Career Coach: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help Your Teen Find Their Life's Purpose

Career Coach

A step-by-step guide to help your teen find their life’s purpose

DEARBHLA KELLY

Gill & Macmillan

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Foreword

Nick Williams

Introduction

Your Role as Career Coach

Who is this Book For?

My Career: Robert Chambers

What is Coaching?

My Career: Diarmuid Gavin

Step 1: Communicating With Your Teen

Engaging Co-operation

Affirmations

Reflective Listening

Enhancing Your Teen’s Confidence

My Career: Dr Ria Mahon

Step 2: Choosing a Career They’ll Love

Identifying Passions and Areas of Interest

Portfolio Careers

My Career: Neven Maguire

Step 3: Help Your Teenager Identify their Skills

Data, Ideas, People, Things

Step into Action!

My Career: Caitlin O’Connor

Step 4: Look at their Values: What Matters Most to Them?

My Career: Donagh Kelly

Step 5: Look at Personality

Six Types of People

Multiple Intelligences

VARK Learning Styles

My Career: Lieutenant Sinead Hunt

Step 6: Encouraging Dreams

Visualisation

Comfort Zones

My Career: Ian Power

Step 7: Motivation and Action!

Motivation

Creating Winning Habits

Procrastination

Inspiration

My Career: Marie-Thérèse de Blacam

Step 8: Five Ways to Try Out the World of Work

Dropping Out

1. Research and Informational Interviewing

2. Networking and Introducing Yourself

3. Work Shadowing

4. Work Experience

5. Volunteering and Participation

My Career: Peter McAlindon

Step 9: Helping Your Teen Build Inner Strength and Resilience

Examples of Resilience

Embrace the Unexpected

My Career: Colm Lynch

Step 10: Abundance and Creativity

Limitation

Excuses and Blame

Scarcity Versus Abundance

My Career: Jenny Murphy

A Final Optimistic Note!

Above All!

My Career: Paul Campbell

Appendices

Appendix 1: Additional Questions to Ask in an Informational Interview

Appendix 2: Senior Cycle Education and Applying to College

Appendix 3: Third-level Scholarships in Ireland and Abroad

Appendix 4: Disabilities and Specific Learning Difficulties

Appendix 5: Apprenticeships

Appendix 6: Other Opportunities

Further Resources

Useful Websites

Bibliography and Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill & Macmillan

Foreword

Iremember being excited about the pending careers advice session at Hornchurch Grammar School. It was 1973 and I was 15. I sensed there must be a wonderful world of work opportunities and experiences available to me and my fellow students. I was looking forward to having a world of possibilities opened up to me.

I should have been suspicious. The session was going to be run by our physics teacher, Mr Jones. He seemed to be in his twenties, and had probably gone straight from studying to teaching. I had heard that he was newly married and needed to earn some more money by taking on the careers advice role too.

The session went something like this: ‘Any questions? There are brochures here on careers in teaching and accounting.’ That was it! I left feeling less inspired than before I went in, but anxious now too, because everyone else seemed to know what they wanted to do.

My parents weren’t much help either. They said I could do whatever I liked and whatever I wanted to. But that was the problem – I didn’t know what I wanted to do! I wanted someone to inspire me, and open up the world to me. To get me excited, to ask me questions like, ‘What do you feel you were born to do?’ ‘What would inspire you?’ ‘What would fulfil you?’ ‘What is in your heart that wants to be expressed?’ ‘What do you love deeply?’ ‘What can’t you stop doing?’

But no one ever did ask me those questions. Luckily, I did begin to ask myself those questions over a decade later and eventually found what I was born to do, what truly inspires me and fulfils me. I wish there had been a Dearbhla around in 1973 for me, my parents and at my school, and I would have got there much quicker.

I first met Dearbhla in a conference room in Croke Park in Dublin in 2008, and we have been in touch ever since. I was immediately struck by two things: the twinkle in her eye and how much she cared about young people and helping them make inspired and empowered career choices.

I sensed an ambition born of inspiration and of a deep desire to contribute rather than a need for self-aggrandisement. She was a woman on a mission. I have seen Dearbhla stay committed in the long run, build and nurture relationships, seize opportunities when they arose and create opportunities when they didn’t exist before.

This book is one of the many fruits of that perseverance and long-term commitment. She cares deeply about us being happy in our work and that we get to express the best of ourselves in what we do for a living.

Dearbhla understands the power and influence that family and friends have on teenagers’ career choices and decisions, even when those people don’t realise the power they have. Dearbhla helps you realise that you do have a positive impact and shows how to use your influence to open hearts and minds, to open up possibilities to discover, and to nurture dreams. She knows that opportunity is an inside job, and whatever is going on in the economy, there are always tremendous possibilities and great hope. She makes the whole process of becoming a coach to teenagers understandable and doable. She believes in the resourcefulness of everyone. She knows that the desire to support and help needs to be matched with the skills of coaching, listening and validation in order to be effective. This book delivers those skills richly and abundantly.

Thank you, Dearbhla, for writing this book. So many lives are already richer because of you and your work and the gift of this book means that so many more lives will be enhanced too.

Nick Williams, London, March 2015 Author of nine books, including The Work We Were Born To Do, and founder of the Spiritual Pro Global Community www.iamnickwilliams.com

Introduction

The Golden Eagle

Aman found an eagle’s egg and placed it under a brooding hen. The eaglet hatched with the chickens and grew to be like them. He clucked and cackled, scratched the earth for worms, flapped his wings and managed to fly a few feet in the air .

Years passed. One day, the eagle, now grown old, saw a magnificent bird before him in the sky. It glided gracefully and majestically against the powerful wind with scarcely a movement of its golden wings. Spellbound, the eagle asked, ‘Who is that?’

‘That is the king of the birds’, said his neighbour. ‘He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.’

So the eagle lived and died a chicken for that’s what he thought he was.

ANTHONY DE MELLO, THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Your Role as Career Coach

Nowadays, due to the change in the economic climate, we are looking at a complete shift in the world of work. When people of my generation were growing up, lifetime employment and permanent pensionable posts were plentiful and offered guarantees. Today our young people are moving into a period of contractual work, less certainty, and a need for self-promotion and expertise. In short, they need to be their own leaders and manage their own careers.

In a recent survey of children in the UK, 92 per cent of the children polled said that parents were among their most important influences. Only five per cent would not consult their parents when making career decisions. (Source: GTI Media Research, Parental Influence on Children’s Academic and Employment Choices (2014).)

Because you have such a significant role to play in your teenager fulfilling their potential, it makes sense to be informed of practical ways to help your child take steps now towards a successful future. There are no shortcuts to discovering ‘the work you were born to do’. Helping your teen discover their calling or vocation in life requires many conversations and these conversations aren’t always straightforward. One day your teen wants to study medicine and the next she wants to be a deep sea diver! Teenagers’ career preferences can change according to what their friends are talking about doing, what colleges their friends are choosing, etc. This toing and froing can be a huge worry for parents and the process can last several years. This book will help you as a parent to engage fully with your teen in the present and show you ways to prepare together for whatever the future holds. Please keep in mind throughout this book that there are in schools professional guidance counsellors who are qualified sources of information on career choices. They are available to help your teen and may provide information evenings for parents on matters such as subject choice and the CAO. Encourage your teen to make an appointment and make use of this vital professional service. Guidance counsellors can also support students who have issues or concerns that are affecting their participation in school. If guidance is not available in your teen’s school, you might find it useful to consult a private practitioner; a list is supplied on the Institute of Guidance Counsellors’ (IGC) website, www.igc.ie.

This book will give you tools to guide your teen and help them voice their thoughts, opinions, concerns, dreams and excitement about their future. It will be a reference point over three to five years that will help you support and direct your teen in choosing a satisfying career. It will teach you practical ways to guide and motivate your teenager and it provides tasks and activities which you can do together. By working together, you can both develop the skills needed to help your child build a joyful career. My wish is that you will encourage your teen to stay true to their talents and to concentrate on the activities that bring them joy and energy – even if it takes them along unconventional routes. Sometimes, your teen may have to take the scenic route to their career and to a ‘slow-cooked’ success.

By the end of this book you will:

Have learned techniques that help increase confidence and areas of ability in your teenager

Have learned how to identify abilities, skills, talents, passions and values in your teenager and how to use them as signposts to their future careers

Know how to motivate and encourage your teenager towards their future life dreams

Learn how to practically link your teenager’s dreams to reality by getting them to look at the world of work

Understand ways to increase your teenager’s chances of future employment and encourage a mindset/attitude that can adapt to the changing face of the world of work

Have learned ways of developing resilience in your teenager that will help them turn setbacks into opportunities

Know what career resources to use that will identify your teenager’s personality, learning style and career interests

Know how to find ways to test out the world of work

Help your teenager build their inner strength in the face of change

Introduce your teenager to the ideas of abundance and creativity.

Between each of these steps, thirteen successful people will share their career insights and wisdom in an interview-style format. These are featured as ‘My Career’ at the end of each step. Some of these interviewees followed traditional academic paths; others took vocational or apprenticeship routes – academia is not for everyone. What shines out from the interviews is that these people stayed true to their interests and they still love what they do. They are committed to their craft or field; they value excellence and display a solid work ethic; they believe in going the extra mile and are good decision-makers; they learn from and model others; and they believe in continuous improvement. It is worth noting that when some of the interviewees were teenagers, they had no clear vision of what they wanted to do, but their careers unfolded as they matured. In addition, it seems that they all attracted success by cultivating the right attitude. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, ‘it is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude’.

The appendices at the end of the book will provide you with information and websites covering topics such as the Central Applications Office (CAO), points, apprenticeships, year out, PLCs, mature students, access and disability supports. It is hoped that this section will signpost you in the direction of useful information that will help you and your teen.

I will make suggestions throughout the book about ways in which you can increase your teenager’s self-esteem by focusing on strengths, developing self-knowledge and creating clear goals and life dreams. If you put some of these suggestions into practice, your teenager will develop positive thinking, assertiveness and communication skills, and they will also start thinking about self-presentation. The aim is to help your teenager become more self-confident in their choices.

By using this book you can help your teen fly high and increase their own range of possibilities.

Who is this Book For?

Whether you are a parent of teenagers starting the secondary school process or preparing to leave it, or you are reading this book out of curiosity and a belief in young people, it will provide you with tools that will inform and excite you about the range of opportunities available to teenagers in opening the door to their future. It is my hope that by engaging in this process in an open way with your child, they will discover ‘the work they were born to do’ and that work will give them meaning and satisfaction in a way that serves others and makes a difference.

MY CAREER

Robert Chambers

Hairdresser and Business Owner

www.robertchambers.ie

Robert opened the first hairdressing school in Ireland and was the first hairdresser in Ireland to be inaugurated into the Irish Hairdressing Hall of Fame. He has been in operation for forty years and has three salons in Dublin and two hairdressing academies.

‘Health and happiness before business … and then business.’

How did your career in hairdressing begin?

At 16, I went to work as an apprentice fitter/turner with Roadstone. I had come first in Ireland in the equivalent of today’s Junior Cert in mechanical drawing and metalwork. In the meantime, my older brother had become a hairdresser and he always seemed happy, he had nice clothes and his own money. I decided that I wanted some of what he had. I asked my Dad to take me to a well-known Dublin salon called Jules to see if they would give me some experience. I stayed there for ten months, but got no practical training until eventually the guy in the perfumery taught me how to use a scissors and I began cutting children’s hair. When I was more confident, I asked one of the stylists what was the best salon in Dublin. He said ‘the Witches Hut’, so I went there, took a look in the window, and what I saw was incredible! I went back the next week and asked for a job, and they gave me one! It continued from there and in the summers I would go to London to train at Vidal Sassoon, watching the stylists working during the days and styling hair models myself in the evenings.

Did you always want to do what you do now?

It never came into my mind. I thought I would end up doing something related to engineering or architecture. I grew up on a farm, so I was used to using my hands; we always had to improvise and come up with solutions and make things. I loved making things. That was an indicator that I was good with technical detail, which is a requirement for precision hairdressing.

What do you enjoy most about what you do now?

The easiest part of my week is cutting hair, which I do two days a week. It comes naturally to me; it doesn’t involve making business and financial decisions. I enjoy meeting