I’ve been a professional career coach since 2002. Over the last 20-plus years, I have learned a lot about the industry and what it takes to be an effective career coach.
Back when I first became a career coach, the concept wasn’t as widely accepted as it is today. In fact, my clients were afraid to admit they were working with a career coach because they felt like it indicated there was something wrong with them.
Today, we now understand career coaching isn’t a sign of weakness, but a path to greatness. It’s why all the top pro athletes and business executives use them.
If you want to optimize your performance and achieve new levels of success and satisfaction in your career, it’s more than likely you’ll work with a coach at some point.
Why?
If you could do it on your own, you would have by now.
Having worked with literally thousands of people on their careers, I have learned some valuable professional lessons.
In the beginning of my coaching career, I thought I could help everyone. I was wrong. You can only help people who are ready to be helped. I wasted hundreds of hours on people who just weren’t ready to succeed. I’m not making that mistake again.
These are the five lessons I learned the hard way as a career coach.
1. People Only Turn To Career Coaching When They Are In Pain.
School teaches us everything except how to get a job and manage our careers. As a result, nobody enters the professional world with the right set of skills and abilities to successfully manage their careers. In many cases, professionals spend years following outdated advice or relying on guesswork, only to realize that they’ve been unknowingly sabotaging their own success.
Unfortunately, it isn’t until a person makes a major mistake or has a career setback that they seek coaching. Only then do they have the aha moment that they need to close the gap in their knowledge and abilities so they can get back on track.
2. Don’t Believe People Who Say, “I’ll Do Anything.”
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When in pain, people will claim they’ll do anything to feel better. But when it comes to their careers, it’s amazing how many people will procrastinate.
Avoiding feeling uncomfortable is often the reason people put off what they need to do to fix their problem. This leads back to the first hard lesson I learned. They wait and wait until the pain is so severe (i.e., lose their job, out of work for months, running out of money), and then they finally seek help.
When they finally come to me, it’s often after they’ve been stuck in a cycle of self-doubt and missed opportunities. The sad part is that most of the time, the situation could have been improved much sooner if they’d just taken small, manageable steps earlier.
3. Coaching Creates Change; Teaching Doesn’t.
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Teaching is when you tell someone what they need to do. Coaching is when you guide someone through the activities of teaching themselves.
When it comes to career development, coaching is what gets people to change how they operate so they can get the results they want. Whereas teaching usually only goes in one ear and out the other.
Coaching taps into a person’s own potential, pushing them to dig deeper, reflect, and unlock their own solutions. It’s the difference between someone passively absorbing information and actively transforming their mindset and actions. That shift is where lasting growth and success happen.
4. Intrinsic Motivation Determines Professional Success.
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It doesn’t matter how much someone claims they want to achieve a particular goal. If there isn’t enough internal motivation to push them to do the work on a daily basis, they won’t succeed.
Self-motivated people consistently get better results than externally motivated people (i.e., people who need incentives to do things). This is something I’ve seen time and time again in my work as a career coach. No matter how well-crafted a plan is or how many resources you provide, success ultimately comes down to an individual’s intrinsic motivation.
5. Excuse-Makers Aren’t Worth Your Time.
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Just like you shouldn’t surround yourself with negative people, don’t waste your time helping people who always have an excuse as to why they couldn’t get something done. It’s a clear sign they lack self-motivation and commitment.
They don’t deserve your help until they are ready to do the work. Growth only happens when a person takes responsibility for their own success, and no amount of coaching can change that.
I love my job as a career coach. Every day, I get an email from someone who has achieved their goal. It is definitely the most rewarding part of my job.
However, I’m not sure I’d even still be in the career coaching profession if I hadn’t learned the lessons above. Realizing these truths helped me build a thriving career coaching practice where my team and I are now able to help thousands of people.
If you want to succeed in career coaching or any other kind of role that involves coaching professionals, I encourage you to consider the lessons above. They’ll save you a lot of time and frustration.
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