Achieving a good career match between your ambitions and the roles available is your main priority when an organisation restructure is on the cards.  But how do you do that?  That was what I was asked to help one manager with.

When I met Sarah she was a senior manager with 20 years’ service in the NHS. An energetic and enthusiastic mum of three young children, Sarah was involved in several activities and projects inside and outside of work.  She had also just discovered that – due to a major restructure – her role at work was not going to exist anymore.

Sarah decided to take the NHS up on its offer of coaching support, with sessions planned to help her:  Create and evaluate the career opportunities available to:

a) Create and evaluate the  opportunities available to secure a career match

b) Help her cope with the transition of moving to a new role.

Our starting point

When we met, Sarah said, “I’m not very good at saying ‘no.” She said that she “lacked confidence” and that she had “lost sight of her knowledge, skills and purpose.”  She summed it up when she said, “I feel like an ornamental china dog.  Very nice, but what’s it for? What’s my purpose?”

Coaching and Support

Over the course of the next six months, I helped Sarah to:

Identify and articulate her knowledge, skills and experience

Reflect on all the projects and job roles she had carried out and recognise those elements that gave her the most enjoyment and satisfaction

Develop a vision of Future Success so she had a clear direction to focus on

Articulate that vision in one or two sentences so she could easily communicate it to key influencers and decision-makers

Establish a wish list of criteria to evaluate opportunities that were offered to her

Become clear on the personal and unique brand that sets her apart from others

Implement a networking and relationship building strategy to raise her profile among key decision makers

Create opportunities to develop specific knowledge, skills and experience

The results? A successful career match.

After just six months of sessions, Sarah said she was now “Happily clear about who I am – and what I do. And I can introduce myself to people in a way that communicates that clearly and simply”.

Sarah soon achieved her career match.  She was assigned a job that perfectly fitted the things she enjoyed and was good at. Over the following 3 months, we focussed on helping Sarah make a good start in the new role.  Specifically, I helped her to:

Develop a clear picture of what success would look like in the new role

Define strategies for delivering results quickly

Initiate and start developing relationships with her new boss and team members

Establish herself as an authority in preferred areas

Sarah’s feedback from the coaching was wonderfully simple:

“Thank you! “ she said, “I don’t feel like an ornamental china dog anymore.  I have a clear purpose nd focus and I’m happy.”