What Can a Career Coach Help You With?

October 13, 2022

Robyn Kern

Maybe you’ve thought about using a career coach for yourself or wondered if your employees might benefit from coaching services. You might be focused on a single topic, such as goal-setting, how to approach a lateral career move, or developing employees for leadership roles. But there are many ways career coaches can help during every phase of an individual’s career. And expert coaches will know to consider the whole human when guiding an individual through their concerns so that they get the most out of their coaching experience.

Topics to Discuss with Your Career Coach

Typically, coaching topics fall into a few categories: career development/strategy, soft skill improvement, wellness, and confidence building. A strong coach will know that most individuals will have overlap in the areas they need help with, even if those individuals aren’t aware of them. A coach will listen carefully and identify areas that might be worth working on, and will offer suggestions on approaches that will help the individual improve in multiple areas at once.

Career development coaching topics

You or your employees may know what they want to accomplish but not know how to go about doing so, or may not have a clue what they want to do in the future. No matter the situation, a career coach can help an individual navigate through identifying interests, skills, and steps needed to obtain goals, and build a strategy to get there.

Examples of career development coaching topics include:

Professional branding
Presentation skills
Building a network
Mentors – how to make the most of a mentorship as a mentor or mentee
Assessing your skill set, your opportunity areas, and how to acquire the skills you want/need
Creating career goals
Identifying and assessing your personal and professional values
Goal setting
Negotiation
Staying motivated
Influence and gaining buy-in
How to request, internalize and apply feedback
Finding your passion
Relationship building and management

Coaching topics to develop soft skills

Soft skills are personality traits that can help an individual in their career and in other areas of their life. Communication skills, problem-solving skills, time management, collaboration skills and critical thinking are all examples of soft skills.

Examples of soft skills coaching topics include:

Conflict management
Effective verbal and non-verbal communication
Organization
Becoming a better listener
Personal presence – how are you perceived vs. how you want to be perceived
Self awareness
Emotional intelligence
Prioritization
Problem-solving
Perseverance
Strategic thinking
Cross-functional collaboration
Inspiring others in your sphere of influence
Accountability
Innovation and breaking out of the mold

Career coaching for management

Along with other topics in this article, managers have specific concerns that can be addressed with a career coach. Managers can get guidance to help them be better leaders, to assist with challenges they may have with their employees, and to get buy-in for their plans and visions.

Examples of coaching topics for managers include:

Employee engagement
Managing an employee with declining performance
Effective onboarding and building a 30/60/90 day plan
Performance reviews
Management skills for leaders and individual contributors
Delegation
Identifying and solving for inefficiencies
Managing a team
Building team culture
Managing up
Building trust and respect
Creating a vision
Change management
Courageous conversations
Navigating cultural differences

Career coaching for work/life balance

Developing strategies for a healthy work/life balance can help an individual in every area of their professional life. For example, reducing stress, learning to advocate for oneself, and improving time management are all areas that, when mastered, can help someone have the time and energy to focus on their career goals.

Examples of work/life coaching topics include:

Creating and maintaining healthy work habits
Time management
Expectation setting
Setting boundaries
Stress management
Practicing gratitude
Resilience
Preventing and identifying burnout

Coaching to build confidence

A person’s confidence may or may not be rooted in their abilities. Conversations with a career coach can help an individual identify the causes of low self-confidence and can lead to a strategy to build confidence. This strategy might include exercises, classes to increase skills in a particular area related to the individual’s role, and/or books to read.

Examples of confidence-building coaching topics include:

Self-confidence and imposter syndrome
Risk-taking and stepping out of your comfort zone
Getting out of your own way
Bouncing back after a failure
Overcoming challenges

In Summary

If you were wondering what a career coach could help you with, hopefully this article provided ideas. Approach your next coaching session with curiosity and you may find that you learn more about yourself and find motivation and encouragement to achieve your goals.

INTOO’s coaches help employees in every stage of their career develop strategies to meet their goals, while employers reap the benefits of increased engagement, productivity, and retention. Learn more about how our career development programs can benefit your company.