Originally Posted on The Coaching Tools Company as 8 Career Coaching Tools & Ideas for Clients Who Have Absolutely No Idea What They Want!
Do you have a client who wants a new career but has absolutely no idea where to start? If so, this article is for you! Because Career Coaching Tools and Exercises are excellent resources to help our clients figure out where next!
IMPORTANT: There are no career coaching tools that give us a magic wand!
But there are super-helpful Career Coaching Tools and Exercises that provide self-knowledge and information that move our clients forwards… And you are the facilitator that helps your clients look within, brainstorm ideas, and get to know themselves. You help them look for patterns, themes and sparks, piecing all this information together until they hit on that new career.
A quick recommendation
First, before working with any client to find a new career I like to share 9 key things with them—to set and manage their expectations. Because while it’s possible to find that new career quickly, if it was that easy your client would already have done it on their own. Which means it’s likely this will take time, effort—and a lot of patience.
So, now it’s time to explore some career coaching tools and exercises you can use to help clients discover that new career.
Here are 8 Career Coaching Tools and Exercises to Help Clients Find a New Career
TIP: I give most of these career coaching exercises as homework—and then discuss what the client learned about themselves in the following session.
Tool 1) Personal SWOT Analysis
Another key career coaching tool I use is the Personal SWOT Analysis where clients identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
We start by looking within.
- Strengths: What careers might suit their strengths? What strengths could be ‘transferable’ skills that would be useful in new or different careers?
- Weaknesses: These might point to jobs and careers to avoid, but don’t let clients use this to get off the hook. Because weaknesses can also be minimised or removed eg. through training, creative role design or delegating.
Finally we look outside of ourselves and use powerful questions to identify potential opportunities and threats.
- Opportunities: What opportunities in the wider world (eg. technology, shifts in society, what is happening in the world) could provide opportunities for your client?
- Threats: What outside changes threaten your client’s ability to find a new career or their ‘marketability’ as a job candidate? For example a lack of or outdated technical expertise, government regulation etc.
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Individual ToolPersonal SWOT Exercise
Quintessential coaching tool to identify your clients’ personal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Read More…
Also Available In: Career Coaching Toolkit
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Tool 2) Career Wheel
This powerful Career Coaching Tool is great for clients looking for a new role. It makes a great tool to delve into their unique skills and experience—and how that might be useful.
Here’s how to adapt it for clients looking for a new role:
- First, ask them to label each segment with their 8 most valuable skills and areas of expertise.
- Then ask them to score each segment, for example:
- Score out of 10 how much they want to and/or enjoy using this skill or expertise. This is great information when thinking about where next for their career!
- Score out of 10 how transferable this skill or expertise is to other industries and roles.
- Score out of 10 how ‘good’ they are at each of their top 8 skills or expertise.
TIP: If scoring in 2-3 different ways, score each using a different colour pen.
- Now coach them around the results. Use this information to brainstorm things like:
- Ideas for which skills they might like (or need) to develop, and which to highlight in a job search.
- What industries, careers and roles would value their skills and expertise?
- Knowing which skills they enjoy using the least, where might they not want to end up next?
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Individual ToolCareer Wheel (Get a Job or Promotion)
Use this powerful yet simple career wheel coaching exercise to help your clients bridge a skills gap at work, or get that new job or promotion! Read More…
Also Available In: Career Coaching Toolkit
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$9.95
Tool 3) ‘Future Self’ Exercises and Inquiries Part 1
Help your clients vision their future—and access their imaginations to get ideas: What would they love to do?
The Rocking Chair for example is a writing exercise where they imagine being 90 and look back over their lives. What did they achieve? What makes them feel fulfilled? And you can add a career-specific slant by asking them to think specifically what they did and are proud of in their careers.
You can also ask your client to write an imaginary retirement speech or a newspaper article celebrating a success they have achieved, as ways to access subconscious inner ideas for how they see their careers unfolding.
Get 3 ‘Future Self’ Visioning Exercises
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Individual ToolRocking Chair and 2 Other Life Vision Exercises
Indispensable goal-setting resource to draw out a client’s vision for their lives and give them the context they need to get inspired and move forward. Read More…
Also Available In: Vision & Goal Setting Toolkit
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Tool 4) ‘Future Self’ Exercises and Inquiries Part 2
Guided meditation is a great tool to help clients envision their future self—or career. You can write your own guided meditation script to visit with their future self and get personal ideas and advice—or search online for guided meditation scripts to adapt.
And here are some great basic relaxing guided meditation scripts for you to adapt. Then simply add some content into the middle of the script, creating a scenario where they meet their future self. Then they can ask themselves questions, look for ideas or get advice on what career to follow next.
A Done-for-you Career Coaching Toolkit!
Do you love these ideas so far? Check out our Career Coaching Toolkit which contains the Personal SWOT, Career Wheel and many more!
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Tool 5) A Set of Career Discovery Pondering Questions
These are essentially career coaching questions for our clients to review and learn from their past.
What did your clients love to do as a child? And what about that did they love? What did they want to be when they grew up? And what about that still appeals to them—and what doesn’t?
The answers to these questions give us clues as to what might resonate with our clients for their next career.
And as our clients reflect on and answer questions on what inspired them in the past, we then look for patterns, themes—and other clues as to potential careers in the present.
A Career Discovery Pondering Questions Worksheet
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Individual ToolCareer Discovery Pondering Questions Sheet
Client struggling with their current career or trying to find the right one? This worksheet helps clients come up with ideas and rediscover buried career hopes and dreams. Read More…
Also Available In: Career Coaching Toolkit
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$9.95
Tool 6) Career or ‘Work’ Values
While looking at life values is definitely helpful, we often look for different things in our ‘work’ as opposed to our ‘life in general’.
For example, we might have a strong value of spontaneity at home, but find spontaneity at work difficult and challenging. Or we may need to keep our distance at work, while connection and intimacy are priorities at home.
So I created a step-by-step Career Values Workbook to help clients brainstorm, identify and prioritise their Top 10 work values. This helps your clients make values-driven career choices.
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Tool 7) Personal Values Work
If a client picks a career that is incongruent with their deepest values it will ultimately make them unhappy.
People may think they want to be rich or famous, but we need to look deeper inside to see what really makes us happy. And the process of identifying our personal values is a powerful way to get to know ourselves better—and what’s most important to us in life.
So you might find these tools and articles helpful as career coaching resources:
- See our Free Sample Values List Tool
- See our How to Identify your Personal Values in 5 Steps here or go straight to our Personal Values Workbook here
- Lastly, see all our articles on Values here
Personal Values Workbook
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Tool 8) Powerful Career Coaching Questions
Of course questions are a tool to find a new career—we’re coaches, it’s what we do! But specific career coaching questions can help unearth some interesting ideas. And when a client is looking for a new career we need to go deep.
You can ask the career coaching questions below in session, but they also make good homework (inquiries for clients to journal around) for clients to go deeper between coaching sessions.
Try the “everything you need” questions:
- Ask: What if you had ALL the money/ friends/ love/ time/ approval/ skills you need?
- Then ask: What career ideas can you think of now?
- This gives great answers or ideas to explore further—and can be used as an inquiry or pondering homework.
And here are 10 more powerful career coaching questions when clients are looking for a new career include:
- Imagine it’s 10 years from now and you’re successful and super happy in your new career—what are you doing?
- Who will you have to become to have the new career that you want?
- What are you hoping to get out of your new career or career change? What outcomes are you looking for? What is your “Why?” This helps clients get really clear on the reasons for switching careers—vital information as you and your client sift through ideas and options.
- How do you expect your life will be different with a new role or career? Ask your client to list as many thoughts and ideas as they can—from how their work-life will be different to how they think their personal life will be different, and any short, medium and long-term impacts.
- How do you want to FEEL at work? Imagine waking up and looking ahead to your day, going about your work, then how you feel when you come home…
- What are some of your most marketable skills? Strengths? Make a list.
- What are your biggest shortcomings or weaknesses when at work? Make a list.
- What will get in the way of moving to a new role or career? What is in your personal life or mindset that will limit your possibilities? For example child care responsibilities, health issues, limiting beliefs, lack of confidence etc.
- What are you afraid of? And when you look closely, how valid are these fears?
- If you could wave a magic wand, if there were no limitations or barriers of any kind, what would you choose to do?
What career coaching questions would you add to this list?
Grab this Done-for-you Career Coaching Toolkit!
Check out our Career Coaching Toolkit which contains lots of career coaching resources including the Personal SWOT, Career Pondering Questions, Career Values Workbook, and many more including the new Career Development Wheel.
Add to cart
$59.00
A final recommendation, if you think you’re going to have more clients like this, is getting yourself the latest edition of What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles*. Not only can you recommend it to your clients, but it has helpful career tools, exercises and resources—as well as tips on how to find a new job/role, interview techniques and much more. And it’s updated regularly.
Wrap-up
So what did you think of all these career coaching resources? The goal of the career coaching tools above is to give the client information about themselves: who they are, what motivates them and therefore what they might want from their next career. And your job as the coach is to help them make sense of it all…
There are many potential new careers for each client, the difficult part is to find the career that inspires them enough to take action and invest their time and energy in.
