Our role as coaches is to help maximise clients’ sense of happiness at work. So how do we enhance their sense of authenticity? Janet Evans considers the evidence
Helping our clients find fulfilment at work is central to our mission as coaches. Being in a job in which you can use your skills to the full, doing something you believe to be worthwhile and which you enjoy, is crucial to personal happiness. Indeed, that’s why many of us became coaches.
It’s these intrinsic factors, rather than extrinsic ones like pay and status, which make a job rewarding. That’s because achieving something we find meaningful triggers dopamine, the ‘reward chemical’, in our brains, which gives us a positive feeling and helps us learn and develop (Domenico & Ryan, 2017). Dopamine is quickly metabolised, so to continue feeling good, we need a continuous series of challenges and achievements. Dopamine peaks when we are in ‘flow’ (Van der Linden et al, 2021).
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2002)* carried out some fascinating research exploring when people felt happiest. He asked his research subjects, from all walks of life, to note down what they were doing, and how they felt, when prompted by a random signal from a pager.
Most people would guess he would have found higher levels of happiness during leisure time rather than at work. He found the opposite: people reported positive emotions more often when they were working than when they were not.
The times people felt happiest were correlated with the state Csikszentmihalyi called ‘flow’. Flow occurs when a person is so involved in an activity and concentrating so hard that nothing else seems to matter, when their body or mind is stretched to the limit to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. People experience it when they’re doing something they find meaningful, which accords with their view of their life purpose, and in which they feel authentically themselves.
This search for authenticity at work has been a recurrent theme of my coaching practice. Many of my clients have come to me because they aren’t finding their current roles satisfying, but haven’t really analysed why, or thought through what it is they really want to do. This often arises early in people’s careers when they discover that their chosen occupation isn’t as fulfilling as they thought it would be. But it’s also a very common issue at mid-life, when someone has achieved their youthful ambitions – or maybe failed to achieve them – and is feeling exhausted and unmotivated. They’re sure that they don’t want to spend the next 15 years doing the same thing, but really aren’t sure what to do about it.
Make it work
Clients in the early stage of their careers are often still learning about themselves, as well as discovering what their chosen career path is really like. They may have brought with them assumptions – about themselves, or what would be a satisfying career – which they acquired in childhood, perhaps from their parents or a particularly influential teacher, but have never questioned. And those assumptions may have been misleading.
A coach can help identify and articulate these assumptions, work out whether they genuinely still apply, and whether the client is ignoring other more important motivations. I do this by asking them about their childhood influences and passions – what made them the person they are – and what matters to them most now. I’ve devised a questionnaire with apparently simple but actually quite profound questions of this sort, which I ask them to fill in before the session, so they have time to reflect and there are relevant tools around.
Psychometrics can also provide valuable objective evidence about their personalities and preferences. I had a client whose parents had encouraged her to qualify as a solicitor, but who was finding her junior legal role scrutinising contracts tedious and constraining, and felt she really wanted to do something creative and entrepreneurial. She was convinced that she should launch a small business as a maker, but didn’t have the necessary capital. I wasn’t so sure – her personality profile suggested otherwise, that she needed constant intellectual challenge and stimulation. Our work together led to a different outcome, as I’ll show later.
It’s helpful to look back with clients seeking a career change at mid-life as well. There may be youthful interests or important values which they’ve forgotten because they’ve been preoccupied with their careers, and which they now want to revisit. But with this group it’s particularly important to think further ahead. Many of us make career decisions incrementally: we take opportunities which arise without thinking about deeper issues or the long term at all. But in mid-career it’s very important for the client to take control, and identify how they really want to spend the rest of their working life, so that they’re able to look back with satisfaction at the end of their career.
At mid-life many people become less concerned with outward success and more concerned to contribute more widely, to pass on their experience and leave a tangible legacy. It can be the time when the client finally achieves autonomy and can do something which feels authentically theirs – maybe through a change of direction or a portfolio career.
Fatal flaws
l Don’t rush The process of identifying long-held unconscious assumptions, evaluating them and maybe jettisoning some, takes a while, as the client’s unconscious gradually reorganises itself, and they let go of beliefs which may have been fundamental to their way of looking at the world. They may need a number of sessions over a period of months to complete this process: one of my clients described having “a succession of new insights” over the period of the coaching.
l Don’t give up Your client may know very little about career options in a new area, and they must be prepared to do a lot of research – talking to people, direct experience if possible – which may come to nothing. This can be very time-consuming alongside their current job. They may become discouraged as they have to explore some blind alleys before their ideas take shape. It’s important the coach reassures them that this is normal and encourages them to continue the process of reflection and research.
l Don’t lose your ethics I’ve been lucky enough to coach on a number of industry-funded schemes, with no direct relationship with the client’s employer. But there are obvious ethical difficulties if the coach is contracted to the employer of someone who’s considering leaving the organisation. If plans begin to crystallise in this way, I explain to my clients that the sessions can’t continue, unless the employer is fully in the picture and content that they should.
CONCLUSIONS
The client must be realistic about what options are available to them. A new career may require them to re-train and start at a lower level and on a lower income. They have to earn a living, particularly younger people who may be starting to acquire dependants.
It’s important that the coach helps the client make a realistic assessment of their appetite for risk. There may be ways the client can find greater fulfilment without making irrevocable changes.
Senior people are expected to put their own stamp on their role, and can emphasise aspects of it they find particularly interesting. Having tried out one of her ‘creative’ ideas in her own time and finding it wasn’t what she expected, and that she was “bored to tears”, my lawyer client took a more senior legal role in a larger organisation and made sure she was closely involved in developing the future strategy and more innovative parts of the business. She also experimented with various entrepreneurial ventures in her spare time, with a view to the longer term.
- Janet Evans was a senior leader in Whitehall for many years. For the last 15 she’s been coaching and running workshops for leaders, middle managers and creatives in the public and private sectors.
References
- S I Di Domenico and R M Ryan, ‘The emerging neuroscience of intrinsic motivation: a new frontier in self-determination research’, in Frontiers in Human neuroscience, March 24, 2017
- D van der Linden, M Tops and A B Bakker, ‘The neuroscience of the flow state: involvement of the Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine system’, in Frontiers in Psychology, 12(645498), April 2021
- M Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, Rider, 2002