The end of the year is about making decisions.
As the year comes to an end, my coaching sessions on work issues have revolved around making decisions.
“How do I choose the right professional #resume writer?”
“I have so many things on my plate and my mind, it’s all just muddled…and I need to do them before I take my Christmas break!”
“I got #retrenched from my events management role recently and I’m thinking of using this time to explore my options for a new career.”
Scoring
One of the ways to help you make a decision is to list down the criteria for your preferred choice. What boxes need to be ticked to make you choose one over the rest? If you have 15 criteria, give each criteria a score between 1 and 10 that symbolises the importance of that criteria so that you can rank the criteria.
For example, in making a choice for a resume writer, the director had five criteria. By giving each criteria a score, she was able to prioritise the most important criteria from the rest. That gave her a clearer picture of what she valued the most in a resume writer.
Then for each criteria listed, I got her to give a score for each of her options to give her a clearer idea of the choice she would eventually have to make. In her case, she did not make a choice, but it made her realise that she had more questions to ask her options as the score was a tie between two of them.
At the end of the session she said she was very clear on her next steps.
How Ready Are You?
For the next client, I asked the director to list her to-do list. Then I asked how many days she has to complete the list.
Being a confident person, the next question I asked was not how confident she was to complete the task but how ready she was at that hour and minute to deliver the items. I used a scale of between 1 and 10 with 10 being most ready. That gave her a better perspective of where she was at for each of the items she listed.
One of the items she was more ready to deliver before the 3-day deadline. For the other two, we worked on how much time she would need to complete the task. Once she determined that, she was better able to allocate time slots in her calendar to get them done.
One of the reasons this client wanted to discuss this topic was so that she would be more efficient. So when prompted how she could be more efficient to complete her top three to-do items, she was able to look at her schedule and make some decisions on some of her appointments.
But ultimately, she wanted to clear her mind and get the work done so she can have a good Christmas break with her family. At the end of the session, she said she was much clearer on what she needed to do and the session also made her realise that she only had 3 items to focus on, one of which was almost a done deal.
V.I.P.S
For the last client, the manager is just getting started on discovering her values, interests, personality and skills, especially her transferrable skills. It will take time but with time, effort and the right type of support, she should be on her way to making her own decisions.
If you need help with your #careerswitch decisons or other work decisions, connect with me using the online booking system on my website.