Leverage assessments and
powerful questioning to help your
client uncover answers to the
following queries:
Interests:
What fires me up? What would I do
even if I weren’t getting paid?
Abilities and aptitudes:
What are the innate talents, gifts and
skills I possess?
Personality factors:
Which aspects of my personality
impact how I relate to different
environments, tasks
and circumstances?
Work values:
What ideals drive me? Why is this?
Leisure values:
What leisure activities do I love?
Accomplishments:
In what areas have I already
experienced success?
Work-specific challenges:
What potential roadblocks do I
face? Can they be removed with
accommodations, modifications and/
or strategies?
Other queries to be addressed along
the way include:
• Do I work best in spurts, or is my
focus pattern more steady?
• Am I sensitive to environmental
factors that affect focus, such as
lighting, smells and sounds?
Arnold C. Fellman
Asking the Right Questions
How many times have you heard
a variation on this piece of advice:
“Choose a career based on
your interests”?
The truth is, interests are only one
facet to consider as we partner with
our clients. Consider what makes
up a “typical” human being (see
diagram above).
• As a child, what daydreams did
I have about the type of work I
would do?
• What do people around me
believe I do best?
the following questions through
coaching and personal reflection:
• What jobs correlate with the
combination of all of my
“puzzle pieces?”
• What are the essential tasks of
those jobs? How do these tasks
align with my puzzle pieces? With
my inner voice?
• Do at least 75 percent of the job’s
essential tasks align with
my strengths?
• Are there ways to offset the
remaining challenges easily?
• Can I gain a better understanding
of the job and its fit for me by
reading more about it; discussing
it with those who already do
it; and/or observing it via jobshadowing, an internship or a
volunteer opportunity?
• If any modifications,
accommodations or strategies
are needed, can they be
identified? Would they be in place
for ongoing support?
For your clients, the process of
choosing or changing careers can be
a noisy one, as they struggle to make
sense of competing messages from
without and within. As a coach armed
with a systematic approach to career
decision-making, you can help them
turn down the volume, hear what their
inner voice has to say and make a
career decision that will yield personal
and professional dividends.
Getting to the Answer
The responses to the above
questions form a strong
foundation for career decisionmaking—and another round
of questions. Once your client
better understands the pieces in
his own puzzle, he can explore
Coaching World 33