Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep107: How to get the right coach. Working with a career coach. Pt 2.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.meiping.com. This is Mei Ping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. So Mei Ping, how do I choose a career coach? What do I need to look out for? Let me introduce to you my PEP formula for you to help you choose a career coach that really aligns with your values.

Starting point is 00:00:41 So the first P is all about process. You may be a bit surprised here, like, oh, maybe why process? The reason is because in order to get real results for clients, there must be a success formula, a successful process that is repeatable. So if you go to a coach that does not have a process, everything is random, ad hoc, there are no clear steps, then it's going to be very difficult for you to implement whatever strategy that's being taught or any action plan. So the process of getting to the final outcome is so, so, so important. For example, for me, all my clients go through my six-step process for their career journey.

Starting point is 00:01:24 So starting from finding career clarity, career interest and direction, resume and LinkedIn profile update, job search strategies, interview skills, work soft skills, and then career growth strategy. All this six-step process, it depends on where you are along the journey, but you will be as part of the journey and moving you from one phase to the other. And it's really, really important to have the process because if you're just randomly doing things, it's almost impossible to replicate the results.

Starting point is 00:02:01 Even if you see a lot of testimonials, it may not mean it's replicable to you. So figure out the process, ask the coach or do your research, ask the coach, what is your process? Do you have a process, the frameworks? And if I work with you, what are some of the steps that I need to go through? What will we be doing first and what will we be doing next? The ability for the coach to answer these questions will give you more confidence as to whether the coach actually has a plan for you or it's just like random ad hoc. Then of course, you know, once the plan, you know, the plan, the process makes sense to you, then you can fully give it 100% and commit to the process that's in place to help you get the results and become successful. On to the second thing to look out for, and it's about experience. So the E in the

Starting point is 00:02:53 PEP formula is experience. Now, I want to be very clear, when I say experience, I do not necessarily mean that very detailed experience in the industry or X numbers of years as a coach. Not necessarily so. In my personal view is if you want to learn from somebody, you want to make sure that you are getting the right strategies, action plans, tools and methods, then it's so, so, so important that the coach has the experience for the level of career that you are at. For example, if you're a manager and you're talking to a coach who has zero corporate experiences,

Starting point is 00:03:29 zero corporate leadership experiences, then rest assured that whatever that you're going to be told are just theory. Because if somebody has never walked the path, how can they bring you there? So if they haven't gone through the process of learning how to become a manager and being successful at that and then moving upwards in their career, then how can they teach you that? So always remember this in mind. This is really

Starting point is 00:03:55 a really big problem I see from people who are learning from like coaches and mentors, you know, people more or less at the same career level as them. So I'll give you an example here. If you are a manager, you are talking to your other managerial friends, you will feel stuck. The reason is because they are also figuring it out. So how can they teach you if they're also figuring it out? And even if you discuss and you learn something useful, but you know know the person that you're learning from you know your friend your coach or your mentor the exact same career level as you they have not experienced failure for the entire career level so that's why when a lot of my

Starting point is 00:04:38 clients come to me they usually tell me that they really like my corporate leadership experiences because i've already moved up the corporate career ladder so I do see the end to end and also fully understand where they are at regardless of whether they're a fresh graduate junior executive senior executive manager or even director level I've already gone through all of it so I know the ins and outs and these were things I've gone through like years before. So all the good, the bad, the ugly, I've seen all of it. So the point I'm trying to make here is while it sounds helpful to learn from somebody who's only one step ahead of you, I just want to remind you that it can be very dangerous

Starting point is 00:05:18 because the person that you are learning from, your friend, your coach, your mentor or whoever, may not have gone through the entire path and therefore when they struggle and stumble, they will like unlikely come back and tell you that you need to fix this, right? Because they are also going through their journey. So I think it's really important to sort of like contextualize experience so that you are also really, really clear on what kind of experience actually is helpful for your career and what kind of experience is good as a story to learn from.

Starting point is 00:05:49 But are you getting the holistic strategy and the holistic method? I think that's something that you really, really need to think about depending on who you're talking to. Moving on to number three of the PEP formula and this is the personality part. Understanding the personality and feeling comfortable with the career coach's personality before you decide whether you want to go with this career coach. Let's be real here. At the end of the day, we are people and there are some people that we feel more comfortable with. There are some people that's just, yeah, no thank you. That sort of feeling so personality i think is the final consideration point but a very very important consideration point before you decide

Starting point is 00:06:31 if you want to work with a career coach one of the really good ways to figure this thing out is to really check out the career coaches free content because in the free content whether it's a blog it's a podcast it's a video or it's a podcast, it's a video, or it's something else, normally it's a really, really good way to understand and also sense the tone of the coach. So for example, when you're watching or listening to me right now, do you like the way that I speak? Do you like the way that I convey the points? Do you think that whatever I say makes a lot of sense? So these are just the very simple ways that you can also see if the coach's personality style really is someone that you feel comfortable with. And it's very

Starting point is 00:07:13 hard to put it into words, but I think when you consume more of the content, you can easily decide for yourself is, okay, is Mayping somebody that I feel that, you know, I feel comfortable to share a little bit more about my career problems or my career goals or something else that you feel is a little bit more personal to you that you may hesitate to share with somebody else. So personality, while it sounds not as important, but actually it's really the final determining factor when you work with your clients or, I mean, you know know for you to work with a client or you know in your workplace or you know for you to choose a career coach to work with as well so it's like kind of like a two-way street also and I personally found that the best clients for myself are the

Starting point is 00:07:55 ones that we can really get along not necessarily as friends but professionally to be able to have my clients also respect what I have to say but I'm also really sure that I understand the language because I also used to be a former corporate professional so therefore a corporate junkie at heart so I do fully understand what you are saying as well. So that's it for my PEP formula to help you choose a career coach that is most suitable for your career journey, your style, your personality, and so forth. I just want to also caveat that there's really no right or wrong when choosing a career coach for you. At the end of the day, it is your career, your choice, your decision that really matters the most. But you just want to make sure that you go for somebody that you

Starting point is 00:08:42 trust and you feel comfortable with. And final point also is there are multiple resources available online. For example, there are blogs, there are podcasts, there are videos, there are Pinterest, there are multiple free paid content and so forth. So all these, you should feel free to consume for you to get a much better sense on the coach's style, as well as any of the offerings available that you think that makes more sense to you. And finally, if you have questions, you should always, always feel free to reach out to the career coach and get some of your initial questions answered and then make a decision from there. So never, ever, ever feel pressured to get on a call or feel pressured to work with a coach.

Starting point is 00:09:28 It shouldn't be like that. You should feel really good. Like for example, when I get on career coaching sessions with my clients, I'm in a really good mood and my clients also are in a really good mood because we know that we are going to make this session really awesome together by imparting so much value, sharing perspectives for my clients to gain the strategies, the methods, the tools to get to their ambition or to solve their problems. So it's really important that it's a win-win relationship. It's a win-win partnership and collaboration. So you can really make the most out of the career coaching sessions or the career coaching

Starting point is 00:10:01 program that you have with the career coach. All right. So with that, I wish you all the best. Keep learning, keep growing. And at the end of the day, only you are responsible for your own career. All right. All the best. Cheers.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep107: How to get the right coach. Working with a career coach. Pt 2.

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