What is Career Coaching and Why It's More Than Just Good Advice
SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS A CAREER COACH?
You can consider career coaching a secret weapon to cultivating and creating absolute success in your career. Speaking from my own experience, as well as watching numerous clients go through this process, being coached is one of the most transformative and powerful experiences someone can go through.
A career coach is someone who is 100% there to support and guide YOU in your business, profession, and life. A career coach is your partner and support system throughout these radical changes, asking you the hard questions and giving you the boost of confidence you need to get the job you set out to attain. This outside perspective is key to helping you learn to adapt and succeed with your new career.
Let’s make one thing clear: NO ONE does everything alone. Embrace it!
We hire accountants to help us with our taxes, we hire realtors to help us purchase our dream homes, we see a doctor when we are sick, and we hire coaches to help us reach our highest potential in our careers.
AND… HOW EXACTLY DID I LAND INTO THIS PROFESSION OF COACHING?
Becoming a career coach isn’t exactly the type of profession you suddenly wake up and decide to be. Instead, my journey was pretty UNIQUE.
If you know me, then this probably is not too shocking, right? I tend to break boundaries literally every step of my career. Oh well, #yolo!
Before becoming a pharmacist myself, I spent my entire life as a part of a long line of pharmacists.. After broadening my definition of what it means to be a pharmacist, my career coach asked me a life-altering question: “Why aren’t you a career coaching other practitioners as a profession?”
At first I laughed this question off. Thinking becoming a career coach has nothing to do with pharmacy or any of my education, but the truth is the exact opposite. I love helping people, I absolutely love the healthcare profession, and I love the career search journey.
Answering these tough thought provoking questions are all part of the career coaching journey. This is why this process is so life changing. It pushes you outside of your comfort zone, and when you are pushed away from the ordinary – CHANGE occurs.
THE DIFFERENCE WITH RX ASHLEE
Here is the raw truth:
The most difficult thing I’ve had to do in my career was to gather the courage to become a career coach. Making the plunge and extreme leap from a (somewhat) traditional pharmacy role to becoming an entrepreneur that’s 100% dedicated to helping other professionals succeed is what I consider success in my own career.
Honestly, this is what makes me the happiest and it’s what drives me to help clients discover their own passions.
As a pharmacist myself, I totally understand the complexities within the healthcare space and what it takes to really shake up your career.
Every single one of us has passions and hopes – our goal is to combine our skills to land you that dream job (which all of my clients have done) and help you achieve that next level of fulfillment.
CAREER COACHING IS WAY MORE THAN JUST ADVICE GIVING!
Here’s the truth: no one really just needs advice or opinions from an outsider. That’s something we get enough of from our friends, family (thanks Mom!), and our social media feeds.
I preach this simple mantra to all of my clients: I am not here to give you advice, I am simply here to support YOU in your journey.
What most of us need is the utmost attention and the specific tools to get to where you want to go.
A great support system is what’s really going to help you push through the discomfort of change and rise above it to succeed. Since success looks different for everyone, it is imperative to be supported through the path that you need to take.
Whether professionally or personally, coaching is life changing because it creates a safe space of pushing the client out of their day to day casual life (aka comfort zone). The client will have an idea or a passion but not know where to begin. Through our sessions, we’ll work together to build a plan, a timeline, a focused strategy to keep them on this one plan.
Speaking from personal experience, being labeled “different” or “unique” is hard. It requires thick skin, grit, and total dedication to this transformation. In fact, that level of commitment is a prerequisite to working with me because this is something we’ll be going through together to ultimately help you succeed.
We’ll work together to determine what exactly is holding you back from creating professional happiness and construct a strategy to get you to the next level of fulfillment. After all, there’s someone else out there doing the job you want all because they believed in themselves and went for it.
So yes, prepare yourself for good advice – but also prepare to work hard to make change happen with the help of a solid support system.
#PROTIP: THE INSIDER INFORMATION I WANT ALL MY CLIENTS TO KNOW
Over the years, I’ve noticed that there are certain gaps in what healthcare professionals think is possible. And it’s not just you – it’s the entire system that leads us to believe there’s only one right path to take.
Having a traditional role is NOT the only way to find success in your career. The magic to finding success in your career is up to YOU, and only YOU.
Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s talk about what I want my clients to know and embrace throughout their career in order to truly love what they do.
Be Bold
If there’s one thing that I want all of my clients to feel empowered to be, it’s being bold.
Be unapologetic in your quest to find success and happiness. Don’t allow seeds of doubt to be planted and for those old roots to keep you where you’re at.
Make Your Skills Work For You
You have to create career happiness. Unfortunately, it rarely just happens to you out of sheer coincidence. You’ll have to consider persistence and perseverance your new best friends and be unrelenting in pursuing your goals.
You can accomplish much more if you make your skills work for you, and this is something we’ll strengthen and capitalize on during our sessions.
Get Comfortable Feeling Uncomfortable
My final #protip that has become crystal clear to me is that we all have to become comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
Discomfort is a huge motivating factor. We all want to feel better, and this is a case where succeeding and feeling great relies on powering through discomfort.
With the right support system, we can take feelings of discomfort about the unknown and turn it into something that’ll drive you to the perfect career for you.
So what are you waiting for?
Are you waiting for someone else to tell you when the “perfect” time to make a career shift is?
Don’t get stuck here, friends!
The time is right now.
You deserve this.
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