You might be here because you know your current career isn’t the right match for you, you feel like resigning tomorrow, or you’ve been made redundant. If any of those is where you are right now, career change coaching takes you from confusion to clarity about what’s next.

Career coaching also helps when you know that you’re in the right field for you but want to make a change like gaining a promotion, handling an overwhelming workload, or improving challenging work relationships.

I’ve answered some of the questions you might have about career coaching here but for a free no-obligation career coaching consultation, please contact me.

Career coach Michelle Bayley on career change

Working mainly with professional people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, I’ve specialised in career change coaching for over 16 years. I spent a long time feeling stuck about my own career choice, so it feels really purposeful for me to help other people to get unstuck and to enjoy their work.

Depending on the changes you want to make, as your career coach, my job includes:

  • Helping you to understand what you really want from your work (not what you think you should want)
  • Exploring career possibilities – understanding what options appeal to you and why, so that you can choose the best match for you
  • Giving you tools to deal with your inner critic which might be telling you there’s no way you can change career
  • Helping you to set boundaries and ask for what you want from your boss or colleagues.
  • Keeping you focused on why you’re making changes when it feels tough going (and celebrate with you when you get there!)

How does career coaching work?

To help you find work that you’ll love, I use Firework™ the UK’s leading career change process, which I’ve also trained hundreds of other coaches to use too. It’s a great framework with three phases – Explore, Dream and Discover.

The Explore phase is about getting clear about what you want from both your work and your life in general – knowing what you want from your life outside work helps you to make a sound choice about what you want from your working life.

You answer interesting, thought provoking exercises outside your coaching sessions and we then dig deep into them to uncover what makes you tick, and what you really want. At the end of Explore, you have a blueprint of yourself, including:

  • Your values
  • What makes you feel purposeful
  • Your favourite skills and biggest strengths
  • What motivates you about work (apart from paying the bills)
  • What a great way of working/organisation looks like for you
  • What most interests you
  • Your achievements

In the second Dream phase, you generate exciting new career options. And because you have the blueprint of yourself and what you want that you created in Explore, you can judge how good a match these options are for you.

When you’ve chosen the option that’s the best match for you, in the final Discover phase you create a plan to take you from where you are now to where you want to be.

Who are your clients?

Anyone who knows that they want their working life to be better, whatever field they’re in. I have a wide range of clients who work in communications, IT, law, teaching, finance, project management, property, higher education and digital media. I’ve mainly worked with:

  • those in their 30s and 40s who know their current role isn’t the right match for them
  • people who’ve been made redundant/taken voluntary redundancy who don’t want to go back to the same type of role
  • women who’ve returned to work after maternity leave and their job doesn’t fit with their life anymore
  • people in their 50s who want the last phase of their career to be more fulfilling.

I also career coach managers and leaders who want to gain promotion or who want to make positive changes to any aspect of their work.

Contact me for a free no-obligation consultation to find out more about career coaching .

What’s the difference between career coaching and career counselling?

Career coaches and career counsellors have a broad range of approaches and some may be similar but roughly speaking, a career coach helps you to uncover what you want to do for yourself and a career counsellor will be more likely to make recommendations about what you should do next.

What if I want to change my career and other areas of my life too?

The Firework™ programme is flexible so it’s absolutely fine to combine it with coaching about other parts of your life. And because Firework™ takes a “whole life” approach to career direction, my clients have found that it gives them insights which lead to improvements in other areas of their lives.

How long does the career change programme take and how often are the sessions?

It depends on where you are with your thinking about what’s next. If you know that you definitely want to create totally new career possibilities, the full programme is around 12 hours of coaching (normally in hour long sessions) but this can be fewer hours if you’ve already done work on some of the areas yourself.

If you already have some strong career ideas in mind and want to make sure that one of them is the right match for you, the initial Explore phase and some action planning might be all you need. We discuss what would work best for you in the initial free consultation. As a professional certified coach with the ICF, I follow their code of ethics and wouldn’t coach you for more sessions than you need.

On frequency, to maintain momentum, a minimum of two sessions per month is best but sessions can be more frequent too, eg if you aren’t currently working and want to move through the process more quickly.

When and where do sessions take place?

I coach in regular working hours, Monday to Friday and in the evening Monday to Wednesday. We agree a convenient time, preferably at the same time and day of the week.

When it’s possible to meet face to face again, anyone who’s local and would like to, can come to my office in Twickenham, South West London or meet in the centre of London. I’m currently meeting clients over Zoom, Skype and FaceTime. I have clients in Manchester, Rome and Hong Kong – so working virtually isn’t an issue.

Twickenham is convenient for Richmond, Teddington, Brentford and Hampton. And it’s on the trainline for Wandsworth, Putney, Barnes, Kingston and Wimbledon.

How much does career coaching cost?

My career coaching fees are £180 a month for two x one-hour sessions or £270 a month for  3 x one-hour sessions. The initial two-hour induction session fee is £180.

There are no hidden extras.

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