Ways Career Coaches Can Help You Overcome A Plateau In Your Career

A Career plateau is a rather idle situation where an employee has reached the highest attainable position in a company and sees no possibility of vertical promotion or growth. It can be caused due to a lack of skills, education, corporate restructuring or other factors. Career plateau is a leading reason why organizations experience low employee satisfaction, high stress, poor performance, low organizational commitment, and high turnover.

While reaching a plateau is perfectly normal with any career path, it's highly important to take corrective actions in order to put yourself back in line with your goals. A career coach is a development professional who will help you adjust and improve your career path through one-on-one guidance and advice. Here are some ways they can help you overcome a career plateau successfully.

Personalizes Your Career Plan

An ineffective career development plan is a common reason why employees face plateaus. It's also one of the leading causes why employees get professionally stuck. A career coach will analyse your needs, strengths, and interests in developing a personalised career plan that will provide a clear roadmap on what you should do to progress in your professional life when you hit a plateau.

Practical Goal Setting

If you already have specified goals, a career coach will help you come up with a structured plan to achieve those goals. They may use strategies like SMART goals, which will help you effectively identify specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based goals that'll clearly outline how you can overcome the plateau. They will be able to apply their knowledge and experience in career paths and developmental strategies to help you comprehensively address the issues concerning the plateau.

Provide Honest Feedback

A career plateau can occur for a variety of reasons which includes personal factors like education, skills, experience, expertise or even personality. Similar to the approaches used by alife coach, a career coach will analyse your situation and give you honest feedback on what is causing the plateau. They will clearly tell you what you're doing right, and areas that you need to work on or improve. This feedback includes analysing your company’s organisational structure, culture and growth patterns and suggesting if it's feasible to continue in the same firm or switch to a new one.

Address Career Anxiety

Sometimes career anxiety can reduce your competency resulting in a plateau. According to a recent study it was reported that every 2,480 per 100,00 workers have work-related stress, depression or anxiety. These negative emotions have the possibility to overpower your work attitude, restricting you from reaching the highest attainable point.

Anxiety can also promote self-doubt and imposter syndrome, limiting growth or progress. As career coaching is a progress-oriented and developmental concept, it can help you identify factors causing career anxiety, take steps to rectify them and help you gain clarity in overcoming a plateau and moving forward instead of giving in to negative emotions.

Gives More Clarity

Sometimes you may experience a plateau due to lack of interest, passion, or simply because you've lost the feeling about loving what you do and have no curiosity to breakthrough. This unclear mindset hinders you from both progressing career-wise or figuring out your career goals.

Depending on your interest, a career plateau could also be a situation where you are considering a complete career switch but are unaware of how to take that risk. This is where a career coach can come in and shift your perspective and energy. They will be able to provide ultimate clarity on how to sync passion with a career and eventually make you understand your career goals and what restricts you from reaching them.