Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #79

Show Notes:

In this special consultant episode of the podcast, Sara brings on Kristen, founder of KM Career Coaching and Consulting. Listen to their conversation surrounding the potential impact of career coaching across the spectrum of employment. They discuss some misconceptions and benefits to career coaching. The unique opportunity of having a coaching experience helps professionals move forward no matter where they are in their careers. Subscribe to this podcast today and so you never miss an episode! 

Episode #79: Consultant Insights: Career Coaching

Sara: Welcome to a special episode of Can I Offer You Some Feedback? My name is Sara, and this is the podcast for those who have a complicated relationship with feedback and are looking to hear from real people across levels and industries with their ideas, perspectives, and best practices on feedback. Today, I want to share this special episode when I talk with another coach who specializes in career coaching.

In this episode, we'll be hearing their insight across the industries they work with and what they wish they could give their clients feedback on. I want to welcome Kristen to the podcast today. She is a founder at KM Career Coaching and Consulting. Welcome to the conversation today.

Kristen: Thank you, Sara. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sara: Absolutely. I'd like to dive into our conversation today with a little bit about your specific experience. Can you talk a little bit about the primary areas of your practice or the types of clients that you like to work with?

Kristen: Sure. For my coaching, I focus in the area of career and three main areas within that really. The first being career exploration or career transition for those clients who are thinking about making a change or they know they want to make a change and trying to figure out how to get there. The second would be job search strategy for clients who are making a change to a similar type role of and may want more help on their strategy around some of the tactical components, networking, interview preparation, those types of things.

And then the third area would be career development or leadership development for those clients who are looking to continue to develop skills and grow where they currently are in a similar type of role or their organization. And throughout all of these areas, I take a strength-based approach. So focusing with clients on their strengths and how they can really use those to move forward in their career in whatever direction that may be and put that into their coaching action plan.

And often clients come to me when they're kind of at a transition point or an inflection point and they're feeling stuck. And so it may be stuck around where do I go next or stuck around how they make that move or stuck around how they move up within the organization or working through the challenge there. So mapping to those three different areas I mentioned, but often that's when clients reach out.

Sara: Okay. And since you've been doing this coaching work kind of pre, during, and post-pandemic, I'm curious, what is something that you've noticed either shifting or something that just feels different now as compared to what you were experiencing before?

Kristen: Right. I think what I've noticed is clients seem to have reflected a lot more on kind of many areas of their life during COVID, career being one of them, because that's such a big piece of their life. You're there for a lot of hours of your week, a lot of weeks of your life overall. And so I see a lot of people really re-evaluating what they want out of their career, what they want out of the type of role they're in their organization and really wanting to feel like they're making a meaningful impact and making some moves if they feel like it doesn't align where they're currently at, they're not able to contribute, or they don't feel valued. Or it's not in alignment overall with their values, maybe the organization or company or what they're doing.

And I also see flexibility continuing to be a really big theme as well as part of how people are re-evaluating their careers. I think we've seen the pendulum swing back and forth on the demand for in-office versus remote versus hybrid work. But no matter what a client's preference is, I'm still seeing a big theme around that need for flexibility, however they define that, but having more of that than the demand was previously before COVID.

Sara: Yeah. I'm wondering, we both work with coaching clients and overlapping and also different spaces. Sometimes clients aren't able to see maybe a problem that's been growing gradually over time, or we observe that they're just ignoring something kind of obvious. What are some of the ways that you help clients see what you're seeing or observations kind of that you're making?

Kristen: Right. I think as a coach, which I'm sure you do this as well, asking those powerful questions can be really helpful to uncover some of those things as well as using different tools or assessments or exercises. And sometimes I find that when clients may have had a lot of these topics swelling around in their head, they've been thinking about it. But when I ask them to answer certain questions ahead of a session and then they need to put pen to paper or type out the answers, seeing that really helps them reflect more and think about, you know, "I didn't realize that," or "I never thought of it this way". So I think using the different coaching tools we have available besides the questions we're asking in our sessions to help them see patterns and other things they may not have observed before.

Sara: Hmm. Yeah. I think that's kind of a unique opportunity that we have as coming from the outside since we don't have all the context. In some ways, not having all the context is not helpful, and it's nice to gain more data. But sometimes not having the context, we're able to kind of spot some things to be like, "Wait a minute. Here's what I'm hearing from the pieces and parts." What feels may be obvious as a pattern that we're seeing may not feel so obvious when there's all the other context noise that that person kind of has around them.

Kristen: Right. I think that outside context is really important with coaching because they may have talked to someone in their organization or a friend or family member who's a lot closer to the situation or have more context. But with that outside perspective in different tools and whatnot, I think coaches can sometimes see things or help illuminate those things that clients come to uncover for themselves based on what they may have seen previously.

Sara: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm wondering, Kristen, if you can share an example of a client of yours, anonymous if you'd like, who you've appreciated that they're really just doing the work. They're really committed to the coaching experience and not just, you know, well, someone said I had to have a coach and I will show up every two weeks or every month. Could you share an example of that kind of interaction?

Kristen: Yeah. Two clients came to mind when you asked me that question. One was a previous client I had worked with, I think last year. Sometimes the time blurs together a little bit. But I think we worked together late last year. And she was great to work with. And she was great to work with because, for one, she was very motivated, right? She came to coaching on her own. So she was making that decision to engage in coaching and so she was really motivated in the process.

And then the other thing that comes to mind is she really did the work of the coaching engagement. And I think this is a great question you're asking because so many times I think people aren't exactly sure what coaching is and they think a coach can fix their problems or just tell them all the answers or give them the information they need. And that's not really the role of a coach, right? And we will have our coaching sessions, but then after that, the client needs to go and put into practice what we talked about during that session. Do you know what I mean? I can't do that for them.

And so I'm thinking of the example you asked, the client, she really put into practice what we talked about in between the sessions, went above and beyond some of the things we talked about and did extra. And it proved to be great for her because she was able to make a transition, land in a different functional role that she wanted, get a raise as well, and it really worked out well for her.

Sara: Yeah, it's always refreshing to have clients who are just so excited and energized and motivated to do some of the work. Now, that being said, it can also be so impactful when you have a client whom you're supporting along the way. They're not able, they don't have the capacity, they don't have the space to be able to invest in the time to do the work outside of session. And so sometimes it's along the way, sometimes it's broken up. But it's nice to be able to see folks really engaging and benefiting from the process.

Kristen: And most of the people I work with are busy professionals. And so it can be hard to find the time to have some of those additional things you're working on in between coaching sessions. And I completely understand that. And in that client's case, she took a bit longer with her process and her transition. But everyone has their own timeline as to what pace they want to work at through their process.

So I think it's important to keep in mind your own timing, what kind of time you can commit to the process with all of the other factors you have in your life as well.

Sara: Nijah, do you need something? Okay, I saw you unmute. So just checking. Kristen, when you're thinking about career coaching, I think sometimes, as you said, not everyone knows what a coach is, not everyone knows what the impact is. And sometimes I get the question of, well, career coaching is only for people that are unemployed or career coaching is only for people that are trying to get a job or only for people... You know, there's a lot of only going on. What is something that you wish others understood about the potential impact of career coaching across the spectrum of employment?

Kristen: Yeah, I think that people, like you said, people have a lot of questions or misconceptions about what coaching may be. It's not maybe as clear cut as I'm an accountant or something like that. And people generally understand what that does. And that's a type of role that's been around for a very long time as opposed to coaching.

What I wish people understood related to coaching in their career is that a coach can help move you forward, help bring clarity and insights to you no matter where you're at. Not just when you get to that stuck place or that place where you run into a challenge or a problem or you want to change jobs. That a coach can help you kind of in the good times as well.

And I think a good metaphor that I'm sure you talk with your clients about as well is networking, right? A lot of people kind of get a new job maybe and don't keep in touch as well with their network. They think of networking as an activity of, "Okay, I'm going to reach out to people when I want to make a change," whereas the feedback I'm always giving is you should always be in touch with your network and continuing to look for opportunities to add value to those people as well. And that should be kind of a continuous professional activity for you. So in the same way, coaching isn't necessarily just there in the times when you need it. It can be there as a more proactive tool as well.

Sara: Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes with coaching in general, there's a kind of misunderstanding because there are lots of people who do coaching and who all have different strategies and all have different narratives about how the work could be done. And so I could appreciate how that might be confusing to the average person who's considering if coaching is right for them depending on the definitions that they've seen other people give.

Kristen: Right.

Sara: Well, for our last question in our time together, Kristen, can I offer you some feedback?

Kristen: Yes, I would love some feedback.

Sara: Well, one of the things I've been so grateful for, and we've known each other a couple of years now is I feel like in our conversations, every time we have the chance to connect or to collaborate on something, I feel like I'm getting career coaching on being a coach. You know, thinking about other ways of approaching the work, other things to consider about it, other angles, how to think about it as a continuum. Even something as basic as networking, even coaches do that, even consultants do that.

And so I've really valued hearing how you work differently to how I work, and appreciating that there's a variety of ways for us to show up in these spaces and to provide support to folks. And I've also really appreciated how... One of the things I try to do is understand the scope and boundary of my work. There are some things where I might not be the best person for. And that's something that we've also talked about and had the opportunity to share clients, potential clients with each other and talk about, am I the best fit for this? Are you the best fit for this?

I think that that only benefits the client. And I'm so appreciative of that. As you know, not every coach and consultant wants to do that. And I've been really appreciative that you have this very giving and spacious sense around how we can just be of service to each other, whether client, whether coach. So I wanted to say thank you for that.

Kristen: Thank you for the feedback. And it's great to hear because I never realized you felt like I was coaching you in our conversation. So it's great to have that feedback.

Sara: Absolutely. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. And thanks to you for joining us in another special episode of Can I Offer You Some Feedback? You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on your thoughts on feedback and any other perspectives you'd like to hear from next. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. And I'm hoping that tomorrow you take a chance and offer some feedback when it's needed most.