Bridging the Gap Between Qualifications and Employment
Striding Out’s ‘Follow My Leader’ project has presented an exciting opportunity for young people to find, develop and show off their skills and qualities through shadowing industry leaders. They are tasked with researching a chosen industry, identifying industry leaders and mentors and collating film footage and information for an innovative careers website, to help other young people explore career choices and find jobs.Career Coaching
An essential part of the Follow My Leader project is about providing coaching to the young people involved. Young unemployed people can access coaching that has often been primarily available to the corporate world and to those that can afford it.As a former careers adviser I know that young people can often feel that they are on the receiving end of information provided about what is available with regard to education/services/home life without being centrally involved and engaged in what they really want to do and be.
This is also at a time when they are often experiencing a lot of pressure, some of it stemming from their transition – from child to adult; and with it, the enormity of trying to find themselves.
Decision making
As a coach, to work with a young person and for the realisation to register that they have the answers to what they want to be and do, is a profoundly empowering experience. That they may be the expert in their life – it is very probable that no one has trusted them with that before.This is possibly what we are doing as a society to our younger people – not trusting them sufficiently with their own lives, not supporting them appropriately at what can be an incredibly challenging time in their life. Trusting them to make their own minds up, to follow their dreams whilst holding back our own judgements in order to really let them fly.Social issues affecting young people
There are obviously difficulties for both young people in this county in an urban setting – incidence of youth unemployment and issues of offending, substance misuse and pregnancy are relatively high. There are complex issues underlying these problems. There are young people in rural settings who can feel demotivated, unsupported and alienated by their community.Empowering Young People
What coaching can provide is a unique opportunity;
• To support the young person where they are,
• Exploring issues and ambitions in a respectful but challenging and dynamic way.
• To hold a dialogue where they take the lead
The coach is curious; they ask the questions and the client finds their own answers. A simple analogy is: your bike no longer works – wheels and chain have come off, you have punctures; the coach doesn’t set to and mend the puncture etc., the coach provides the client with the tools and resources to do it..and then the next time the wheel comes off ..the client knows what to do.
The great coaching tenet: ‘we are all naturally creative, resourceful and whole’ – supports the client in choosing to make profound transformations and to lead their own life.
This is a dialogue that includes examining individual responsibility and accountability; that we all have choices in whatever we do and whoever we are.
Coaching is not a formulated process – it is organic, tailored to the individual and does not discriminate in terms of who can access it.
Article by Rachel Harford
Career and Business Coach
