In This Chapter

It’s nice to know that you can reach out and find support fairly easily these days. All along in this book, we have talked about being able to sustain your motivation for the career discovery process as well as pursuing your career goals. There are two types of support that will help you at different stages of your career journey. A coach is someone who can help you through the career discovery process, preparing for your job or school search, and help you to reach your life or job-related goals. A mentor is someone who you can look to for guidance in growing and learning professionally in your chosen career field. A mentor can be your boss, another person in the organization you work in, or someone you find on your own. This person knows the ropes, has been in your profession or career field, and is there to guide you as you enter each new phase of your career.

Both mentoring and coaching used to be almost exclusively part of the succession planning or training programs in organizations. Over the past several years there has been an explosion of coaching organizations, coaching schools, coaching networks, and coaches of every kind. Today coaching is available to everyone, not just those in organizations. And mentoring is not far behind with the opportunities online to find a mentor that matches your needs.

Just as mentors used to be found mostly in formal organizational settings, so did coaches. Coaching was generally done by organizational development consultants who came in to work with management staff in organizations. Over the past several years, many managers have taken training in how they can coach their own employees using the skills of active listening, feedback, and development planning. And, some organizations have made coaching available to all employees. The difference between mentoring and coaching is closely aligned, and coaches often do mentor or find mentors for people they coach. Mentors need to have the experience and knowledge base in a particular profession or occupation in order to guide a new entrant into a field or position. A coach’s skill sets focus more on the process of helping you to reach your goals. Many training programs for coaches have emerged over the past several years. These programs focus on people skills and approaches to helping people to reach their goals.

Coaching is usually defined as the art of partnering with another person to help them to reach their goals, to expand their horizons, and to inspire them to achieve the future they desire. Coaching is a proactive way to approach moving toward your goals and keeping the focus on the future versus the past. It is unlike therapy in which a person often wants to understand their past in order to understand their present behavior and feelings. For those of you who still need support, encouragement, or motivation to continue your career discovery and search process, a good coach is just what you need.

Most coaches have a specialty area that they focus on because they do have some knowledge and expertise about that topic. Some examples of specialty areas are career coaches, small business coaches, fitness coaches, healthy eating coaches, weight loss coaches, leadership development coaches, divorce coaches, financial planning coaches, retirement coaches, and so on. Almost any life/work topic that you can think of can be a coaching specialty. Many coaches today call themselves life coaches, and they offer coaching in the whole range of life issues that, as human beings, we may want to set some goals around.

In order to find the right coach for you, you should complete three steps:

You need to do a little preparation yourself before you go out and look for a coach. First of all, think about the goal that you want to achieve. Do you want to identify your perfect career? Do you want to create a business plan for your small business? Do you want to find a job that matches your Career Profile Map (in Appendix A)? By deciding what your goal is, you are already narrowing down the specialty areas that you want your coach to have. For our purposes in this book, you may be looking for a career coach or a small business coach. However, some of you may love the idea of working with a life coach to achieve some of your lifestyle goals such as health and fitness, building a support system, or having more fun in life.

The next part of your preparation is thinking about the kind of coaching relationship that is going to work for you. Remember, a coach will partner with you to help you to reach your goals. So, what kind of a partner are you looking for? Do you want someone who will hold you accountable for taking action toward your goal on a weekly basis? Do you want someone who challenges you to step out of your comfort zone and take some risks? Do you want someone who is very understanding and accepting of who you are right now? At different points in our lives, we are looking for different interventions to help us achieve our goals. Here is a short list of things to consider in your coach:

Now that you have thought through the kind of person you believe would make the best mentor for you, you can begin to turn your attention to finding this person.

Now you are ready to locate your coach. An important aspect of this search is to find someone that both meets your list of criteria for a good match and has the type of credentials that make you comfortable. Many coaches have training through accredited coaching programs and through the International Coach Federation. And many coaches have degrees in counseling and related fields that have prepared them to work effectively with people in a helping relationship. Still other coaches are experts in their specialty areas and do not have any formal training as a coach. All of these options can be fine, depending on what you are looking for in your situation or your preference for the level of qualification in your coach.

If you are looking for a career coach, first look in the telephone directory under Career and Vocational Counseling. There is usually a short list of local providers. Another place for local providers is in your local newspapers and newsmagazines. Call each one of the telephone listings or ads that appeal to you and interview them. Tell them your goals and what you are looking for in a coach. Ask them about their services, their fees, and whether they have a website or a bio to which they can refer you. Often their websites will have testimonials from former clients. You can also ask them if they have clients who are comfortable and willing to act as a reference. This takes into consideration the fact that some clients would prefer to maintain a confidential relationship with their coach or counselor.

So many people today are coached over the phone. If you don’t mind this, then you can expand your selection. Here are some sites you can go to for referrals and listings of coaches:

The following is a sample coaching exercise developed for a local professional business women’s organization. This can help you to see one way that a coach can help you to establish your goals.

Your Business Mission. Rate your current satisfaction with your business results from 1 to 7, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 7 being very satisfied:

Generate a list of goals for the next 60 days that will result in increasing your satisfaction with your results and further achieve your mission:

Choose two goals from the previous list that you believe have the most leverage for creating greater results. Write them here:

As you look at both of these goals, what “next steps” need to be taken to achieve these goals? Write these next steps here. List everything you can think of—these do not need to be in order:

What distractions are keeping you from focusing on your goals? What do you find yourself doing during the day that takes away from your primary business goals? Write these down here:

Can any of these distractions be delegated, outsourced, bartered for services, or simply eliminated? If so, circle those distractions now. Put the name of the person in your network (next to the circled distractions) that you will ask to champion your distractions!

Take a few minutes to think about people in your network who would be able to do the following:

Write down the names of people in your network that you will contact in the next week that might be able to assist you:

Mentoring is when a more experienced and seasoned person agrees to aid a less experienced person in developing professionally in a particular field. This relationship can take place between a senior in college majoring in engineering and a first-year student who is just starting in that major. It can be a person just starting a coaching business being mentored by a well-established coach. Mentoring can take place in any profession and in any industry.

Often, we think of mentoring as being your own personal ongoing orientation to a situation. Usually, if someone was new to a company, they would be given a mentor who would show them the ropes. This would include understanding the company’s culture and normative behaviors and expectations, how they do things there, what’s rewarded and what’s not, who the players are, what types of activities or projects gain the most recognition, and so on. For someone looking for a mentor in their perfect career area, you might want to know some of the same things and more. For instance, what are the best companies to work for, what interviewers will be looking for, what a good career path might be, how to handle yourself in different situations, how to market your business, what classes to take to get the best education, and so on. Here are some benefits to having a mentor.

Although it’s a great idea to have your own personal guide for learning all about your perfect career, where the heck do you go to find these people? Here are several ways you can find a mentor:

Not everyone can be a good mentor. Some people have loads of experience and information, but they don’t have the communication skills or the patience to impart their knowledge to others. You are looking for someone who is willing to take the time and enjoys being able to help someone else to grow and learn in their chosen career field. Here are some basic characteristics that you want in a mentor:

There are a few important points to remember in being a good mentee. If you want to be able to keep your mentor, follow these eight simple rules:

Mentors are usually very special people. They are willing to give of their time, energy, and caring for new entrants into a career field. The most successful mentor-mentee relationships are those that are explicit. You both agree to a mentoring relationship, and you develop goals and a plan of action for carrying out the mentoring goals. Mentors are not any particular age. It’s about a more experienced person helping a less experienced person.