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Professional Development for Career Practitioners

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4 Areas to Explore to Help Your Clients Rebalance Their Life

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When I first heard Geoff Pearman (workforce development consultant in New Zealand) use the term ‘rebalancing’ to describe how Boomers could look at the next phase of their lives, I knew I liked it. I have struggled with how to describe this time after leaving full-time employment to clients I work with, and now have embraced ‘rebalancing’ rather than retirement, “3rd age”, or whatever else is out there. This is a great way to look at ALL career changers as well. (Read Geoff’s article).

People don’t just stop living when they turn 62 to retire and watch eight hours a day of I Love Lucy reruns. This time in their lives is an opportunity to really look at their life and rebalance. Most people want to keep active: possibly volunteering, traveling, picking up new (or old) hobbies. Some will want to keep working, albeit maybe something different than what they’ve done for most of their careers…and maybe with more flexibility.  

Here are four areas to explore when you are working with a client who is changing career paths, and in particular for Boomers who are leaving full-time employment and facing their ‘second adult lifetime’.

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What You’re Really Meant To Do. By Robert Steven Kaplan

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What You’re Really Meant To Do. A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential. By Robert Steven Kaplan

Just finished this book and really liked how the author laid out his thinking. Much of his book, the second half, is about how to keep a job and advance in a job which I really liked because most books are only about how to FIND a job.

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Less is Best

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Less is best in most cases. We live with a tsunami of information and all we often need is a beach and an umbrella. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink says, “We live in a world saturated with information….The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”20130704_112354

So how do we take this enormous amount of information and turn this into understanding? One way to do this is to embrace the “less is best” motto and it will leave you with the clues to understanding. Malcolm Gladwell speaks to this in his book and I talk about “trusting your instincts”. (See 3rd bullet point in this blog).

When working with college students on their resume, I say that every word on this needs to count. To have a purpose. You do not need to tell me that 207-555-5555 is a “cell phone” or JimPeacock @Peak-Careers.com is an “email”, I know what it is. Use bullet phrases, not sentences in your experience area because I am skimming this document, not reading it. Make this resume shorter, meaningful, and cleaner, so I can understand you.

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Prop Them Up Until They Get Their Balance

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I heard this quote recently and it has been running through my head since. “Prop them up until they get their balance“. It hit home to me as a career counselor and coach. Much of my work is helping people “get their balance” so they can move forward on their own. I love this visual, as I evolve from a “counselor” or “advisor” who gives something, to more of a “coach” who encourages my students and clients to look within and figure it out themselves.

How did I prop someone up?

  • Helped a client come up with four questions to ask in an informational interview
  • Guided a student in writing an email to alumni asking for advice
  • Helped a Boomer / mid-life career changer “discover” the value of their own network by uncovering numerous serendipitous moments in their lives positively affected by people they knew
  • Encouraged a student to try an informational interview with a faculty member before stepping out and doing one with alumni they do not know
  • What have you done to ‘prop someone up’?

Each person is different. Some people simply need a few resources and they are off and running. Others simply need a ‘reframing’ of the situation to see it in a more positive light. Others are “off-kilter” and need a few suggestions or open-ended questions to get them thinking. The key as a career practitioner is to keep the ownership of the issue with the person and not try to give them answers that worked for you or others in the past. To truly listen to what they are saying & thinking and help them figure out how to move forward.

What they present to us often is not the real issue. If you view yourself as a “propper upper” first, you realize that we are often a sounding board for others, asking the questions that no one else has asked them. Yes, often we are the first people to ask these questions

  • “What skills do you want to use in a job?”
  • “What did you love / like about past jobs you’ve had and is there a connection or theme?”
  • “How can you leverage your strengths and passions to do something in the next 3 weeks?  3 months? 6  months?“

What are some of your favorite questions you ask that helps a person see more clearly?
That “props them up until they get their balance”.
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Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

Sign up here to receive my  TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON.  You can also receive the career practitioners newsletter which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Cracking The Hidden Job Market by Don Asher

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I like Don Asher’s style and practical approach to career coaching & advising. This book is filled with great advice on helping people realize that you “have to turn over a lot of rocks to find work” (that’s what I say all the time, see my blog on this).

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He says that all industries are hiring all the time due to death, firings, people moving, retirement, expansion, or whatever. I agree. When people say there are no jobs in our area, I say, “There are people getting hired in Waterville Maine where we live every day”. And its true.

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My favorite career bloggers

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LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, Facebook, conferences, journals, and more continue to come across our desks as ways to do professional development.  (See previous blog on this topic).

So how do we manage all this information?  I found that there are key people out there writing about topics meaningful to me and that if I follow these key people, they will either sift through the volumes of topics and synthesize for me or they write topics I am interested in.   

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I also use feedly.com to organize various blogs & news I want to follow.  This is an aggregator application which compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources. I have three categories, CAREER, NEWS, and SOCIAL MEDIA. I can then add people / organizations that I want to follow under each category.  Currently I follow two news feeds, one social media marketing feed, and six career feeds.  This does NOT have to be overwhelming.  Keep it simple.  Less is best.  Based upon the input I received in a different LinkedIn groups, I’ve actually added a couple to my feed.

By using Feedly I can log into one place and get a quick snapshot of current blogs, articles, and news.  I
can skim the list and if there is something that looks interesting, I read it.  If I like it, I share it on LinkedIn or PeakCareers Facebook, or Twitter.  This allows me to manage my time and if I had all of these coming into my email I would be overwhelmed.  If I had to actually go out to each person/organizations site, I would never go.  

Here is my list of bloggers I follow.

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