How Can I Inspire Others to Make Better Career Choices?
Have you ever looked at the career choices of some of the people around you and wondered why they decided to go in a particular direction? Many people look at the decisions of those around them and don’t quite comprehend their reasons for deciding to choose the career paths that they have.
If you are talking about this with friends and family, help them to understand the skills that they have in their possession and suggest some career options that may be suitable for those skills. Sometimes people just haven’t even considered a particular area of work because they hadn’t realised that their skills were a match for what was needed.
Beyond this, if you are determined to help people to find the careers that suit them, there are a few options that you could follow, including making this your own career.
How to Inspire Others in Their Career Choices
Become a Life Coach / Careers Adviser
If your passion is to inspire other people and help them to make the most of the opportunities in their lives, it sounds like becoming a life coach or a careers adviser could be an excellent career move for you. The two roles are somewhat different, with a life coach focusing more on the broader spectrum of experiences that make up an individual’s life and the careers adviser focusing more narrowly on career advancement and improvement.
There are many courses online that you can follow which can teach you the skills needed in order to become a life coach. Most of these are skills that you will probably have developed anyway if you are considering this as an option, such as empathy and being able to listen to what the other person is really saying.
Being able to help another person to identify and then pursue their goals can be a very gratifying experience and it is one of the reasons many people get into life coaching in the first place. Seeing a positive effect on the lives of others is its own reward.
Life coaching is often seen as being quite a “new age” concept but it is actually more akin to a form of therapy, in the sense that you are giving the other person the opportunity to speak about their experiences and suggesting ways that they can modify how they think about things, or their behaviour patterns, in order to get closer to success. Being able to talk to a client about how they aren’t enjoying their current job and suggesting others that they may be better suited to can be just the push they need to take the next step.
Becoming a careers adviser is something that is a bit more formal than a life coach. Life coaches tend to be freelancers with a small group of clients that they focus their energy on whereas careers advisers tend to speak to far more people and try to assess their skills and their needs. This can be done through asking them to complete a skills audit, where they think about and list the kinds of skills that they have, and the jobs they think they may be suited for.
It is possible to take undergraduate courses at university to prepare you for a career as a careers adviser and there are also many courses available online that can help you to pick up the basics of what the role entails, so that you are ready to go from day one. It is a job in which you need to be able to get to know and assess people fairly quickly and have a great knowledge of different jobs, career paths and the kinds of skills that each needs. These are the slightly more formal routes of inspiring people to make better career choices.
Live by Example
One of the best ways to inspire people to consider positive moves in their career is to be an example of what their lives could be if they heeded your advice on the matter. You are unlikely to have much credence when telling others they should find a job that makes them happy if you are stuck doing something that makes you miserable yourself.
It is far easier to inspire people to take that leap and decide that the job they are in is wrong for them, if you have already done this and you are now enjoying the fruits of your labours. Talk to them about what works for you and makes your choice a better one than the one they are currently pursuing. Is it because you are working remotely and can base yourself anywhere you want to? Is it because you are freelancing and are now your own boss?
While it is great to attempt to encourage people to make changes that will be positive in their lives, it is also important to remember that you are living your life as you wish and that is what other people are doing as well. There is no one size fits all solution for getting life “right”.
What is a win for someone may look a lot like a loss to someone else. You might want to travel around the world while working but other people may want to stay in one place and put down strong roots with their relationships and family choices.
If you tell people that their careers are hampering their chances to live their lives the same way you do, you may end up being told that they have no intention of living like you and want no part of your career change advice.
This may sound harsh, but it is important to be prepared before broaching this subject with people in your life, and to realise that careers that you don’t see the attraction of and don’t gravitate towards aren’t necessarily failures. Indeed, to characterise them in this way may lead to arguments with the people you are trying to inspire.
Read some of our inspiring career stories?
