How to Be Your Own Career Coach

Self-coaching can be just as effective as hiring a professional--and it costs a lot less

Career coaches and counselors, including me, have liabilities: Pros are unlikely to understand you and your workplace as well as you do, so their counsel is too often off base, yet because you’re paying, you usually follow their advice, figuring, “Well, he’s the expert.” Many pros claim to just facilitate your own thinking, but often, consciously or unconsciously, they push you toward their preferred solution. Coaching and especially counseling can be disempowering, making you feel you need a crutch to solve your problems.

Of course, there’s the cost. Many career coaches charge $200 for a weekly half-hour session, and make you prepay for three months worth. That’s $2,500. And they usually expect you to keep seeing them for longer than three months. Self-coaching has none of those liabilities. Plus, if self-coaching doesn’t solve your problem, you can always turn to a pro.

Here’s how to self-coach. Let’s say you’re contemplating changing careers:

1. Write what makes you unhappy about your current job.

2. Could those problems be fixed without changing careers? If so, how? Write your musings. For example, what could you change in your current job? Or, what if you stayed in your same career but changed bosses or places of employment? What are the pros and cons of those options? The act of writing your thoughts will help you generate even better thoughts.

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