8 Career Coaching Tools & Ideas for Clients Who Have Absolutely No Idea What They Want!

Tool 1) Personal SWOT Analysis

Another key career coaching tool I use is the Personal SWOT Analysis where clients identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

We start by looking within.

• Strengths: What careers might suit their strengths? What strengths could be 'transferable' skills that would be useful in new or different careers?
• Weaknesses: These might point to jobs and careers to avoid, but don't let clients use this to get off the hook. Because weaknesses can also be minimised or removed eg. through training, creative role design or delegating.

Finally we look outside of ourselves and use powerful questions to identify potential opportunities and threats.

• Opportunities: What opportunities in the wider world (eg. technology, shifts in society, what is happening in the world) could provide opportunities for your client?
• Threats: What outside changes threaten your client's ability to find a new career or their 'marketability' as a job candidate? For example a lack of or outdated technical expertise, government regulation etc.

Tool 2) Career Wheel

This powerful Career Coaching Tool is great for clients looking for a new role. It makes a great tool to delve into their unique skills and experience—and how that might be useful.

Here's how to adapt it for clients looking for a new role:

1. First, ask them to label each segment with their 8 most valuable skills and areas of expertise.
2. Then ask them to score each segment, for example:
   • Score out of 10 how much they want to and/or enjoy using this skill or expertise. This is great information when thinking about where next for their career!
   • Score out of 10 how transferable this skill or expertise is to other industries and roles.
   • Score out of 10 how 'good' they are at each of their top 8 skills or expertise.

TIP: If scoring in 2-3 different ways, score each using a different colour pen.

3. Now coach them around the results. Use this information to brainstorm things like:
   • Ideas for which skills they might like (or need) to develop, and which to highlight in a job search.
   • What industries, careers and roles would value their skills and expertise?
   • Knowing which skills they enjoy using the least, where might they not want to end up next?

Grab this ready-to-go coaching tool below!

Tool 3) 'Future Self' Exercises and Inquiries Part 1

Help your clients vision their future—and access their imaginations to get ideas: What would they love to do?

The Rocking Chair for example is a writing exercise where they imagine being 90 and look back over their lives. What did they achieve? What makes them feel fulfilled? And you can add a career-specific slant by asking them to think specifically what they did and are proud of in their careers.

You can also ask your client to write an imaginary retirement speech or a newspaper article celebrating a success they have achieved, as ways to access subconscious inner ideas for how they see their careers unfolding.

Get 3 'Future Self' Visioning Exercises

Tool 5) A Set of Career Discovery Pondering Questions

These are essentially career coaching questions for our clients to review and learn from their past.

What did your clients love to do as a child? And what about that did they love? What did they want to be when they grew up? And what about that still appeals to them—and what doesn't?

The answers to these questions give us clues as to what might resonate with our clients for their next career.

And as our clients reflect on and answer questions on what inspired them in the past, we then look for patterns, themes—and other clues as to potential careers in the present.

Tool 6) Career or 'Work' Values

While looking at life values is definitely helpful, we often look for different things in our 'work' as opposed to our 'life in general'.

For example, we might have a strong value of spontaneity at home, but find spontaneity at work difficult and challenging. Or we may need to keep our distance at work, while connection and intimacy are priorities at home.

So I created a step-by-step Career Values Workbook to help clients brainstorm, identify and prioritise their Top 10 work values. This helps your clients make values-driven career choices.

Tool 7) Personal Values Work

If a client picks a career that is incongruent with their deepest values it will ultimately make them unhappy.

People may think they want to be rich or famous, but we need to look deeper inside to see what really makes us happy. And the process of identifying our personal values is a powerful way to get to know ourselves better—and what's most important to us in life.

So you might find these tools and articles helpful as career coaching resources:

• See our Free Sample Values List Tool
• See our How to Identify your Personal Values in 5 Steps here or go straight to our Personal Values Workbook here
• Lastly, see all our articles on Values here