What is career and executive coaching?
I provide career and executive coaching in Washington, DC. People call me not only for executive counseling and career coaching, they also seek help finding jobs and/or generating business.
Many Washingtonians are deeply invested in their work-life. However, today’s professionals are searching for more than just professional and financial success; they want to meaningful work and work-life balance.
Traditional Career & Executive Coaching in Washington DC
People often ask, “What is career counseling and executive coaching? How are they similar and how do they differ? How do I know whether I need career coaching or executive coaching? Or, some other type of help, such as, psychodynamic career assessment, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalysis” or a mix?
Given the morass of options for help with work-life, it’s no small wonder that people are genuinely puzzled as to what sort of help to seek. Complicating things still further: people who seek career or executive coaching recognize that an array of factors may lead to their difficulties. Some attribute their challenges to complex organizational dynamics. Others attribute their difficulties to their own internal conflicts and inhibitions. Therefore, let’s consider each of these options.
Career Coaching
Generally, career coaching helps you to identify and pursue your career goals. Career counselors work with an array of individuals, including, people who are:
- just starting out.
- career changers.
- seeking more meaningful work.
- wishing to develop a career path.
- laid off.
- and others.
A career counselor’s primary focus is to help you to find work-life satisfaction. For instance, career counselors help you to:
- Identify career goals.
- Develop a strategy for pursuing your work-goals.
- Successfully, navigate obstacles that get in your way.
- Help you to develop a strategic career plan.
Your coach can help you to identify job, or business, opportunities available in the current economic climate. Together you can fashion both a short and long-term plan designed to lead toward greater career satisfaction and financial success.
Learn more about career coaching, here.
Executive Coaching
In contrast to career counseling, the focus of executive coaching although overlapping is somewhat different. Executive coaches can help professionals to strategically manage their careers. Also, they can help you to identify and address the complex political and organizational dynamics in your workplace. Executive coaches help professionals to:
- Become effective team leaders.
- Create an atmosphere of respect and trust.
- Manage diverse teams for competitive advantage.
- Deal with difficult bosses, colleagues and subordinates.
- And much more! Learn more about executive coaching in Washington, DC.
Career or executive coaching are not the optimal sorts of help for everyone. Here are some signs that they might not be the optimal modality for you.
Of course, career and executive coaching are not effective for everyone. Rather, other interventions are more useful for some people struggle with workplace dissatisfaction. That is, there may be other gremlins that get in the way of your career search, professional success and career happiness. For example, these may include:
- an inability to tolerate the rejection inherent in building a business or launching a job hunt.
- low self-esteem.
- fear of assertiveness.
- guilt over success.
- the imposter syndrome.
- difficulty with authority.
- depression.
- anxiety.
- a lack of self-confidence.
- concern about impressing or pleasing others (e.g. parents, friends, bosses, etc.)
For these people a psychodynamic career assessment might be warranted. This sort of evaluation is designed to understand the underlying obstacles that are getting in your way. Thus, an assessment, in turn, can lead to a helpful recommendation as to what sort of help might be most useful. Some may benefit from career coaching, executive coaching, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalysis or a hybrid.
In summary, a person dealing with work-life concerns may derive benefit from an array of different approaches. To learn more about this topic, read the NCDA articles, below.
I provide psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic career assessment, career coaching and executive coaching. If you’d like to explore the possibility of working together, feel free to give me a call: 240.483.3530.