Transcript

I think self-awareness is absolutely at the heart of coaching. And one of the most important things that coaching and mentoring can do for you is to help increase your self-awareness. Self-awareness is a very difficult thing, and as we go through our lives we gradually develop our self-awareness, and perhaps we change who we are so there are further challenges associated with understanding ourselves there. In terms of career coaching particularly, I think what self-awareness does is it helps mitigate risks. So whenever you make a career decision of any sort, whether it's to change career, to start a new opportunity, or to go for promotion, there's a risk involved. We don't really know how it's going to work out until we try it. And a good understanding of ourselves and what we want, what we value, what we're good at, what we're going to enjoy, can help make sure that we make a choice that is most likely to provide us with the outcomes that we want and the kinds of jobs that satisfy us.