Episode 34: Why the current uncertainty could make now a perfect time to consider your professional possibilities, with career change coach Nicola Porter

My guest on this episode of the show is Dr Nicola Porter.

Nicola Porter has been a lecturer in psychology for the best part of 20 years and has in recent years added an accreditation in executive and life coaching and established a practice specialising in career coaching and career change for mid-career professionals.

This set of skills and experiences allows Nicola to combine everything she's earned from psychology and the science of behavior, with professional coaching tools and techniques to provide an effective and evidence driven approach to career change for her clients.

In this conversation, we chat about everything from the micro to the macro of careers and the working life.

We talk about the next best step that someone can take if they're struggling in their day to day professional career, about finding that spark that can breathe new life into the working week.

We chat about taking part in “career experiments” and how it’s more possible now than it has ever been before to put a toe into the waters of a career change without needing to dive straight into the deep end.

We chat about the workplace, the challenges of management and leadership, and how people as individuals are often rated or judged exclusively on their output, rather than their whole self, and how individuals themselves are often their own harshest judges.

We go through the detachment from meaning that’s so common to the working experience for so many people these days.

And we also consider the prevailing landscape in 2020 and beyond, with the effects of a global pandemic and the economic fallout from that, about the certainty of uncertainty in our lives and careers, and about how right now, in this strange year, might be the best time to lay the foundations of future career progression.

All that and more in my conversation with academic psychologist and career change coach, Nicola Porter.

Find out more about Nicola's work at www.coachd.ie.

Other items mentioned in this conversation:

• Putty Like - A home for multi-potentialites
• Watch Emily Wapnick's Ted Talk "Why Some of Us Don't Have One True Calling" on YouTube
• The concept of "possible selves" from the book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, by Herminia Ibarra
• Values In Action survey