Coaching Case Study: Building Confidence in A New Industry

Coaching Case Study By Irene Chua Sok Yang
(Career Coach, SINGAPORE)

1.) Who are the main players in this case study

Celens is a friend of mine who is undergoing mid career change and he will begin his new job as a Security Manager managing staff in a security industry. He came from an auditor background in a garment industry and hence, he is concerned and anxious in ensuring that he does well in his new role. He also hopes to be able to prepare an action plan of what he can do when he begins his work.

Celens has been approaching me for coaching advice.  I have done 6 sessions with Celens.

2.) What is the core problem or challenge you applied your coaching skills to?

From our first session discussion, the identified core problem is the lack of confidence shown in Celens. He acknowledged this lack to be his main issue that he hopes to address as he does not having the technical nor industrial knowledge. This impact is great as he began to demonstrate negative energy even before he begins his new role. The situation also became worse when he kept brooding over this gap once brought up by his prospective Superior for this role.

3.) What specific coaching skills or approach did you use in this case and explain your process in detail

Active Listening and Creating Trust

I recognise that Celens is going through mid career change and anxiety may set in. Therefore, it is important that I ensure active listening to all his concerns with patience to settle him down. Over the course the first 3 sessions, Celens further open up and communicate actively and he has develop further trust in our coaching sessions.

Powerful Questions

By using powerful questions, I guided Celens to reflect and identify the relevant transferable skills he already possessed throughout his working experience. Through this guided tool, Celen could also recognise the possible reasons and strength he possessed for being successful  for the role despite not being technically experienced in his new security job. There are several areas of expertise experience that he could contribute beyond technical aspect that his prospective hiring Manager has recognised. For example, through the coaching process, Celens could identify that his CT-PAX (Customer Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) knowledge is not only transferable, but is highly sought after by most business entities. By creating this awareness, his confidence level raise rapidly.

By using the wheel of life tool applicable to how he feels what would be the key factors required to be successful in his role, in short and long term, Celens could identify almost immediately that his technical knowledge gap is just a small fraction towards his overall success and this can be build overtime.

By further enquiring how he may wish to build and learn on this gap, Celens found his own answer; besides attending training, he could also leverage on his key stakeholders and senior staff knowledge to learn quickly.

Creating Action

When Celens is able to see clearly and his perspective towards his new role has changed positively, I further apply my questioning skills to encourage Celens to move things forward in planning a framework of action plan he would set for himself within the first 3 months of his role.

He is able to formulate a plan to get to know his company and teams, training plans and seek resources to up his knowledge and develop his teams.

4.) What were the results of your process?

Celens no longer brood over his technical incompetency and focus on his strength to build a strong team. His confidence level not only raised, Celens began to speak positively and shows great enthusiasm towards his role and positive energy is greatly felt in the last few sessions. The end result has shown success in building his confidence and we shared this experience together.

5.) If you could approach this problem again, what would you do differently?

As much as Celens wish to prepare himself for the role, I may probe him further on how he used to prepare for all his previous jobs, or there isn’t any preparation required? This may trigger him to analysis his concerns further.

I could also share about the negative or positive thinking in looking at a half glass of water and use the Gratitude tool learned.

6.) What are the top 3 things you learnt from this experience?

1. I am very glad that I could leverage on my learning with my coaches to apply the knowledge learned and improve myself further
2. I am grateful to be able to help someone and this brings about a very positive purpose in my life and beyond
3. In life, we hold the answers to our questions but we do not realise them. Through powerful questioning by a trusted partner, we are able to account and find our answers
4. Being human, we tend to over think and set high standards for ourselves and focus only on our weakness without realising such thinking could potential cause hinder in our life, and we failed to see our strength. Through coaching, this opens our mind and change our perspective to better our life