Career Coach: Compass or GPS?
One symbol widely adopted in the coaching community is the compass. It is a fitting representation of the role the coach plays in the development of the client.
The compass is a wonderful tool to use in gaining a sense of what direction to move in and when used properly is very reliable under most circumstances. The same is true of the coach. Through listening, questioning, and sometimes suggesting new ways of looking at things the coach can assist the client to gain or regain a sense of direction for their lives and careers.
The compass in the hands that know how to use it can help you determine bearings and headings. It can point you in the direction you want to go. When you’re lost it is a valuable tool to get you pointed in the right direction and keeps you on course. Again, the same is true of the coach. Once a direction is determined by the client the coach can assist the client in further refining the direction and steps needed to get moving, keep moving, and finally arrive at their desired destination.
A GPS on the other hand is the device of preference these days for the traveler. Plug in the information, the city, the street, the number and viola! Instant directions! Exact directions! Complete with the visual of a map, voice narration, and instructions on where and when to turn. Hard to get off course with one of these babies but if you do you’ll hear the device say “recalculating route” and soon your put right with visual and audio cues all adjusted to your route. Nice! And when, at long last I come to my destination it tells me I have arrived!
The comparison is stark. The compass, a centuries old mechanical device that was one time considered magical or a 21st century electronic gadget that makes use of satellites, triangulation, and other technology most of us don’t really understand. I know when given the choice I want to take the GPS on the road trips I take. The GPS is exact, precise, calculatingly keeping me on the straight and narrow even if the little voice seems unforgiving at times. The GPS adjusts to my errors in navigation and puts me back on course every time in ways designed to get me to my destination as quickly and directly as possible. It is user friendly and fairly idiot proof.
Sometimes our clients want a GPS for their career development tool. Clients who do not understand the coaching process or the idea of career development come to the coach seeking GPS like services. They desire exact direction, precise step by step instructions on what they should do and how they should go about doing it. As a coach it is sometimes tempting to provide them the direction they seek but that would be of no services to them. The coach must resist the temptation to be directive and instead help the client to discover for themselves what direction and course they should set for themselves.
For career coaching I’ll take the compass every time.
The compass is not as exacting, not as precise. With the compass there are no precise directions on where to turn and when to turn just the steady pointing of a needle that indicates the direction of magnetic North. Certainly not the accuracy of a GPS but accurate enough to keep you on course once you have an idea of the direction in which you want to go. The route the compass gives is more general. It will allow you to suddenly veer off course if you wish to do so or to slowly drift off course if you choose not to refer to it on your journey, all without correcting you. But still it always maintains the accuracy of the direction you had set for your original course. The compass is not prescriptive like the GPS; it does not say “do this, then do that, now do this” and tell you that you have arrived at your destination. The function of the career coach is to be more like a compass than a GPS.
Coaching, when at its best, is or at least should be more like the compass than the GPS. Your coach should work to help you discover the general direction of your destination but you need to determine where that destination lay and how best to get there. Certainly it is the function of the coach to help you discover the destination you desire but the choice of destinations is yours. No coach or assessment tool can be the final arbiter of the direction in which you should move in your career. There should not be the prescriptive “do this and then do that” coming from the coach on which you peg the hopes of your career. The coach is there to point the way, keep you on course, help you develop a plan and a direction, and provide a measure of accountability not to give you turn by turn instructions on your career. Why? Two reasons really.
First, you are an individual, immensely complicated, and unique. Like every other individual you should not be prescribed to a career direction, you should be assisted to discover it. There is no such thing as “one size fits all” in career development. There can be no prescriptive method that works for every person, every time, which will deliver them to their career destination.
Second, and more importantly, it is your responsibility to figure it out. It is your life, your career, your happiness and fulfillment at stake. By putting forth the effort to determine your destination, to plan the route, to make the journey, to make the adjustments along the way and then to finally decide if and when you have arrived at the destination you planned you take control of your career and your life. Chances are you’ll be more satisfied with the outcome.
Many times clients, acting out of frustration, will say “Just tell me what I need to do to …. get the promotion … get the job I want … get ahead on the job …” They want GPS like direction for their careers or lives. They want turn by turn instructions on how to get them to their destination. They want “to arrive” in the shortest time possible, over the shortest distance possible, with as little planning as possible. And while, as a coach, it is tempting just to tell them what they need to know to relieve their anguish that is not the role or function of the coach.
The coach, like the compass, is a tool for you to use in your career development. The coach can point you in the right direction and keep you on course if you choose to use him/her for the purpose they were intended and in the way they were designed to be used. The journey however is up to you. It falls to you to determine, to plan, to conduct, and to finally it bring to fruition. And when you have “arrived” at your destination the coach will be there waiting and pointing to the possibilities that await you beyond the place where you have “arrived”.