When I take in information for a résumé, I am dealing with many facts, dates, etc. Always, however, looking for the branding message of my client.
When I take in information for coaching, however, I am going deeper. I am not a psychologist and don’t even want to be in that category, but I do know that there is a lot of unhappiness going around these days about what a person is doing in their working world. This affects everything. People go on for years, making a livelihood doing what they really dislike or working around people who are totally obnoxious.
I don’t find this particularly in taking in a résumé. However, I have worked with people for over 20 years and I can pretty quickly sense this or my client talks about job dissatisfaction within the first 10 minutes. I can make adjustments to the job course, but to gain real insight takes a little getting to know each other, trust each other, not as best friends, but in the client/coach relationship.
Just as an athletic trainer can do a better /deeper job to help you, so can a coaching process.
Deeper clues: I like to assist in several directions, but my client has to do the real work “finding” himself/herself and that is through dreams, imagination, fact finding, analyzing, and more.
Samples:
Perhaps there was a lost dream somewhere along the way. Perhaps the love-of-your-life job was teaching, but you quickly realized sales made more money – and there you go— sales it was. But now after 15+ years a good salary, mortgage, etc. you realize you and perhaps your spouse are really unhappy.
I can’t say you need to cut your salary in half and go into foreclosure, but I can say with a little or a lot of work you can find a fulfilling career – not just a job with good salary but perhaps a position that has more of a sales engineering / teaching focus of product and less management concerns.
Can you make the same? I find that people who love what they do make money at it because, you see, they don’t see it as work. Rather they experience what they do as an extension of themselves.
I once had a client for a résumé, a blue collar worker who told me what all he could do in welding, etc. I took all the information in (and this was year’s ago, by the way, before I saw myself and trained to be a coach) and we concluded the information session.
As he got to my door, he turned around and said to me, “You know years ago as a kid, I could draw anything, then I started painting, painting in some oils even and then my dad told me only sissies did that so I never did that again.
Don’t listen to old messages or discard old dreams.
And remember that an old dream is still part of you. You can’t go back, but you can pick up the part of the meaning that the old dream gave you: a ‘time stand still’ feeling, a love of life, a feeling of deep satisfaction, a Fritz Perls’ gestalt. Mary Ann
