“I wonder if I chose the wrong career…”
“Please help me, I feel overwhelmed…”
“So… what do I do now?”
I wasn’t a coach then, but after I published two career guidebooks, I received emails from twenty-somethings lamenting how lost or confused they were.
I responded by offering advice, but now that I’m a certified coach, I learned better ways of helping early-career employees, i.e., recent college graduates and new in the workforce.
I’ll get to those better ways later, but first let me comment on a popular notion. It’s commonly held that today’s millennial and Gen Z have difficulty adjusting to the workplace because they are self-absorbed and entitled.
I protest this as stereotyping because as a boomer who got my first job back in 1984 (I’m feeling Jurassic already), I felt the same gnawing disconnect and a crying need for guidance. My own experience and that of others’ teach me that it’s more of a culture change issue.
When we were at college, we pretty much knew what to do and what was expected of us. Structure was set through a curriculum and a set of class schedules. Answers were usually right versus wrong and had to be consistent with textbooks or what the professor said. Performance lapses could be made up with remedial class or even shifting courses altogether.
But in the “real world”, structure is not always evident. While the newly hired gets to know about the organizational structure, policies and procedures, and job description, he or she would quickly learn that there are unwritten rules, informal leaders, and multitasking galore.
Answers were not always clear cut: the boss will not always hand them to you. You grapple with uncertainty, you try to decipher an ambiguous message, you yearn for immediate feedback but are not getting any.
Performance lapses can damage the company (say, you mishandled a customer or a machine) and also your reputation (“Why were you fired from Company X?”). There are no make-up classes to go to. Talk about pressure!
Coaching can help such people who are transitioning from campus to cubicle. Core competencies as laid out by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) can impart powerful benefits. These include being present, evoking awareness, and facilitating learning and growth.
In the next two posts, I will share three distinct ways coaching can help people at this starting phase of their careers.
April 29, 2024
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