Career coaching and counselling with KIm Tasso

Usually my coaching work focuses on high performance management, business development and the transition to leadership roles. However, I recently wrote about a couple of career counselling webinars that I had joined.

Having qualified as a professional coach/mentor back in 2002, and with a number of psychology qualifications (including accreditation as a psychometrics assessor) as well as ongoing counselling training and a wealth of business management and people development experience I thought I’d share some insight into my approach to career coaching.

With people in my career counselling sessions – whether they are business owners, traditional professionals such as lawyers, accountants and surveyors or “new” professionals such as marketers at junior or senior levels, each session and programme is tailored to the needs of the specific individual and situation.

I have a vast tool box of assessment tools, development aids and signposts a variety of learning materials for business, professional and personal skills. Typically we cover the following although the first stage in any coaching relationship is a discussion about and agreement of the aims:

Analysis of the individual
- Personal skills
- Professional skills
- Technological skills
- Management and functional skills
- Work experience
- Personality and style (I have a range of psychometric and other assessment tools and signposts to mainstream and more specialist tests)
- Peer review and feedback
- Passions and pursuits
- Strengths and weaknesses

Analysis of the environment and market
- Personal and professional relationships
- Organisation and team preferences
- Market sectors and specialisms
- Networks and communities
- Opportunities and threats

Goal setting
- Long, medium and short term goals
- Financial – requirements and aspirations
- Roles and responsibilities
- Organisation and sector preferences
- Work-life balance and family commitments
- Other motivators
- Milestones and critical success factors

Career planning
- Long, medium and short term plans
- Gap analysis
- Building brand me
- Brainstorming and option generation
- Skills and core competency development
- Training, coaching and mentoring options
- International perspectives
- Planning

Implementation
- Strategies and motivation
- Managing fundamental change
- Training, reflection and application
- Stepping up activities
- Experience and portfolio building
- Developing management competencies
- New business development
- Tackling challenging situations and relationships
- Appraisals and applications
- Negotiating new arrangements
- Creating a new business
- Moving between organisations
- Transitioning into new roles
- Repositioning for next steps