The direction of the career or a future new job is a common theme amongst clients. And there is another commonality, as I hear this over and over again in leadership coaching sessions.

I want a different kind of job but I don’t know what. Sounds familiar? “I don’t know what it could be.”

And there’s an issue with that. If you focus on the fact that you don’t know what kind of job you want, it becomes a problem. And focusing on this problem will make it seem difficult to solve. The more attention you pay to what you don’t know, the worse it seems to get.

The process matters

As with the topic of clarity that I recently wrote about, it’s not always important to have the end solution at hand, to know what your dream job could be. But rather the process of how to get there matters.

What you can work on is defining what you care about, what’s important to you in your life, or what your values are, and how those aspects influence your life. It also helps to think about and define what you don’t want. This can stem from a previous job, or previous experiences that you don’t want to repeat. See things that are in the past, as learnings, experiences that shape you and help you define and take next steps, but don’t look at them with regret.

This helps you think about aspects that need to be in your career or in your job. This way, it’s also easier to understand what you don’t want. Take your time for this.

And this is exactly where leadership coaching can play a role in supporting you. By having a neutral person listening to you and reflecting back in their own words, what you just said, your brain is able to think more creatively and to see outside the issue or the problem.

Humans are very good at ruminating, and going in circles when it comes to solving their own problems. Solutions are far away or impossible to think of. It can be of great value to have someone supporting your thinking process.