are at a crossroads in their careers. They know something is wrong but don't quite know what or, if they do, are uncertain what to do about it. Some of McMahon's clients have lost their passion for the job.

Others want to launch their own business.

Who to turn to? Although a British politician Lord Mancroft once said: "Happy is the man with a wife to tell him what to do and a secretary to do it," this is something you can't delegate.

Before the advent of coaches, there wasn't a trained and sympathetic ear. At least, not in New Zealand until the last couple of years. Coaching developed in America in the late 1980s out of the recognition that senior executives - for example, partners in professional firms - didn't have the time or the skills to help an employee think their way out of a career dilemma.

In fact, as David Maister, a consultant to professional firms points out, they're very bad at it. "In tough times there's a tendency for professional firm managers to edge away from the coach role and become more like policemen, administrators and bosses ..."

Basically, it's sink or swim.

Mentoring, which is a corporate version of the buddy system promoted by General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War in the early fifties, still enjoys a vogue in New Zealand, especially in professional firms.

But the trouble with mentoring, says the coaching industry, is that mentors tend, with the best will in the world, to guide the individual down the same path they have followed.

Also, they're usually too busy to spend enough time to truly help the individual. And finally, mentoring is primarily about taking younger employees under the wing, whereas many businesspeople at the crossroads may be middle-aged or older.

This leaves seminars - blitzkrieg enlightenment. But that's perceived to be too much like the emotional equivalent of a cardiofunk class. Namely, lots of fizz but no follow-up.

Like a personal trainer, a coach is there for you. Over anything between months or a year, however long it takes, a coach guides the client towards the emotional equivalent of a set of six-pack abdominals. That is, the enlightenment required to see the way.

Sometimes, in fact, it's a small thing. In one case, the source of the client's unhappiness was nothing more than a failure to talk to colleagues.

Over the years, this relatively minor deficiency had been allowed to fester to the point where it had become a serious problem. Once it was resolved, work became enjoyable again.

And sometimes it's the big U-turn. "One of my clients had been completely unfulfilled in his work for a long time but was too scared to jump", remembers McMahon.

Typically, these insights don't come from the coach but ultimately from the newly-enlightened client. "I work alongside the client," adds McMahon. "It's a collaborative process based more on enquiry than advice."

And who does a coach turn to for coaching? Well, most of them have coaches. McMahon certainly does and wishes he'd found one earlier:

"In hindsight I would have achieved a number of things if I had had the benefit of a coach."

*Contributing writer Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz