Career Refresh Digest #35
Welcome to the latest edition of the Career Refresh Digest.
In this issue: what career coaching actually involves, how to articulate what you need from your work, and a question worth applying if you're not sure where to start.
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WORTH THINKING ABOUT
Career therapy?
After hearing on an initial discovery call about how I work with clients, a woman said: "Ooh, that sounds like just what I need – career therapy!"
I laughed, because I’m not a therapist. But actually she wasn’t entirely wrong.
Career coaching isn't therapy, but it certainly can be therapeutic. There's no exploration of past trauma, no clinical mental health assessments, and the scope is career focused.
It is a fundamental and holistic process, with deep exploration of what you value and your identity, but through the lens of your working life and career decisions. People feel better for having done it. This is what helps them feel ‘unstuck’.
From our initial chat about my services, this woman clearly sensed that the work would require her to dig deeper than she might have expected. And that, in the process of gaining clarity about what she needs from work at her stage of life, she’d likely surface things that she hadn’t thought of. Things potentially buried under busyness, confidence knocks, or history she hadn't necessarily connected to her career.
She went ahead with the coaching programme and at the end of our final session, I reminded her of what she'd said on that first call and asked whether she still felt that way. She said:
"Actually, yes. It's like a counselling session for your career – you have to dig deep, and it gets the wheels turning. Things that are there but hidden, having to surface them in a structured way. And when someone articulates it back to you, well, there were so many moments of ‘oh yes, that is me!’."
That last part is the point really. Things do surface that you hadn't consciously connected to your career – but when they're articulated back, they're recognised rather than foreign.
While the career coaching process isn’t therapy, it does require the same willingness to look honestly at what's there.
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WORTH REFLECTING ON
What would you ask for, if you could choose?
One of the consistent patterns I see when people first come to me is that they've defaulted to thinking about what they could manage – what they'd be willing to work with or could get by on.
It's an understandable response. But if the only thing you can envisage is what you'd be prepared to accept, the ceiling on what becomes possible is already set quite low.
So instead, early in the programme I ask clients to think about their ideal – not as a guarantee, but as a reference point. What would good look like? What conditions would allow you to do your best work?
A client who initially struggled with this – who felt it was self-indulgent to think beyond what she'd be fine with – described what shifted once she gave herself permission:
"I went from feeling flat and unable to see options, to excited and hopeful about what might be possible. Not in an unrealistic way – but in a way that gave me something to work towards."
If you’ve had trouble articulating what you need to thrive at work, here are three questions worth reflecting on:
If someone said "we really want you – name your terms": would you know what to ask for?
If you were setting up as a consultant and writing your ideal brief, what would it say?
When did you last experience being in a state of flow at work? Or when you still had energy left at the end of the work day? What contributed to that?
Gather the clues from those reflections. They're the beginning of articulating what good actually looks like for you.
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WORTH DOING
A question to ask yourself if you're feeling stuck
Sometimes people come to me for coaching having lost touch with themselves so thoroughly that imagining something different feels impossible. Life has been too full, for too long. As one person put it: "I don't even know what I'd do with leisure time, let alone what I might do for a job if not what I’m doing now."
If that resonates, try this:
If it were guaranteed you could make a living from it – what would the role, business, or consulting work actually be?
It's a hypothetical but useful one. Removing the practical constraint of viability, even temporarily, often allows something to surface that the practical, cautious side of you has kept suppressed.
You don't need a fully formed answer. Even a partial one is a clue worth following.
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If any of this has prompted you to think more honestly about what you need from your work, a 15-minute conversation is a good place to start. Book a free call here.
– Lucy
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ABOUT THE CAREER REFRESH DIGEST
The Career Refresh Digest is a fortnightly newsletter for mid-career professionals who feel stuck or out of step with their work. Each issue shares practical insights and tools to help you reset direction, make clearer decisions, and reshape your work to better fit your life – drawing on recommendations, research, and insights from client work.