How to Find Your Best Career

I remember talking with one of my clients, a funds manager at one of the large international banks, about 18 months ago and she saying how confidence was waning and somehow starting to ebb away, and that she could only see it getting worse.

Fast forward to the present; February 2009, and chances are some aspect of what is now a financial tsunami officially classified as a recession has on some level affected you and your clients life or business.

As a Performance Coach working with individuals on aspects of their career such as motivation, action planning including switching employers, and increasingly leaving employment to begin self employment, I can say one constant theme running through all is once again that of confidence.

Simply put; with confidence there’s a chance we can achieve anything we set our minds to, and without confidence suddenly the world becomes a much more difficult place.

The Fung Shui Approach to Coaching
As a trainer at Coach and NLP trainer one metaphor I often use is that of the martial arts masters of the East; when a challenge cannot be avoided or dealt with in a different way and an attack is imminent they do not try to convince themselves that it is not happening, since when something is happening, it is happening. Rather, what they then do is to accept the challenge and redirect it towards a safer place or to render it harmless. This is one of the fundamental beliefs of most martial arts.

The connection with life is that sometimes bad things happen. Many times this can be averted, overcome, avoided or rechanneled in some useful way. However, sometimes ‘stuff’ still happens, such as the present financial crisis, and no matter how much we may try to convince ourselves that it’s not taking place, most of our reality proves otherwise. These are indeed tough times.

So, in using what I call the Fung Shui approach of rechanneling energy into something more useful, the question then becomes; if we are in this financial crisis, what can we do about it?

…and that’s where coaching comes in.

As coaches, we help clients, from large corporations to individuals, to think ‘out of the box’. Also, since as coaches we are mostly independent businesses owners ourselves, we can ‘walk the talk’ for our own good, too. Because the truth is that no matter what the economy happens to be doing, as professionals we should always be asking ‘what next, how do I move forward now, what else can I do’. Anthony Robbins perhaps says it best when he suggests the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we give our clients ‘massive value’?

How can you give your clients even more added value right now?

As a coach celebrating my 6th anniversary since attending the first two days of my Diploma Programme with The Coaching Academy (22nd February 2003), I can honestly say it’s the been during the times when I’ve been most challenged that I’ve moved forward the most. It’s also a fact that in history that during times of conflict and overwhelming odds some of the greatest discoveries and achievements of mankind were produced.

New Programme
As a full time coach, I’m constantly looking for new ways to provide vehicles that enable my clients to keep employing me as their coach, and that means keeping an eye on the tried and trusted coaching ‘staples’, plus some others as the year progresses.

As well as telephone and face-to-face coaching programmes, I also offer online courses (sometimes known as eBooks, though with more exercises). There’s FREE access to Chapter 2 of the latest, launched only last week, at the end of this article. Called ‘How to Find Your Best Career’, the programme is designed to help people develop a new career plan based on their values and beliefs, external present day factors, a cutting edge CV, and razor sharp interview and negotiating skills for when they get the all important interviews – all at a lower price than personal coaching.

Take a moment
Three top questions to ask yourself no matter where you are or how far advanced your coaching practice is at the moment and that might help you move ahead in the present economic climate would be:

• Is what you’re doing now as a coach reflective of whatever experience of the world you now find yourself in?
• If you were to spend time reinventing, realigning, or in some way offering a new aspect of what you do that helps clients move forward, what would it be?
• What three extra incentives or ideas can you add to your marketing plan each month for the rest of 2009 (you do have a marketing plan, don’t you – and if not that’s a whole different article)?!

Here’s wishing you the very best in your coaching career, no matter where the economy happens to be.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Click here to read 2nd Chapter of ‘How to Find Your Best Career’ http://www.mikeblissett.com/Free_sample_chapter.html