Career Transition: Where to begin?

In my coaching practice, many of my clients are considering a career transition. The most common question people come to me with is "Where do I even start?" Especially if you have been in the same role or with the same organization for a long time, or if the desire or need for change has come up suddenly, it's completely understandable why you may feel at sea. Knowing you can and want to do something new, you may feel daunted by all of the possibilities: "Where do I go? What do I do? How do I know where to begin?"

These are tough questions! And my role as a coach isn't to answer them, but to provide a framework for exploration so that my clients can discover the answers themselves. In my experience with my clients, I have found that the place to start is often in one of these four areas:

• Values: Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, will probably indicate if your life is turning out the way you want it to. If you are living your values, your family, friends, and colleagues should be able to take a look at your life and reflect your values back to you. What are your values and how do you use them in your career decisions?
• Purpose: I know, this is no small subject. I promise you that taking some time to sit with a question like "Why am I here on this planet?" is well worth your time for contemplation. It's likely your job isn't (nor should it be) the sole avenue for living your purpose. But without knowing your purpose, it's hard to tell whether your career supports it or detracts from it.
• Skills: Throughout a career, we collect all kinds of things that we learned how to do. But, which of these things do we actually LIKE to do? And, frankly, are we actually good at any of them? And maybe there are things that we don't know how to do yet that we'd like to learn. Taking inventory of our skills can remind us of all that we know and what we've dreamed of knowing.
• Environment: I love to ask my clients to envision the work environment in which they thrive. I ask them to imagine, "If I planted myself here, will I grow?" And so what does it look like, sound like, feel like? When making a career transition, we can't forget how important the environment is in addition to things like salary, benefits, and convenience.

​When I meet with clients, we walk through this framework, and while we will eventually talk about all of these areas during our coaching relationship, there is usually one of these areas that stands out. I find that having one place to start makes the whole process feel less insurmountable. And by starting at that one place, it reveals all kinds of answers in the other areas.

If you are contemplating a career transition, consider which of these places might make the most sense for you to start digging in. For instance, have you articulated your values? How would you use them to make decisions around what kind of career move would be best for you? And how would you ensure that you are living your values throughout your career? If you need a coach to help you explore these questions, I can work with you to unearth the answers that are already inside of you.