Articles by Lynn Davidson

I would like to find a coach to help me work through some issues but I don't know how to go about this. What advice can you give me to help me find the right coach?

Although there are cross over skills, theories and techniques common to all types of coaching the first thing to establish is what type of coach you need:

1. Life Coaches tend to work on any issues related to your personal life eg relationships, life changes, self esteem, family matters, life balance and even career changes.
2. Business Coaches help new businesses get off the ground.
3. Management/Executive Coaches are focused on work related issues such as helping new mangers settle into a job or helping senior managers become more self aware and effective
4. Specialist Coaches will have a single focus on one type of discipline eg voice coaching, relationship coaching career coaching.

Once you have established what type of coach you need there are three main organizations in the UK which register coaches:

• The International Coaching Federation
• The European Mentoring and Coaching Council
• The Association for Coaching

All three of these have ways of monitoring and measuring their members skills and qualifications before letting them join and they all have ethical codes which their members need to adhere to. So it's worth checking which professional body your potential coach belongs to.

Once you have established the above information ask your potential coach about :

• Their background (is it business biased, counseling and therapy based, etc.)
• If they have supervision for their coaching (and if they do, how often)
• What coaching tools and techniques they use
• How long they have been a coach and what they did before in their career history
• What references and testimonials they have available
• If they have professional indemnity insurance

Finally remember that coaching is about guiding you and helping you move forward. It isn't a long term telling process.

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I would really like to totally change my career. The trouble is I don't know what I would be good at and what would suit my life style. I fell into an administrative job when I left school and have been there ever since I am now in my early 30's. How would I go about finding out what I could do instead and if I would enjoy it?

This situation is actually very common. The first thing I would do as a coach is explore the reasons why you want to make the change. This is to ensure that this is the right change for you rather than it being a way of handling another problem.

Once we had established it was totally about career transition there are two key things you would need to consider. The first is financial. What do you need to earn? Could you for example afford to go back into education either full or part time to re-train? Once you know what you need to earn and have done some cost breakdowns you can work from there.

The second key thing is looking at what you like, what you are good at and taking stock of it. I often use a basic tool called a wheel of life here and most coaches are familiar with this tool. It helps you look at how you are currently spending your time and how you would like to spend your time.

I then do exercises that evaluates your desires. These are the key things that drive and motivate you at any given time (and they can change). Once these are established it can help to define the type of job and also the type of organization you would be best suited to. It also helps you formulate the questions that you can ask at interview - which is an area a lot of people miss out on.

Another really useful thing to do is to contact your local business link. These are run by the local government to support small businesses and people out of work who want to re-skill. They often run courses that are very reasonable or even free. They also often do a personal audit that helps you match to potential new careers. So don't overlook what is available from the government.

The last thing that I wanted to mention to you is that when I work with people on career change I use a profiling tool called Myers-Briggs. It helps them look at their personality type against certain key criteria. Having an understanding of this often helps people to pin point situations that work and situations that don't. It also helps to identify where relationships and communication can succeed or fail when two personality types come together. Because the workplace is all about communication with different personalities this tool brings up some useful areas to explore in a career transition coaching session.

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