Organise career coaching
If you would like to incorporate career coaching as part of Prosper at your institution, you may find this article to be a useful reference point.
We take a look at what career coaching is, why it is effective, how you could arrange it at your institution and provide a guidance document for coaches new to Prosper.
What do we mean by career coaching?
For Prosper, career coaching includes the following:
- helping postdocs clarify what they want from their career
- helping postdocs consider how this aligns to their life goals
- prompting postdocs to set their own career development goals
Ideally, these discussions will be facilitated by a qualified career coach.
A career coach does not offer advice, counselling or mentoring to the postdocs.
If the careers service at your institution offers advice for postdoctoral staff then linking up these careers’ advisors with your career coaches as part of your Prosper offering could be beneficial.
Career coaching to support Prosper doesn’t necessarily need to be delivered by a dedicated career coach, we’ve created self-guided coaching resources that postdocs could work through.
Why is career coaching important?
Career coaching allows postdocs the time and protected space to discuss and explore their career options.
A career coach will prompt postdocs to fully explore their own career options and set their own goals.
The majority of postdocs in both of our pilot cohorts found the experience of career coaching very beneficial. The postdocs also found that supporting each other and seeing each other’s growth in group coaching sessions to be a positive experience. See our evaluation, blogs and testimonials for more detail.
What does effective career coaching look like?
Benchmarks of an effective programme
- A stable programme that is structured and has the backing of senior management.
- Has an identified and appropriately trained person responsible for it.
- A coaching approach which is non-directive, non-judgemental, constructive and proactive.
- Informed by career and labour market information. The 'coach' or adviser and the programme need to provide good quality information about career options and the labour market. An informed adviser should provide support.
- Addressing the needs of each postdoc: the coach actively challenges stereotypical thinking to expand aspirations.
- There is no prejudice, either way, for careers within or beyond academia.
- Programme addresses and coach is aware of special educational needs, vulnerability and protected characteristics
- Safeguarding and legal compliance: understanding of coaching approach and ethics, registered with recognised ethical body, listing of any statutory guidance.
- Accountability and quality: institutional policy about one-to-one work, conflict of interest, evaluation, internal coaches or adviser special considerations.
- Evaluating the impact of coaching: build-in feedback, check-in and monitoring of coaches and advisers throughout the programme.
Arranging career coaching to support Prosper at your institution
There are three broad options:
1. Commission external career coaches
Has your Institution got pre-existing relationships with an external career coach/es? If so would they be appropriate? Could you approach them to support Prosper at your institution?
If not, you may need to look for a supplier or commission or tender for one. For approximate costs see 'Identify potential running costs' section of how to choose your mode of delivery.
2. Recruit internal career coaches
Does your institution have an internal pool of staff trained as career coaches that could be approached for support? Special care is needed with internal coaches to ensure postdocs feel psychologically safe and there isn't a real or perceived conflict of interest.
3. Support postdocs to self-guide through career coaching resources
If you have limited resources, you can direct the postdocs to our self-guided career coaching materials.
Career coaches do not necessarily need to have worked with postdocs before to be able to effectively support Prosper. They just need to be aware of the challenges this staff group face.
Career coaches briefing document for those new to Prosper
Here we provide a document for you to share with your career coach/es to aid them in supporting Prosper. You can amend it as you wish. You need to provide your career coach/es with details of your local provision for mental health and wellbeing for staff, there is a prompt for you to do this at the end of the document.
Guidelines for Prosper Coaches
Welcome
These guidelines are given to everyone who coaches for Prosper to inform them about the history of the project and our approach to career transition and development coaching.
At Prosper, our mission is to provide postdocs with the opportunity to break through limitations, enabling them to change their thinking so that they can alter their outcomes in their careers and lives.
Prosper - an introduction
Prosper is an innovative, holistic model for postdoc career development across the UK. Prosper empowers postdocs to take control of their careers, furnishing them with the information, tools and resources they need to thrive across multiple career pathways, both within and beyond academia.
Funded by Research England and four years in the making, Prosper's model is freely accessible to all within the UK Higher Education and Research spaces. Since 2019, Prosper has been working to create a new and transformative approach to postdoc career development, for rollout across the whole of the UK Higher Education sector. In the four years, we have worked closely with two cohorts of over 120 postdocs along with 100 employers, PIs and other stakeholders to craft a holistic and comprehensive programme of career development resources aimed at postdocs. As well as resources for postdocs themselves, Prosper offers support for Managers of Researchers looking to boost their postdocs' career development, as well as guidance and materials for institutions looking to implement Prosper locally within their own organisations.
Prosper group-based career coaching
Through the Prosper pilot cohorts, we have seen that group-based career coaching allows postdocs to increase their sense of agency (the feeling that they have ownership of their lives); their self-esteem to express and share who they are; their relatedness (the degree to which they feel connected and supported); and, the possibility they see in their future.
These attitudinal and mind-set shifts lead to significant and long-lasting behavioural change that can transform people’s lives.
Key guiding principles of group-based career coaching for postdocs
Community
- We encourage postdoc groups to build, develop and sustain a supportive community based on authenticity and appreciation, in which everyone in the group contributes and is open to contribution.
- We create groups with clear boundaries, we are rigorous and compassionate about facilitating a robust and connected community.
Possibility
- See beyond predictable or stereotypical views of postdocs/disciplines/ and actively enable postdocs to seek out new possibilities where there may appear to be none.
- We support all postdocs in defining their career aspiration (whether academic or not), and committing to the development and realisation of their own potential.
Enabling career progression for all
For postdocs who aspire to an academic career, our coaching acts as an accelerator. Helping them to identify the next step, such as a fellowship, new collaboration or lectureship, and enabling them to get there faster.
For postdocs who want to move beyond academia, we help them to understand what they want and how to navigate a career transition.
We do this by:
- Holding all participants in unconditional positive regard
- Role modelling growth mindset
- Being aware of structural barriers (and how you respond to them – for example, don’t reinforce inequality!)
- Being open-minded about what we can learn from participants (such as having your perception of discipline or research working practises and environments expanded).
Reflective practice
Commit to enabling the participants to develop the self-awareness to communicate flexibly, honestly and with compassion.
Specific issues for postdocs
Stress produced by their role
The combination of long hours, fixed-term contracts, and or competitive/bullying culture can create a lot of personal stress for postdocs. When surveyed about their jobs the main concerns are:
- The relationship with PI or line manager
- Workload/hours
- Unhealthy/toxic working culture
This can produce fear, obligation and guilt, so it is particularly important at the start of coaching programs to help postdocs to get in touch with, and look clearly at their career situation without pushing them to make changes (which can add more stress when they already feel overwhelmed).
They may not be ready to set career goals because they do not have enough clarity about what they want or need. So the postdocs may need to explore the what, and how and why for some time first.
Professional identity crisis
Like many other professions (doctor, athlete) where people only have one type of professional role throughout a career, the thought of trying to change careers can create a sense of identity crisis. In coaching this can manifest as a lack of confidence or a defeatist attitude: ‘it is how it is’.
It is important to be persistent and encouraging with people who appear not to engage deeply, because their avoidance or defence mechanism that they have built up may take time to shift.
More info: See professional identity crisis page.
Social skills and group work
Postdocs do not tend to have engaged in this sort of group work before. So it is important to spend time building trust and gently warming them up to the idea of disclosure.
The whole group will benefit from:
- Listening exercises
- Principles about open questions
- Description of non-judgemental, non-directive approach
Trust and participation
Always give the participants choices about privacy and sharing, for example, do you want me [the coach] to be part of that conversation or would you prefer to break out?
Debrief activities and ask for feedback about how easy/difficult they found the sharing, adapt to the groups feedback (this varies a lot in groups).
Invite the group to suggest topics for coaching conversations, don’t be surprised if nobody volunteers anything for a few months! They often take a while to get focused on concrete action.
Group coaching in practice
There are various coaching practices, models, and activities that can be used successfully within groups such as the GROUP model, peer-to-peer coaching, laser coaching, and having participants pair up to discuss insights in smaller groups.
In practice, a coach needs to be familiar with various structures and to be tactical about which strategy to apply to the group, as well as meeting the integral need to involve the group in driving the agenda and content, by describing the rationale for the content and activity and asking them if they think it would meet their needs or not.
The following points are an overview of group coaching in comparison to 1-2-1 coaching:
Contracting
- It is best practice to meet your participants individually before the start of the group program to learn more about them and their needs. Typically, this might consist of a 30-minute contracting meeting.
- This is an opportunity to explain what coaching is and how the program will work, to find out what they want to gain by joining the program, and allow them to allay any fears they have about the process.
- Simple questions to ask at this stage are:
- What led you to join this program?
- What would you like to get out of it?
- What are your primary career development/transition needs?
- What should I know about how you learn best?
- How do you feel about being in the group?
Templates for developing group coaching sessions
Not all coaches will need a detailed outline, depending on where they sit along the coaching continuum, they may focus more on using coaching skills to respond flexibly to a group.
In practice, many of the coaches who took part in the Prosper pilot cohorts found it useful to have a detailed road map of how sessions looked at the start of a coaching program, but as the participants and coach become more comfortable and confident with the process, found it easier to enable a purer (less content-driven) coaching approach.
A general a template approach to structure group coaching sessions:
1. Check-in: Each participant says how they are feeling, and progress on the goal or anything that has happened in relation to career development/transition (depending on their goal).
2. Topic name (This can be source from the check-in, or elicited directly from the group or provided by the coach).
3. The main points of the topic/learning points/content.
4. Activities/coaching questions.
5. Debrief: What have you learned from this activity and how will you apply it.
6. Check-out: Each participant sets an action or intention to further their goal.
Signposting for support
Issues requiring support beyond coaching can arise. Below is a list of non-institution based resources and institution specific support for staff.
Non-institution based resources
NHS England: Every Mind Matters. An online resource to help inform and build resilience. Signposts to online talking therapies in England, as well as interactive videos on self-care.
For support with financial issues caused by Corona virus, the following links may be of use: Guidance from the Financial Conduct Authority and the Money Helper.
Samaritans – UK wide, have a 24/7 phone line (free to call: 116 123). You can also get in touch via email.
The CALM zone is a charity that helps prevent male suicide phoneline open 5 pm – midnight 0800 58 58 58, also has webchat function
Mind has a phone line (0300 123 3393) and a web page if you need urgent help with your mental health.
Hub of Hope is an app that finds local mental health services close to you, so you can find support exactly when you need it.
Switchboard if you identify as LGBT+, call, live chat, or email (reply in working 3 days) phone 0300 330 0630 (open 10:00 to 22:00 every day), email chris@switchboard.lgbt
Women’s Aid (for those who identify as women): A charity that focuses on protecting women and young children. Support is available for women who are experiencing domestic abuse through a variety of platforms such as instant messaging.
If your life is at risk right now
If you feel like you might attempt suicide, or may have seriously harmed yourself, you need urgent medical help. Please:
- Call 999 for an ambulance
- Go straight to A&E, if you can
- Or call your local crisis team, if you have their number
- If you can’t do this by yourself, ask someone to help you
- Mental health emergencies are serious. You’re not wasting anyone’s time.
Support for staff at your institution
You need to provide your local staff support offerings here, download this document so you can do so.
How we did it
We commissioned five external career coaches, via tender due to the expected costs and institutional guidelines. Applicants were shortlisted, interviewed and then appointed (all online). All career coaching was provided online. Not all five career coaches had worked with postdocs before, but all had experience with people in the Higher Education sector.
As a project we set career coaching as a compulsory element of participating in a pilot cohort in our participant agreement . We also included career coach guidelines for coachees on our prototype portal so that the postdocs knew what to expect. These guidelines were agreed with all career coaches beforehand.
As Prosper was co-created with postdocs, PIs and employers there wasn’t a rigidly fixed plan of the sessions and dates for the cohort in place when the coaches were appointed. The coaches were briefed as far as possible, and it was explained that the programme was a deliberate work in progress, into which their input was also desired. Each of our two pilot cohorts ran for a duration of 12 months.
We paid each coach for 4 hours of their time, to familiarise themselves with the prototype Portal content as it stood in the first quarter of cohort 1.
Each member of cohort 1 was allocated a total of 3.5 hours of 1:1 career coaching, plus 15 hours of group career coaching across the 12 months of the cohort. Postdocs were assigned to coaching groups with a broad aim to get groups of mixed discipline, gender and ethnicity as far as possible. No group coaching group exceeded 11 postdocs in size. Postdocs were assigned to the same career coach for both group and 1:1 coaching.
The same five career coaches were used for cohort 2. Coaching group assignments for cohort 2 were made with a broad aim to get groups of mixed discipline, gender, ethnicity and institution as far as possible. Each member of cohort 2 had a total of 1 hour of 1:1 career coaching, plus 15 hours of group career coaching available to them across the 12 months of the cohort. For further details see the how to choose your mode of delivery, and how Prosper ran it's two pilot cohorts pages.
Each career coach had a personal excel sheet of their assigned coachees, pre-populated with the number of 1:1 and group coaching sessions they were commissioned to deliver. These documents were stored securely on a dedicated Sharepoint site. The coaches each arranged by email (and input) the precise time/date of their sessions with their coachees. The coaches reported the attendance of their coachees to each session on their spreadsheet. The coaches raised an invoice quarterly.
We held a meeting once a quarter (towards the end of each quarter) with all of the career coaches to discuss how it was going, raise any common challenges or comments and collect feedback from them. Each meeting was 90 minutes long, held online and we paid for their time to attend. All meeting time/dates for the year were booked in at the start of the year.
All career coaches were asked to encourage the postdocs of each pilot cohort to keep a reflective journal to document their career development journey. Each postdoc had a personal folder accessible only by the individual postdoc, their career coach and the Prosper team. The reason Prosper wished to have access to these reflective journals was as another way to evaluate the postdocs mindset shift. Ultimately, a mixture of inconsistent uptake by cohort postdocs and the very time-consuming nature of analysing (and anonymising) these entries limited their utility to the project. A blog detailing the initial analysis of these self-reflections can be found here.
Career coaches were also invited to our end of cohort celebration events and invited to input their parting thoughts or best wishes for the outgoing cohort. We also found that our career coaches were well placed to be commissioned for specific sessions to the cohort on a range of topics due to their background and depth of understanding of the needs of postdocs. Some of these can be found in the Learning and Development section, for example in time management, building your confidence and starting a business and entrepreneurship.
We included the career coaches on our postdoc cohort mailing list so that they received all updates the postdocs did. We also encouraged the coaches to let us know if there were any issues that we needed to be aware of, or if any postdoc had got a new position. This last point was extremely important to our project for both the 0.1 FTE buy-out of postdoc time and our evaluation. Postdocs who got a new position during the 12 months of the pilot cohort were offered the option to remain on the cohort (in their own time if no longer a postdoc at any of our three partner institutions). We were pleasantly surprised that many of the postdocs did want to continue with the career coaching until the end of the cohort, even if they had moved onto another job.
Associated resources
Recommendations
- Do take time to consider how you group/assign your postdocs if you’re offering group coaching – do you want to mix them up or not?
- Do allow either coach/es or coachees to request to move coaching groups.
- Do make your expectations of the participants to attend career coaching sessions clear.
- Do ensure your cohort members can request reasonable adjustments if group coaching is not achievable or comfortable for them.
- Do consider making reasonable adjustments for participants who would find group coaching non-beneficial or distressing, such as (but not limited to) those with anxiety or individuals identifying as neurodivergent.
- Coaching doesn’t have to be offered for a duration of 12 months to be effective. Our coaches thought offering career coaching over four to six months would also be effective.
- Do consider the frequency of the coaching sessions, we had sessions two weeks apart near the start of the cohort, which then moved to a month apart. Session frequency is a balance between frequent enough to maintain momentum and a focus on career development versus insufficient time for participant self-reflection or exploration between sessions.
- Do consider how you timetable sessions – do you get the coach to set dates/times that work for them and then the postdocs self-assign to groups based on this?
- Do keep you career coach/es in the loop/make them feel included. If you’ve got more than one career coach, consider how you might like to support them meeting up to share practice.
- Don’t forget to share the details of staff support for mental health and wellbeing at your institution with your career coach/es.