What is coaching?
While the word “coaching” may make you think about sports, the word is also used for a field that helps people with their lives, relationships, and careers. Empowerment Foundation offers coaching services specifically related to your career.
What can coaching do for you?
Just as a sports coach helps an athlete reach their fullest potential, coaching is a practice that leads you towards self-discovery. A coach can work with you to accomplish your personal goals and achieve the change in your life that you may be seeking. The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as, “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
Coaching can focus on a variety of disciplines from relationships to life changes. Empowerment Foundation focuses on career coaching because we believe that coaching can be a powerful experience that supports your career change and job search. A skilled coach can lead you towards better understanding yourself. We all have the power to change our own lives and a coach can move us forward in that process.
At Empower, we also know the difficulties that come with not only changing careers but doing it in another country. While there are services in the Netherlands for Dutch speakers, resources for international unemployed individuals are lacking.
Empower Amsterdam’s career coaches can help you:
Determine a clearer profile of the type of job you’re looking for
How to communicate to employers who you are
Define a clear objective for your job search
Discover solutions to challenges you have been experiencing
Build motivation and confidence
Job hunting can sometimes be a lonely and overwhelming experience. A career coach is there to support you and lead you towards your career path and goals.
How does coaching work?
Coaching dives into the now. While a therapist or psychologist might help you with issues from your past or mental health concerns, a coach follows you in the current moment and helps you get to where you want to be. They’re also not a mentor because coaches are not there to give you the answer but lead you towards your own self-discovery. This can happen in a variety of ways depending on the coach.
Coaching can be done individually or with a group. While each coach has different techniques and methods, they craft these to help you achieve insights. Your session with a coach could include a:
Conversation or discussion: Your coach will most likely spend a lot of time asking questions and talking you through your ideas, goals, and dreams and how to put them into action.
Role-play: In career coaching, your coach might practice an interview scenario with you. This way you’ll be more comfortable when you finally have a real interview.
Visualization: This is where the coach has you imagine a scenario and then debriefs your thoughts and feelings. This can help you uncover hidden mental blocks you may have created for yourself. Your coach can help you brainstorm strategies to overcome these mental obstacles.
Other exercises: Your coach may have other exercises and tools that they use depending on their training and expertise.
However your coaching session runs, if you stay open to feedback and insights, you’ll be able to get the most out of it. Many coaches offer a short, introductory session where you can see if you are a good fit. At Empower, our volunteer coaches offer three to five free sessions so you can really get a taste of the coaching experience. It allows you to try out coaching with minimal commitment. If you don’t feel like your coach is the right match, just reach out and let us know!
Who are the coaches?
A coach is often times certified through the ICF. Through accredited programs, potential coaches undergo rigorous training and practice coaching sessions before finally becoming certified.
Coaches may also have extensive experience or other education and have positioned themselves to support you on your career journey. Many times people become coaches because they’ve always been good at connecting to others, or they might have coached people in another discipline.
Our coaches at Empower Amsterdam come from a variety of backgrounds. They volunteer their time to help job seekers meet their career goals and aspirations.
Why might coaching be a good fit for you?
Professional athletes use coaches to help them improve everything within their sport from physical improvements to mental strategy. It’s time for individuals to use the same approach to optimize their life and career path.
Are you feeling stuck in your job search? Have you just moved to the Netherlands or want to make a career switch? You might already have people around you to give you feedback, but they may not have the expertise or knowledge to push you to make necessary changes.
A coach has the knowledge and experience to guide you towards achieving a better sense of self. With Empower Amsterdam, we offer up to five free coaching sessions of 45 minutes each. It’s a great way to test out if coaching might be a good fit for you.
Interested? Sign up here.