Many people seek to change jobs early in the New Year. How can we build confidence when career coaching? John Lees reports
A while back a university colleague mentioned that two kinds of support were on offer to students: career coaching and career counselling. I asked what the difference was. “Coaching is for students with confidence issues”, was the answer.
My response then and now is that nearly everything we do in career coaching is about confidence – about clients understanding and claiming their best selves, and communicating that effectively and authentically.
Confidence issues always matter: career transition is about vulnerability and exposure. The things we recommend as strategies – information interviews, direct approaches to organisations, career summary statements, hi-octane interview performances – quickly drain the confidence battery, and it can be difficult to recharge.
Taking vulnerability seriously
As coaches, particularly those focused on job searching, we sometimes fail to see client vulnerability. A recent client, Mark, had worked in sales for more than two decades. He’s great at opening doors, establishing warm relationships quickly, winning not just commitment but deals. Or, at least, he’s great at doing that when he’s promoting other people’s products and services. Doing it for himself feels totally different: “It feels tacky … like asking for favours,” he said.
Imposter syndrome lurks in the shadows, and sometimes in the most surprising of people. Career transition looks easy only on paper. In reality it’s often about asking people who are feeling confused, rejected and lacking in self-esteem to keep on making brave steps in the face of rejection.
I spent a large part of my earlier career training recruitment consultants, often reminding them that an interview is a very different experience on each side of the table. For an interviewer, it’s routine, sometimes dull. For a candidate, it might be a life-altering event that shapes the next decade of their career. It will often feel like their past and personality are under intense scrutiny. Sales professionals will tell you that they inevitably hear ‘no’ at least three times before getting close to ‘yes’. Job hunters can stall at the first rejection. That’s why they often come to a session deciding to ‘lower their sights’, or wounded by an unexpected knock-back.
Negative experiences are not just about missed job offers. Much more frequent, and just as dispiriting, is the much more common experience: radio silence. In today’s economy where online applications and selection processes are the norm, and clients, sometimes unwisely, upload random CVs to job boards, the biggest problem is zero feedback, with some organisations ghosting candidates partway through.
Hitting this kind of brick wall is a telling experience, even for the most experienced. It can easily lead to catastrophising: ‘I am too old’, ‘I’ll never get an interview’, ‘I’ll never be able to sell myself to people like this’. Clients apply blind for roles they don’t really understand, and bring you the response as valid statistical evidence of failure.
Avoiding questions around confidence usually leads to problems later in the process, especially those moments when you’re encouraging clients to reach out and explore, to road-test ideas in the marketplace. That’s when the poorly prepared client discovers they don’t feel comfortable asking for a conversation, or becomes unstuck when someone asks ‘what are you looking for?’.
Outside a comfort zone
Everyone has a comfort zone. Operating inside it feels safe and familiar, and working outside it is risky. That’s fine, but the problem comes when we ask clients to move too far and too quickly. We encourage direct approaches to people and organisations, asking people to talk about their skills and achievements.
Encourage clients to stray just beyond the edges of the zone. So, rather than contacting strangers, ask that clients start with people where no internal ‘script’ is required. Few career coaches recommend cold-calling lists of employers, but we often expect proactive, dynamic behaviour, perhaps not recognising that for introverts this is the perfect excuse to do almost nothing.
Even a small step outside a comfort zone is important. Talking to people to gain support, affirmation, and to try out phrases is a great place to start. Next, ask your client to offer the first names of three people, easy to approach, who can provide useful information about work sectors. Offer a micro-challenge – have these conversations in 48 hours. They are quick wins, and if each conversation ends with, ‘who else should I be talking to?’, a kickstart to soft networking. Encourage one or two long shots as well – a well-crafted message to someone high profile can give amazing results.
Forming new habits, quickly
Confidence may feel like a kind of magic, but it’s based on learned habits. We need to try things out and remember what effective feels like. Trying things out is very different to reflecting on imaginary conversations.
Let’s take an example. In workshops, many people set out their stall in a series of limiting statements: ‘I don’t like talking about myself… I don’t know what to say…’ and ‘I don’t have a great network’. So I set them in motion gently. First, by helping them say one sentence about a skill they enjoy using and the context they like to use that skill in. One skill, in one setting. Then I get them to practise that sentence with someone who will give simple feedback. Was the skill clear? Is the example interesting?
Next, I get everyone in the room standing, and the task is to make one statement and hear one statement, then move on. We get through about four exchanges in five minutes. Then we discover something interesting. First, people can remember what they have been told (because it’s snappy and memorable). Second, the task gets easier. In just five minutes. And each person has just talked about themself to a stranger, breaking both of their no-go rules.
What’s actually happening is that if you start in a safe environment with some structure, you can say pretty much anything. And your brain hears you say it, and forms a new habit. Instead of fear of new and dangerous territory, the brain says, ‘hello, we’ve done this before more than once, and it went OK’, so stops getting in the way when you want to do it again.
Talk openly about the respective value of reflection and action. Reflection is good to increase client self-awareness and to imagine possible career paths. Action covers just about everything else.
Make it work
Offer your client confidence-building stages.
1. Don’t just listen to skill stories; draw them out. Ask for more detail and for other examples. If a client finds it hard to retrieve evidence with you, they’ll struggle in front of a busy recruiter.
2. Affirm. Nothing is more powerful than telling work stories, and a listener then telling you what skills they heard. Often the language you use to describe these skills will be transformative
and uplifting.
3. Walk clients through the ups and downs of the process. Ask how they’ll feel when a contact doesn’t return a phone call, or if they’re ignored in a selection process.
4. Give clients time and space to unearth their strengths. Then learn how to tell stories about contexts where their skills have been effective. Record that evidence so it becomes a confidence reservoir for the client.
5. Make the first outreach stage all about support – outward-facing, but often in safe territory. Encourage clients to have starter conversations with friends, asking ‘remind me what I’m good at’, ‘where have you seen me make a difference?’, and then ‘help me talk about myself so I don’t feel like a fake’.
6. Finally, move the client forwards by encouraging enquiry. Tapping into a client’s curiosity provides a great stimulus, but this works better if they have a script (reinforce the principles of a great information interview).
Fatal flaws
- Accepting client statements about confidence levels at face value is dangerous, at both ends of the range. A client who says ‘I have no skills’ is probably as inaccurate as a client who says ‘I know what I’m doing and I have a fantastic network’.
- Not listening to quietly revealed confidence problems means they’re not named, and ignored in the coaching process.
- Any discussion about networking can be deeply offputting. Each client has their own picture of what that might mean in practice – often a negative one.
- Don’t be misled by articulate and communicative clients. Sometimes they over-deliver, mis-direct, and talk long enough to reveal problem areas.
- Don’t underestimate the impact of rejection. Even the most (superficially) confident candidates make strange adjustments to their strategy after rejection.
- Don’t settle for a summary of what a client plans to say, ask for the actual words. If a client is anticipating a difficult conversation, don’t just ask how they feel about it, but get them to voice different bits of script.
- Don’t be complicit in client isolation. Encourage them to meet confidence-builders, regularly and often. Confidence batteries drain fast and recharge slowly.
About the author
- John Lees is the author of 15 books on career and work including How to Get a Job You Love. He is a faculty member for Firework Coaching and Careershifters.