I have seen too many people treat their careers as happenstance. So many settle for jobs and work-life circumstances that don’t align with their authentic selves, principles, passions or purposes. Your career is one of the last things in life that should be a left to chance. Integrative Career Coaching (ICC) is all about making it a conscious choice, inspired by creativity, energy and intentionality. Whether you are launching a career or changing careers, your career can be a product of design innovation. It only requires that you invest the time to discover who you really are, who you really want to be and the life you really wish to live.
Career development has historically been approached as if it were solely a cognitive matter solved by list making and analysis. But the cognitive aspect of career development is not the only one and, for many people, not the most important one. Choosing a career direction is a deeply personal, existential matter, as much of a creative undertaking as an analytical one—a veritable vision quest of learning, growth and change
Integrative Career Coaching Approach
Integrative Career Coaching (ICC) supports career development in five respects that are all important and interdependent, helping you align your thinking, feeling, visioning, learning and acting to realize your authentic career vision.
Thinking
ICC supports your cognitive effectiveness at career development including your knowledge and understanding of career options and change processes, your problem-solving and decision-making abilities and your capacities for reflective and strategic thinking.
Feeling
ICC involves enhancing your wellbeing, building self-confidence, reducing stress, improving motivation, reducing anxiety and alleviating depression. These affective aspects of career development are frequently given short shrift or ignored altogether; however, they are vital to career transformation and self-efficacy.
Visioning
ICC helps reveal the purpose, principles and passion that converge to form your life path. Using my background as a creative director and meditation teacher, I guide you through creative projects and meditations that help reveal and express your authentic career vision and identify the major psychological, emotional and spiritual forces that influence your life and personal growth.
Learning
ICC uses a skills-based framework to help you identify and acquire the knowledge, skills and experience needed for the next phase of your journey. Such learning might include leadership, strategic thinking, business acumen, communication, assertiveness, relevant technologies or time-management.
Acting
ICC helps you plan and execute the incremental behavioral steps to get from where you are to where you want to be—for instance, by improving your work performance, raising financial indicators, getting more interviews, attaining work placement or being promoted. Ultimately, career transformation is a performance management task. Clear milestones and valid metrics help to keep you motivated.
Great Candidates for Integrative Career Coaching
Ultimately, ICC is a synergy of head, heart, vision, skill and action in the service of career transformation. It works because it emphasizes a big-picture (macro) perspective and fine-focused (micro) perspective. The macro perspective takes into account your entire life over the long haul and frames your career as just one facet of your journey, which can be fulfilled through a number of possible paths. The micro perspective focuses on short-term, concrete, measurable goals—a “raising the bar” orientation. Clarifying both perspectives helps you move forward confidently whether you’re:
- Formulating your initial career choice
- Launching your career
- Taking your career to a higher level
- Changing fields mid-career
- Approaching workplace reentry
- Leaving a career to buy or start your own business
- Divesting of a business to pursue a new career or life direction
- Countering ageist or other discriminatory hiring practices
- Planning for retirement
Integrative Career Coaching Process
ICC is ultimately a journey of self-discovery and of profound personal growth and change. The process works because it’s tailored to your unique personality, worldview and developmental stage. It’s also highly pragmatic in that we use only what is helpful to you and forget the rest. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all ICC approach.
What’s Your Authentic Career Vision?
ICC informs most of the professional coaching I do. This is because when I’m coaching a business, an executive, a leader or an individual’s performance, his or her career development stage and objectives—as well as any obstacles in the way—are often part of the coaching equation.
As someone who has successfully navigated three major career transformations, I’ve benefited by ICC methods—and by culling out what didn’t work. If you’d like to discuss your authentic career vision, please call or email me to set up a complimentary 30-minute phone or web conference. You’ll come away envisioning your career in a whole new light.