“This is your life. You and only you decide.”
—Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations

 

Repeat this phrase three times and remember it when you think about your next job and the career you pursue.

American culture encourages us to maximize our professional selves. Discovering rewarding work and a career that’s “built to last” is an important step toward this aspiration. Without flexibility and ongoing self-awareness, this admirable pursuit can go awry at any stage of an individual’s life.

Complicating your career journey today is the increasingly dynamic nature of the economy and social change. As our external environment constantly shifts, we must find ways to adapt. We must maintain an attitude of flexibility while also retaining our personal stability.

According to Gallup, 52% of workers in 2019 are “psychologically unattached to their work” putting time, but not energy or passion, into their jobs.1 That was slightly lower than in the previous 10 years.

Conversations with a career coach, with a proven methodology, real work experience, and insight into future job markets can create your transformational moment. With the right coach, individuals are more open to personal exploration, better able to advantageously position themselves in the job market or within their organizations (today and in the future), and more confident that their professional life will be rewarding.

Now more than ever

There are phases in the economic cycle when career coaching is particularly vital. For example, the Great Recession—2007 to 2009—prevented many recent college graduates from discovering rewarding work. After spending four years preparing to begin an independent and fulfilling postgraduate life, close to half found themselves underemployed or unemployed2.

The COVID-19 pandemic, when combined with pre-existing trends in globalization and artificial intelligence, can be expected to impose even greater challenges on all professionals. Whether you’re a recent graduate, early in your career or mid-career, advancing professionally will require personal insights, a deliberate strategy and skillful actions. And perhaps most importantly, sustainable self-confidence.

1https://www.gallup.com/workplace/284180/factors-driving-record-high-employee-engagement.aspx

2Federal Reserve of NY, 2014, Are Recent College Graduates Finding Good Jobs