What Color Is Your Parachute? (60 page)

To their fee must be added, of course, the cost of the phone calls.
No problem—
the cost of the telephoning doesn’t have to break your budget, especially if your counselor is using a technology known as Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) conferencing, or has an Internet phone service—technically called VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol)—which makes your phone calls free or available for a low fee.

Indeed, that’s available right now. And, a program called
Skype
is especially useful. (Details, for counselor and job-hunter alike, may be found at
www.skype.com/download
or in the official definitive written guide by Harry Max and Taylor Ray, called—surprise!—
Skype: The Definitive Guide.
³
) Skype requires telephones, but not necessarily computers. Or computers, but not necessarily telephones. Your options are many.

Now, this increasing availability of “distance-counseling” is good news, and bad news.

Why good news? Well, in the old days you might be a job-hunter in some remote village, with a population of only eighty-five, back in the hills somewhere, or you might be living somewhere in France or in China, miles from any career counselor or coach, and so, be totally out of luck. Now, these days you can be anywhere in the world, but as long as you have the Internet on your desk, you can still find the best distance-counseling there is.

And the bad news?

Well, just because a counselor or coach does distance-counseling or phone-counseling, doesn’t mean they are really good at doing it. Some are superb; but some are not so hotsy-totsy.

So, you’re still going to have to research any distance-counselor who interests you
very carefully.
It is altogether too easy for a counselor to get sloppy doing distance-counseling—for example, browsing the newspapers while you are telling some long personal story, etc., to which they are giving only the briefest attention. Since you can’t see the counselor, you don’t know. Because of this, I personally, were I job-hunting or changing careers, would want to sign up only for one session at a time. In case a flaw suddenly appears.
Outtahere!

To avoid any kind of sloppiness,
you
and the counselor need discipline. Experienced distance-counselors, such as Joel Garfinkle,
⁴
insist on forms being used, both before and after each phone session. With his permission, I have adapted his forms, and print them here.
And, P.S., they are equally useful for just normal, face-to-face counseling, as well.

Prior to beginning the counseling, it helps if your coach or counselor asks you to fill out the following kind of form, for you to give to him or her. They are written by the counselor, addressed to you, the potential counselee
.
(And if they don’t ask for a form like this to be filled out, you might volunteer to give them such a form on your own.)

(Copy this onto another sheet of paper, and leave lots of space on the form for your answer, after each question below.)

1. Why have you decided to work with me?

2. How can I have the most impact on your life in the next ninety days (three months)?

3. List three key goals you want to accomplish through our work together.

4. What stops you from achieving what you want in question #2 or #3 above?

5. Project ahead one year: As you look back, and things went well, how did you benefit from our coaching relationship?

6. What are your expectations from our work together? How can we exceed these expectations?

7. What else is helpful for me to know about you?

8. Explain your background (use the same format as the examples below).

Examples:

1. After thirty years as a commercial insurance broker, I hit a wall last May, and decided to change careers…

2. After twelve successful years in the high-tech industry, I found myself unfulfilled in finding a satisfying career. Over the years, I read countless books on the topic of finding one’s true purpose in career pursuits, but was still missing a sense of purpose and clarity on what I wanted to do…

3. After working for twenty years in the investment industry I decided to start my own company…

4. Etc.

Please fill out this form #2 for each coaching session. It should be filled out and e-mailed to me twenty-four hours before the next coaching session to assist me in preparing for that session.

(Copy this onto another sheet of paper, and leave lots of space on the form for your answer, after each question below.)

Commitments that I made to myself on the last coaching session and what I accomplished since we had the coaching session:

The challenges and opportunities I am facing now:

The one action I can take that will most affect my current goals and provide the highest payoff:

My agenda for the coaching session is:

Immediately after each coaching session e-mail me form #3.

(Copy this onto another sheet of paper, and leave lots of space on the form for your answer, after each question below.)

This week’s commitment:

My greatest insights during this session were:

What you, my coach, said or asked during the session that impacted me most:

What I’d like you, as my coach, to do differently/more of/less of:

How I feel I am evolving from our work together:

What happens in a counseling session is our responsibility, not just the counselor’s or coach’s.

The forms, above, are one way of our taking responsibility. Another, is that when you first contact prospective coaches for distance-counseling in particular, you have a right to ask them: (1) “What training have you completed, relevant to distance-counseling, such as telephone skills, and supervised counseling?” (2) “How will our distance-counseling be organized and scheduled?” and (3) “What will the two of us do if and when interruptions occur during a session, at either end?”

You must always remember: distance-counseling, attractive as it will be for many, as necessary as it will be for some, definitely has its limits.

To the caveman, the technology that enables all this to happen in this twenty-first century, would be jaw-droppingly awesome. But, good career counseling or coaching
is not just about technology.
What is really truly awesome, in the end, is simply our power to help each other on this Earth. And how much that power resides, not in techniques or technology—though these things are important—but in each of us just being a good human being. A
loving
human being.

The following Appendix is exactly what its name implies: a Sampler. Were I to list all the career coaches and counselors who are out there, we would end up with an encyclopedia. Some states, in fact, have encyclopedic lists of counselors and businesses, in various books or directories, and your local bookstore or library should have these, in their Job-Hunting Section, under such titles as “How to Get a Job in…” or “Job-Hunting in…”