During the second session we concentrated on making the Client’s dream of becoming a coach more specific. Would she like to be a freelance coach or one working within a company? If it is a company, what kind? Emily decided she would like to work for a small company as an HR professional doing in-company coaching as well. The post-session action plan was to find out what coaching within companies entails, how she could move from her current position (a narrow recruitment niche) to a more general HR position and then possibly coaching. We also listed her strengths that could help her in achieving her goal.
In the beginning of the third session Emily reported being demotivated in her quest to become a coach. She had a lot of work and felt that the benefits her job was giving her outweighed pursuing her dream of becoming a coach. In order to broaden and shift her perspective I used the technique of Cartesian questions (detailed in the “Tools used” part). The Client realized what the consequences of not taking action would possibly involve (regret, boredom, lack of fulfillment). We agreed that she would reflect on the exercise some more and think of moving towards coaching in terms of small steps rather than a major change. At the end of the same session another issue emerged – Emily did not believe she could charge people for coaching. We added it to the list of things to work on.
In spite of the shifted perspective, in the beginning of the fourth session the Client reported that she was not convinced about pursuing the goal. This is when I decided to use a visualization exercise (detailed in the “Tools used” part). As a result of the exercise, Emily was able to make a list of characteristics her dream job would have (working in a small team, caring about the company’s goal, immediate feedback, being interested in the field in general). She realized that she would be very interested in working at a hotel or a spa. When asked why she was not applying for these jobs, she came up with a few statements reflecting certain beliefs that were preventing her from taking action:
-“I don’t know enough about this job and it scares me”;
-“I feel negative about the interviews – I was interviewed four times last year, with no results”.
During the fifth session Emily said that she was reflecting on the exercises we had done to that point and decided to reevaluate her goals. She thought that maybe she did not appreciate what she already had. Although I felt that some rationalization was being employed, I decided to follow the Client and we went through the list of advantages and disadvantages of staying at her current workplace. We started thinking on what to do about the disadvantages, namely: a lack of challenge or fulfillment, repetitiveness, and (another disadvantage Emily listed) being embarrassed about having an “administrative” job while her friends had more “prestigious” professions. Since the Client enjoys writing and reflecting upon her experiences, she agreed to write everyday what she learned at work in hope that this would make her work more meaningful and fulfilling for her.
However, during the sixth session Emily realized that the actions she agreed to were not going to change her feelings about her current job to a significant extent and that at some point she would want to make a change anyway, despite her efforts to make her current job more meaningful. We then spoke about her reasons for choosing her current profession in the first place, how much she would like to be promoted to have her current boss’ position, her ideal day at work, and where she would like to be and what she would like other people to say about her during her 50th birthday party. All those questions were aimed at widening the Client’s perspective so that she could start having a better idea of what she would exactly need to do in order to have a fulfilling professional life.