Career development/coaching
Unit for career and leadership in academia offers career development/coaching for all employees at all levels of the University. Professional career does not always have to be synonymous with upwards mobility. Rather, it means illuminating different choices of development for you as an employee, which might for example involve broadening, specialisation, a change of direction or just choosing to stay where you are but with some new perspectives.
Due to the quick pace of change today, we often need to reflect on our own development, our strengths, skills, goals, networks, and so on in order to make active choices for our own work situation. Coaching is a process that aims to clarify these factors, thereby helping you to be clearer about your choices as well as clearer to others. The process consists of individual meetings and whichever tasks you might find useful to focus on in-between meetings. There may be a few or several meetings and the meetings always revolve around you and your relationship to your work. We decide about the specific process according to your needs.
By deciding to work with a coach, you choose to be active about your choices. Coaching is a process by which we can co-create and develop ourselves by being constructively curious about what’s already working well while creating choices for facing future challenges. The coach will not be giving you advice or providing expertise. The coach’s solutions to your problems would have a high probability of failing. Throughout the coaching relationship, the coach will assume that you are the expert on your life, that you have the answers. The coach will ask questions that relate to what is going on with you and will support you to take action when you have chosen an objective or direction. If you wish, the coach will hold you accountable for the actions that you commit to. We will partner as a team of two to create a coaching alliance that will help you stay focused and move forward toward whichever objectives you choose to focus on.
Coaching is both challenging and rewarding. The coach asks only that you bring yourself to each session exactly as you are. You may be confused, excited, frustrated, proud of yourself or your actions, angry, delighted, fearful or any of a thousand other states of mind. Coaching is about all of you, about how the whole system operates. By looking at yourself as openly as possible we can explore how your thoughts and actions serve or limit you. You can create more choices that enrich your life.
It may be useful to begin with a developmental dialogue with your direct supervisor, as results are often better when the process is an open one. However, it is your decision whom you talk with or not talk with. The coaching is confidential and the confidentiality of the process is regulated by law.
Contact person: Rabbe Hedengren
email: rabbe.hedengren@uadm.uu.se