FAQs

Career Coaching FAQs

1. What is a career coach?

"Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.” – Sir John Whitmore. Or as we like to say, a personal trainer for your career.

2. What does a career coach do?

Career Coaches use a solution-oriented approach to assist and inform any person who is in need of career advice. In other words, they help people define, redefine, and achieve their professional objectives and other work-related goals. We use our unique, Don’t Just Be methodology.

3. How much is a career coach?

Our email coaching service starts from as little as £35 per person, per month, of course, terms and conditions apply.

To receive a personalised quote regarding the cost of our career coaching programmes please complete the web form here and we can get back to you shortly to discuss this more.

4. What training do career coaches have?

Our coaches have a variety of professional qualifications whether life coaching or executive coaching. Including being senior members of the ACCPH, Association of coaching, ANLP and ISMA.

5. Do I need a career coach?

A career coach can help you define, redefine, and achieve your professional objectives and other work-related goals. For instance, our career coaches might help you improve skills in your current career or it might be a case of working towards a new career – we help you identify what your goals are.

6. When can I meet with a career coach?

To meet one of our career coaches simply complete the web form (link) to register your interest and we will schedule you a time to speak with one of our career coaches over the phone to get a better idea of how we can help you. We can then book you in for a face-to-face consultation.

7. What are the benefits of career coaching?

Coaching benefits everyone in an organisation, that includes both the employee and the employer. Here are some ways coaching does that:

Employee benefits
Improvement in individual's performance, targets and goals, Increased openness to personal learning and development, increased ability to identify solutions to specific work-related issues. Greater ownership and responsibility and development of self-awareness. To get a clearer understanding of how coaching can benefit you, watch our … video here.

Employer benefits
Increased Employee Engagement – coaching can be used as an employee engagement strategy it allows the individual to actively reflect on their role within your organisation. The feedback they will receive from our coaches gives individuals a connection to their work, effectively improving employee engagement as well as company culture. Employee engagement has also been linked to lower absenteeism.

Identified and Developed High-Potential Individuals - Our coaches can work on developing various soft skills and close skill gaps within your organisation to properly prepare your employees in the succession pipeline to greater things.

Stronger Management Relationships
Relationships between employees and managers can often be strained. In fact, bad managerial relationships are often cited in the top reasons why employees quit. Our coaches help individuals understand things from a different perspective and why there may be conflict – we can help change attitudes to create a more cohesive environment.

Demonstrated Organizational Commitment to Career Development
By investing in your employee’s career development, they will feel more committed to the company due to feeling more valued and in return this create happier and engaged individuals which improves productivity and minimises lost profits due to absenteeism. Coaching shows you are investing in your employees and also makes your organisation more appealing to potential job candidates. This puts you in a much stronger position to recruit new candidates and also improve current employee retention.

To get a clearer understanding of how coaching can benefit you as an employer, watch our … video here.

8. What's the difference between a career coach and a life coach?

Whilst a career coach helps you achieve job-related goals, a life coach focuses on personal goals. Unlike career coaches, life coaches help a client for a long period of time since goals and plans may change as one reaches different chapters in their life, whether it be marriage, children or old age.

Our career coaching programmes typically run monthly for 6 months and thereafter drop down to every other month as our clients find they have a greater self-awareness and clearer ability of goals but like to still have that person on hand to keep them accountable.

9. What's the difference between a career coach and an executive coach?

Typically, a career coach will focus on advancing your career, helping you take the next steps toward your long-term goal, whether that be skills development or identifying a new role. An executive coach will cover a wider remit, including identifying what kind of leader they want to be and maybe are currently, how to become a better leader, making strategic decisions, and developing key relationships. So many of the elements are the same and our coaches use the same proven methodology working with apprentices right up to those in the C-Suite.

10. What is the difference between mentoring and career coaching?

It is important to understand the difference between coaching and mentoring as they are two distinct things. However, these terms are often used interchangeably.

In mentoring, the mentor advises and shares their own experiences and is usually more experienced and qualified than the learner (or ‘mentee’).

In coaching, the coach doesn’t advise. For this reason, the coach does not need to have direct experience of the coaches' role. Career coaching aims to unlock a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them, thus enabling them to feel more self-reliant going forward.

Group Coaching FAQs

1. What does a group coach do?

Group coaching involves one of our experienced coaches/facilitators working with a team, from managers and executives down to apprentices - we encourage having a mixed group of personnel in our programmes as we like bringing employees of all levels together as a bit like a secret team building activity. These sessions are what we see as the modern approach to training.

2. How much is a group coaching programme?

To receive a personalised quote regarding our group coaching sessions please complete our contact form and we can get back to you shortly to discuss this more.

Whilst our general group coaching programmes are for all team members, we also offer leadership group programmes for more senior members, please speak to us about your bespoke needs.

3. What size group for coaching?

Our group coaching sessions are typically for groups no larger than 20 people per coach however, we can facilitate for larger groups. Submit your enquiry here.

4. How is group coaching different to training?

Essentially, training is about transferring knowledge while coaching is about enhancing knowledge or skills. Obviously, coaching is a way to apply learning in an informed way. Training hopes that learners will remember knowledge so it can be applied. Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

Two fundamentals in our group coaching that sets it apart from training is helping individuals gain self-awareness and assist them with setting clear monthly, quarterly and yearly goals which will be a part of a tailored plan we help them create in each group coaching session.

5. What are the benefits of group coaching?

Group coaching allows companies to achieve the benefits employees would get from career coaching but at a more affordable price. To find out more about our group coaching opportunities click here (link). It also offers a more modern approach to standard training, with our group coaching programme covering many soft skills that might be beneficial to multiple members of the team.

Benefits to Coaching

1. What is Coaching?

If you think of a coach like a personal trainer but for your career. In theory, we could all go to the gym and exercise however, a personal trainer keeps us motivated to think about our exercise goals and can provide us with better techniques to use equipment. A coach does the same for other parts of your life, a coach will give you techniques to help give you structure to your development and keep you accountable by setting goals with you and developing an action plan to get there.

A coach can also be seen as a facilitator of learning rather than an expert. In coaching, fundamentally, the coach is helping the individual to improve their own performance: in other words, helping them to learn. There is an important difference between teaching someone and helping them to learn. Good coaches believe that the individual always has the solution to their own problems but recognises that they may need assistance to discover the answer – this is what a coach aims to achieve.

2. What are the different types of coaching?

There are many different coaching techniques however we specialise in workplace-based coaching. The process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to fully develop themselves to be effective in their commitment to themselves, the company, and their work. There are many different forms of workplace coaching including:

Executive Coaching: An executive coach is a qualified professional that works with individuals (usually executives and high potential employees) to help them gain self-awareness, refine goals, achieve their development objectives, unlock their potential, and act as a sounding board.

Leadership Coaching: Leadership coaching is an individualised process that builds a leader's capability to achieve short-term and long-term organisational goals. Coaching is personalised, customised, usually conducted one-on-one for a defined period of time and with a specific business purpose in mind.

Career Coaching: Career coaching is getting the support and help you need to figure things out to reach your ultimate career goals. A career coach helps you establish realistic goals, discover solutions to challenges, develop action plans, build self-confidence, and gets you pumped up and motivated.

Team Coaching: Team coaching involves a single coach working with a group of managers or executives. This type of coaching gives members of the group the opportunity to stretch beyond their current abilities.

Business Coaching: A business coach will assist and guide the business owner in running a business by helping them clarify the vision of their business and how it fits in with their personal goals. Business coaching is a process used to take a business from where it is now to where the business owner wants it to be.

3. What are the coaching skills?

If you are a manager who would like to use a coaching technique with your client or team members you will need to develop certain skills. You can be assured that all of our coaches have the following necessary skills to provide a comprehensive coaching experience to help you develop your own skills and also those of your employees. This is ideal for managers who wish to lead with a management coaching style:

Listening – Listening is key! That is why it’s top of the list. You cannot be a good coach unless you can really listen. This doesn’t just mean listening to what is being said. It also means listening to what is not being said. This is how you can really support your client – by asking insightful questions about what you notice might be going on for them.

Questioning - Asking questions is at the heart of great coaching. There are many different types of questions that can be used. Some are more helpful than others. The best questions are ones that give insight into the person you are coaching.

Building Rapport - This is the first skill you need to use as a coach as it is the gateway to trust. The coaching process will not work unless you create a good rapport from the beginning, and it should be maintained throughout the coaching relationship. Having a god rapport means the person that is being coached will feel relaxed and are more likely to open up – so that personal barriers and fears can be identified. This allows the coach to ask harder and more challenging questions.

Empathising - Empathy is our ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes and appreciate how they are likely to be feeling or thinking in a given situation. What might it feel like to be them? This is important as you need to understand the situation from the coachees perspective.

Summarising and Reflecting - The advanced listening skills of summarising and reflecting help you guide your coachee to allow them to make sense of what they are grappling with. This will help them reassess their thoughts and help shape appropriate actions to take going forward.

Unlocking Limiting Beliefs - There will be situations in which you will need to trust your intuition and ask challenging questions. Underneath the initial symptom or issue, there is usually something deeper.

Staying Focused - It’s really important as a coach to make sure that the coaching session stays on track and does not degenerate into a general discussion or chat. It’s also important to ensure the coachee doesn’t digress too much or get caught up in too much detail.

Being Non-Judgemental and Open-Minded - This is a critical skill which is the foundation of good coaching. As a coach, its vital not to judge. Being a great coach is about being curious and having an open and inquisitive mind. This will allow you to focus on doing the best for your coachee by reflecting, providing feedback and asking probing questions.

Giving Constructive Feedback - One of the most useful things for your coachee can be you pointing out to them things you are noticing about them, for instance, their behaviour, their reactions to questions, and their facial expressions. Understanding body language is pivotal in grasping everything that is being said, not just the words.

Resisting Temptation to Tell - Not telling your coachee what you think the answers are or giving advice. The aim of coaching is to help the coachee identify the answer for themselves not giving them advice on what you think is right, however many of our clients come to us as coaches asking for the answer, we know they know it, they just don’t often want to say it aloud!

4. What if my team are all over the country or world?

No More Ifs Or Buts provide three different forms of coaching platforms for you to choose from Face-to-face coaching across the UK. Video/over the phone coaching and Email coaching that is available internationally (English only speakers).

We have clients across Europe and in the UAE which our coaches manage with a flexible working hours approach to suit the needs of our clients, wherever they are based.

5. Where do the face-to-face coaching sessions take place?

Our face-to-face coaching can take place in-house or at a local coffee shop/members club wherever you or your team member would feel most comfortable.

6. Are wellbeing and coaching linked?

Coaching and wellbeing are both in the realm of improving yourself and your team. Wellbeing is key to having a healthy, happy and engaged team while coaching can be a way of helping your employees reach their full potential. Visit our sister company Stress Matters for a more tailored wellbeing approach in the form of pledge schemes, wellbeing workshops and Mental health first aider (MHFA) training.

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