For parents and students · Launch League blog
What Should a Career Coach Help You Discover About Yourself?
By Nick Gonzalez, founder, U.S. Air Force veteranPublished
The short answer
A good career coach should help you find four things: the work that gives you energy, the strengths you can prove with real examples, what you value enough to trade for, and what you will not put up with. A personality label is not the goal. Evidence you can take into a decision is.
The proof-in-hand rule
A strength only counts if you can point to a specific time you used it and someone else noticed. “I'm a people person” is a claim. “The coach asked me to run warm-ups after I sorted out the freshmen” is a receipt. Career plans built on receipts survive contact with real work; plans built on claims usually don't.
What should a career coach help you discover about yourself?
Most people expect a career coach to hand over a job title. That is the wrong deliverable. A title chosen at 16 without evidence gets dropped at 19. What a coach should leave you with is a clear, written picture of yourself that you can test any job against, now and in ten years.
In my experience that picture has four parts, and if a coach skips one of them the plan has a hole in it. The International Coaching Federation describes coaching as a partnership that provokes thought and helps a client reach their own potential. Nothing in that definition has the coach deciding for you. The coach's job is to ask the questions, hold you to the homework, and make sure your answers are backed by something real.
- Energy: which activities leave you wanting more, and which leave you flat, even when you are good at them.
- Strengths with receipts: what you can do well, proven by times you actually did it.
- Values: what you would give something up for, such as money, time, stability or independence.
- Deal-breakers: the conditions you will not tolerate, such as sitting still all day, night shifts, or selling.
Strengths are not the same as interests, or grades
Three things get mixed up all the time. Interests are what you are curious about. Strengths are what you do well. Grades are how you perform in a school subject, under school conditions. They overlap, but not as much as people think.
I spent eight years running operations at a company of more than a hundred people, and some of the best supervisors I promoted had middling grades. What they had was a strength school never measured: they noticed when a crew was about to go sideways and fixed it before anyone asked. A teenager who is a B student in math but is the one everyone calls when the group project falls apart has a real strength. It just doesn't show on a report card.
So when a coach asks about strengths, a list of school subjects you like is not the answer. The answer is a list of moments.
Identifying your strengths and weaknesses: a career coaching exercise
This is the exercise I would run in a first session, and you can do it at the kitchen table tonight with a sheet of paper and twenty minutes. It works for a teenager on their own, or with a parent asking the questions. Parents: write down what they say, word for word, and do not argue with it.
- Step 1, the list: write down ten things you actually did in the last month. Not hobbies in general; specific events. “Fixed the chain on my brother's bike.” “Explained the chemistry homework to two friends.” “Worked the Saturday shift alone.”
- Step 2, energy: next to each one, write a plus if you would happily do it again tomorrow, and a minus if it drained you.
- Step 3, skill: next to each one, write G if you were good at it, and N if you were not yet good at it. Be honest, not modest.
- Step 4, receipts: circle every item where someone else noticed, thanked you, asked you to do it again, or came to you for it.
- Step 5, sort: put each item into one of four boxes, explained below, and look at which box is fullest.
Reading the results: the four boxes
Plus and G with a circle is a strength with a receipt. That box is where career exploration starts. Plus and N is a growth edge: you like it and are not good at it yet, which is often where the most interesting careers hide, because skill can be built and liking cannot be faked.
Minus and G is the box I watch most carefully, and I call it the competent trap. These are things you are good at and dislike. Careers get built on them by default, because teachers and bosses keep handing you more of what you do well. Plenty of adults are miserable in jobs they are excellent at. If your fullest box is the competent trap, that is worth saying out loud before choosing anything.
Minus and N is the easy one: stop worrying about it. Not every weakness needs fixing.
Which weaknesses are worth fixing, and which to ignore
A weakness is only worth working on if the careers you are drawn to require it. A future electrician who struggles with public speaking does not need a speech course. A future electrician who struggles with fractions does, because the work runs on measurement. A future teacher who struggles with public speaking also does.
That is the useful question a coach asks about weaknesses: does this one block a door you want open? If yes, make a plan for it. If no, let it go and spend the time on strengths. Strengths-based coaching does not pretend weaknesses don't exist. It just refuses to spend a teenager's limited time sanding down things that don't matter for where they are headed.
Using strengths-based coaching for career planning
Once you have three or four strengths with receipts, turn each one into a question about work: where do people get paid to do this every day? Fixing things points one way, explaining things another, keeping a group calm under pressure another. Each strength usually points to a family of careers, not a single job.
Then test, cheaply. Read about two or three careers in that family, talk to one person who does one of them, and if you can, spend a few hours watching the work. The proof-in-hand rule applies here too: after each test, write down what happened, not just how you felt about it. A plan built that way is something you can defend to a parent, a school and yourself.
Our free quiz, Future Finder, takes about ten minutes and stores nothing; it is a good way to widen the list before you start narrowing.
Take Future Finder, the free career quizBrowse the career library
Where Ohio schools already ask these questions
Under Ohio Revised Code 3313.6020, every Ohio school district must adopt a career advising policy, post it on its website if it has one, and update it at least once every two years. The policy has to include a career advising plan for grades 6 to 12 and grade-level examples linking schoolwork to careers. Ohio also offers OhioMeansJobs K-12, a free career planning system for students, teachers and school counselors.
Bring the results of this exercise to your school counselor. A list of strengths with receipts gives a busy counselor something concrete to work with in a short meeting.
Questions
Quick answers
- Can a teenager really know their strengths at 15?
- Not all of them, and nobody expects that. A 15-year-old can know three or four with real evidence behind them, which is enough to choose what to test next. Strengths keep showing up as you try new things, which is why the exercise is worth repeating every year or so.
- What if my teenager can't think of ten things they did last month?
- Lower the bar. Chores, games, helping a sibling, a group chat argument they settled, a recipe they tried: all of it counts. If the list is still short, that is useful information too. It usually means they need more real experiences, and a part-time job or volunteering will add them quickly.
- Is a career coach the same as a therapist?
- No. Coaching is about choices and next steps, and it does not diagnose or treat anything. If anxiety, low mood or something else is the real obstacle, a doctor or licensed mental health professional is the right first call, and coaching can come later if it still helps.
- Where can a teen get help right now if they are struggling?
- In the United States, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential and open 24/7: call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
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Sources: International Coaching Federation: About ICF and its definition of coaching · Ohio Revised Code 3313.6020: district career advising policy · Ohio Department of Education and Workforce: OhioMeansJobs K-12 · 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Coaching is not therapy, medical, legal or financial advice.