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

Life and work seem to be mixed these days, in the wake of COVID where most knowledge workers have been working from home with their families listening into their zoom calls. Especially at times like this, it can feel like you need a coach – someone to ask you questions and enable you through the daily challenges of the professional world. So, is it a life coach or a career coach you need?

Career coaching is focused on your professional work skills, relationships, and goal setting, to enable you a clear path towards achieving your work aspirations (Yarborough, J. P., 2018). Career coaching, or sometimes called professional coaching, can be started at any stage of your career, and gives methodology to support you to make the best professional decisions for you.

Career coaching has its roots in career counseling, which dates back to the early 20th century. The concept of guiding individuals in their career paths gained traction in the 1920s, with the rise of vocational guidance and psychology. The first career counselor, Frank Parsons, is often considered the father of career counseling, and he established the foundations for career guidance in his book Choosing a Vocation (1909), where he emphasized the importance of self-knowledge, knowledge of the world of work, and the ability to make a good match between the two.

As society evolved, so did career coaching. By the mid-20th century, with increasing job mobility, economic changes, and the rise of personal development, career coaching began to take on a more holistic approach. In the late 20th century, coaching expanded beyond just job-seeking advice to include more personal development aspects, encompassing long-term career satisfaction, work-life balance, and leadership potential.

Today, career coaching is defined as a professional service where a coach helps individuals navigate career transitions, enhance their professional development, clarify goals, and create strategies for achieving those goals. Unlike traditional career counseling, which tends to focus on diagnosing and advising, career coaching is more action-oriented, empowering clients to make decisions and create plans tailored to their unique aspirations.

Benefits of Career Coaching

• Gives Confidence
• Teaches professional skills that help in today's world
• Enables strong relationships and networks
• Builds a strong and technically attractive resume
• Improves decision-making
• Helps in making a plan that leads to your destination.

Common Exercises a Career Coach Might Use

Strengths Assessment Goal: To help individuals understand their inherent strengths, talents, and skills.

• Exercise: The coach might have you complete assessments like the StrengthsFinder or the VIA Character Strengths test. From there, you will reflect on how these strengths have played a role in past successes and how you can leverage them in your career path.

Values Clarification Goal: To ensure that your career choices align with your personal values.

• Exercise: A coach may ask you to list your core values (e.g., work-life balance, freedom, helping others) and prioritize them. Then, you’ll reflect on your current job to see if it aligns with those values, and brainstorm possible career paths that do.

Vision and Goal SettingGoal: To set a clear vision and actionable steps for achieving long-term career goals.

• Exercise: The coach might lead you through creating a vision board or help you map out a 3-5 year career plan, breaking down long-term goals into short-term milestones.

Career Anchors Goal: To identify what drives an individual in their career and what kind of work they should seek.

• Exercise: Based on Edgar Schein's career anchor theory, the coach might ask you to reflect on past work experiences and what aspects you found most satisfying or dissatisfying (e.g., technical competence, managerial competence, autonomy, security).

SWOT Analysis Goal: To identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to your career.

• Exercise: The coach guides you through a SWOT analysis, allowing you to clearly understand areas for improvement, potential career opportunities, and external factors that may impact your success.

Networking Strategy Goal: To build or improve your professional network.

• Exercise: The coach helps you create an actionable networking plan, which may involve identifying key people in your field, setting goals for outreach, and preparing for meaningful networking conversations.

Career Mapping Goal: To map out potential career trajectories.

• Exercise: A coach might have you draw out a career map, considering where you are now and exploring various options for where you want to go next. You’ll break down the steps you need to take to move from one stage to the next.

Mindset Shift Goal: To help shift limiting beliefs and self-doubt that may be blocking career progress.

• Exercise: A coach may guide you through exercises that challenge your negative thought patterns or fears. Techniques such as visualization, reframing, or cognitive-behavioral strategies could be used to encourage positive thinking and build confidence.

Job Crafting Goal: To help individuals find ways to tailor their current job to be more aligned with their interests and strengths.

• Exercise: The coach will work with you to identify areas where you can "craft" your role — whether it’s through taking on new projects, negotiating for more autonomy, or redefining your tasks to be more fulfilling.

Interview and Resume Prep Goal: To improve your application and interview techniques.

• Exercise: The coach may do mock interviews with you, helping you refine your answers to behavioral questions. They'll also provide feedback on your resume, LinkedIn profile, and cover letter to make sure they reflect your strengths and achievements effectively.

These exercises help individuals clarify their career goals, understand their personal drivers, and build a strategy for long-term success. Career coaches often combine these tools with deep listening, feedback, and accountability to guide clients toward fulfilling careers.

Career Coaching is Different from Life Coaching

Life coaching deals with your lifestyle, and decisions about relationships, goals and ways of being your best self outside of work (Garcia, N. M., 2015). While it is true that if you’re working on developing your skills and character outside of work, this will have benefits and transfer over to your professional career, and vice versa, life coaching and career coaching us different techniques, and the coaches themselves are specialized and trained differently. To paint the difference between life coaching and career coaching more specifically:

• Career coaching is related to your job or goal; life coaching is related to personal achievement.
• Career coaching helps in finding professional opportunities and career shifting, life coaching helps in life planning, making fine relationships in a society with others.
• Both career coaching and life coaching use techniques and models grounded in positive psychology.
• Career coaching gives a strong attitude towards jobs, help in making career plans, life coaching deals with mental health development and your plans for your personal life.
• Career coaching gives leadership style and attitude while life coaching gives purpose in life.

Life coaching has its roots in a variety of disciplines, including psychology, personal development, and counseling, but it emerged as a distinct profession in the 1980s. The term "life coaching" was popularized in the 1990s, largely due to the work of several prominent figures in personal development. The roots of life coaching can be traced to ancient philosophies such as Socratic methods of questioning and guiding others to self-knowledge. In the early 20th century, personal development theories, such as those from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, influenced how individuals began thinking about personal growth. The modern form of life coaching emerged as an offshoot of the human potential movement in the 1980’s and the growing interest in self-help and personal transformation. Influential figures such as Thomas Leonard (founder of the International Coach Federation in 1995) and John Whitmore (who wrote Coaching for Performance) helped to formalize coaching as a distinct profession. Life coaching began to gain widespread attention as a way for people to achieve personal goals, overcome obstacles, and unlock their potential.

Life coaching expanded globally in the 2000’s, with many coaches becoming certified through accredited organizations like the International Coach Federation (ICF). Today, life coaching is recognized as a professional service that helps individuals create balance, develop goals, manage life transitions, and make decisions. It differs from therapy in that life coaching focuses on present and future outcomes rather than delving into deep psychological issues from the past.

Definition of Life Coaching

Life coaching is a professional service where coaches work with individuals to help them achieve specific personal goals, improve their quality of life, and enhance their overall well-being. A life coach helps clients identify their values, set clear goals, overcome obstacles, and develop strategies to create the life they desire. The process is generally future-focused and action-oriented.

Common Exercises a Life Coach Might Use

1. Goal Setting and SMART Goals
2. Visioning
3. Values Clarification
4. Wheel of Life
5. Mindset and Belief Shifting
6. Time Management and Prioritization
7. Gratitude Practice
8. Limiting Beliefs and Self-Sabotage Exploration
9. Action Planning
10. Reflection and Journaling

Many of these exercises are also delivered with a career coach, with the main difference being the domain focus of vocation versus life. These exercises help individuals gain clarity, increase motivation, and take consistent action toward their personal development goals. Life coaching is holistic, addressing all areas of life with the aim of achieving balance, happiness, and fulfillment.

When to get a career coach

Your career coach will probably have a background in psychology or HR and should be qualified with the ICF or EMCC or another globally recognized body. Life coaching is less regulated than career or professional coaching, so it’s important you take references and get to know the background of your life coach before deciding on how much influence they should have in your mental frameworks for personal development. While both career coaching and life coaching are young in their development as fields of practice, the research evidence for career coaching has been proven effective through scientific study, while life coaching has often failed to adopt an evidence-based research approach, and therefore doesn’t have a strong evidence base (David, 2016). For this reason, it can be suggested that professionals looking to strengthen their professional AND personal skills might consider engaging a career coach and a counsellor in parallel.

Professional coaching or career coaching is highly effective as a personal development and learning approach for professionals in any sector, with research showing impacts on managing others, influencing skills, wellbeing, and finding creative solutions to novel problems (Ballesteros-Sánchez, 2019., Lofthouse, 2019). As COVID has caused more pressure on managers and employees to develop these skills to be productive and effective in new, often remote environments, career coaching has become an even more impactful development method. Because it’s hyper-personalized to your motivations and needs, and because of the training standards of the career coach, it’s more effective than taking an online course or finding a mentor.

Reach out if we can help you find the right career coach for you. If you're interested in learning more about how BOLDLY can help you or your organisation, we invite you to explore our website or write to us at connect@boldly.app or submit an enquiry via this LINK.

References

[1] Yarborough, J. P. (2018). Therole of coaching in leadership development. New directions for studentleadership, 2018(158), 49-61.

[2] Garcia, N. M. (2015, October). Aroadmap to the design of a personal digital life coach. In InternationalConference on ICT Innovations (pp. 21-27). Springer, Cham.

[3] Ballesteros-Sánchez, L.,Ortiz-Marcos, I., & Rodríguez-Rivero, R. (2019). The impact of executivecoaching on project managers’ personal competencies. Project ManagementJournal, 50(3), 306-321.

[4} Lofthouse. R. (2019). Coaching in education: A professional development process information. Professional development in education, 45(1), 33-45.

[5] Harris, B. L. (1982). A holisticapproach to coaching. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation &Dance, 53(3), 29-30.

[6] Bhatti, N., Maitlo, G. M.,Shaikh, N., Hashmi, M. A., & Shaikh, F. M. (2012). The impact of autocraticand democratic leadership style on job satisfaction. Internationalbusiness research, 5(2), 192.

[7] David, O. A., & Breitmeyer,A. (2016). Life coaching: An introduction to the special issue. Journal ofEvidence-Based Psychotherapies, 16(1), 1.