Do you need a career coach?

Image by Dave Jones – one of many via Flickr

Coaching has been well established in the USA for years now. American businesses and individuals routinely engage coaching services to help them make crucial decisions about their careers and their personal lives.

Now coaching is catching on here in Ireland, and you can find Irish coaching services covering everything from getting fit to running your own business to a holistic coaching that encompasses every facet of your life.

One coaching discipline that’s really taking off here is career coaching. When you think about it it’s little wonder. We spend most of our lives at work, and yet reports indicate that up to 70% of the Irish workforce are unhappy in their current job.

If you’re unhappy at work, or just feel you’re stuck in a rut, coaching is one way of discovering what it is you’d be really happy doing, and helping you take steps to achieve it. A coach will act as a catalyst for change, helping you to identify what it is you really want out of your career, and laying out a definite plan of action for getting there.

“Coaching will take you from where you are today to where you want to get to. It’s as simple as that; don’t try to over complicate it, work with it and go for it. It is all about YOU and nobody else,” said job and career coach Greg Dalton of coaching firm Q1 etc..

“The process of coaching is an extremely positive process, it gives you the opportunity to look at where you are today, look at where you want to get to, then take a step back and work out a plan on how you are going to achieve it.

“There will be a lot of thought provoking discussions, finding out what your belief systems are, finding out what your values are and in particular what are you self-limiting beliefs. These are what hold you back, this is not rocket science, it is a simple process that most of us find incredibly difficult to deal with,” he said.

Working with a coach can help you to to:

• identify what’s really important to you
• set clear, achievable goals
• get tangible results more quickly
• keep focused on what’s important to you

Your coach will also provide you with the support and encouragement you need to put your plan into action.

Coaching may not be for everybody. There are people out there who already have a clear vision of where they want to be in their lives and careers, and have the drive, enthusiasm and commitment to reach their destination. For the rest of us, working with a good coach can help overcome the barriers we subconsciously put in the way of our own success.

Greg Dalton sums it up: “Coaching doesn’t agonise about the past… it focusses on your future! It is about your happiness and what it is about your life that you want to change to make you happier.”

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