5 Top Executive Career Coaching Questions to Handle Career Uncertainty

Even though we’re working online I can see you’re agitated as we begin your coaching session. You* shift in your seat and the pen clamped between your index and middle finger judders up and down continuously.

​You thought you’d be cock a hoop that lockdown was easing. But then it hit you 

​that during these last few months, you’d been coping by subconsciously believing things would return to normal… You’ve realised that’s not going to happen, it might never happen… You feel shaken, afraid, lost.

​Handling Unprecedented Career Uncertainty

​I hear how you’re grappling with this new uncertainty.  The prospects for your industry are dire. Your bosses kept you and your team busy during lockdown with current projects. But with no future pipeline to speak of, your higher-ups have warned that posts will soon have to go.

You’re barely sleeping with the anxiety about the mortgage and the bills, it’s unbelievable how much it costs to take care of a family. Thank God your wife is a teacher – at least her work looks secure at the moment…
​
But it’s not just that. Despite this grim outlook for your work situation, part of you is recalcitrant. Lockdown and in particular working from home has changed you. 

​“Can you believe this?” You say. “I’m terrified of losing my job… but at the same time, the idea of resuming my commute and working in the office all the time makes my hackles rise…. It’s so
​unnecessary, it’s exhausting… But I mean, what’s going on with me? How can I even think of being picky at a time like this?” ​

I tell you that despite your suspicions you’re not going mad. Let’s get some perspective, we’re living through a period of unprecedented change. Even during the Second World War, schools generally stayed open. 

Welcome to the VUCA world; volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. We’ve had glimpses of it in the last twenty years due to the impact of new technologies and globalisation, but Covid-19 has taken VUCA to a whole new level. There’s volatility – infection rates are swinging up and down across the world. We have uncertainty – will there be a second lockdown? This is complex – it’s not just about your industry, it’s whether the eco-system of industries that feeds your industry survives. It’s ambiguous - different people interpret the data about the key measures deemed important differently. I wouldn’t be surprised if you feel in turmoil.

​Nostalgia for Career Stability

“I feel in turmoil,” you say.  “And there’s something else. I’m wondering if maybe I never had it so good as in the pre-Covid world! No it wasn’t perfect, but my work seemed stable, my life was on track, we went on holiday and away for the weekend. I worked out in the gym, had a pint with my mates… and I took it all pretty much for granted.”

 “So perhaps you’re feeling nostalgia for the good times?” I say, and you nod. And we agree that those times feel safe because we’ve lived through them and enjoyed them. And I hear the hopelessness in your voice when you say you feel defeated, but you’d like some answers if there are any.
​
And I suggest that the old normal has gone and we have no clue about how the new normal of work and the economy will turn unfold. What’s more, spending time on predicting the future environment will likely be a fool’s errand. 

 Career Hope Alongside Covid-19

And then there’s you. And you’re no longer the you who went into lockdown…
​
​And I ask if you would be willing to reflect on the only area you can influence right now.  Would you be ​willing to try to understand your ‘new self’  a little better?

 And I ask you five questions and wait for your responses.

• What’s Important in your working life now?
• What’s no longer important or less important in your working life now?
• Where are you now in your career?
• What trying to emerge for you in your career now?
• What’s getting in the way of this?

An then I ask the 'bonus' question...

• What qualities do you need to develop to move forward now?

And afterwards, you say you feel a little hope and perhaps slightly calmer. You realise you need to turn your attention to the future and plan you’re first step, take it, and then the next and then the next. 
​
And I say that’s what I’m doing… and that’s all any of us can do right now.

* This is a fictionalised coaching case based on recent experience. No content in this exchange is directly drawn from work with any particular individual or individuals.

© 2020 Trudy Lloyd & Associates. All Rights Reserved.