This episode focuses on another service of the business: professional development coaching. This type of coaching is not your normal Career Center office or high school/college guidance counseling for life after you obtain a milestone. This is about not only understanding and working through a career transition, but examining other facets of dissatisfaction, addressing problems at work that need a longer term solution, or some combination of the above to achieve success. This process is examined further to create a better understanding that "looks on the surface" do not translate to what this service can provide.

This is part five of a series of episodes exploring the wide variety of services that Your Speaking Voice LLC provides to interested clients.

• Toastmasters International -Home - Toastmasters is an international organization that has allowed many of my guests to be on the show through personal and professional connection, combining all kinds of different types of communication and leadership development. Learn more about this organization at the link provided, plus check out the "Find A Club" option where you can locate an in-person or virtual club closest to you and your likings!

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Intro/Outro By: Michael Dugan, Podcast Host: Voice4Chefs

Welcome to the podcast where relationships, confidence, and

determination, all converge into an amazing, heartfelt experience.

This is Speaking From The Heart.

Welcome back to episode number 25 of Speaking from the Heart.

Today we're going to talk about another service that my business

offers, Your Speaking Voice, LLC, which is available to clients that are

interested in partaking in it, and that is professional development coaching.

Now, this isn't your "run in the mill" high school guidance counselor session

or even career advisor at college.

This is actually detailing some of the ways in which we might be working through

problems that we have individually when it comes to our work performance or even

things that are said by our boss and even working through some career transition

services that might be helpful from moving from one industry to another, particularly

when you're going through some different types of things that might be available

or offered to you as a result of the work that you've already accomplished.

I think that we often think about professional development as this

big overarching term, which I wanted to spend some time today to talk

about, and then get into what I actually provide to my clients when

it comes to professional development.

Professional development, in its very core, means having some techniques,

some skills, knowledge and abilities, and also additional training beyond

what your formal education is to help you continue to grow in your way of

which you provide certain things on the job, and even throughout the different

types of career choices that you make.

Oftentimes, people confuse this with being another session in which we

have to go to a boring class, maybe even virtual, or even hybrid, or

even in person, and we have to learn so many different types of things.

That is not the case.

As a matter of fact, going through this means understanding what might be

holding you back from being able to make that next move in your career, being

what are some of the facets that might be holding you

back from a professional standpoint so that it helps you to become a much

better worker in the eyes of others?

Now, that is to say that for some people there's a lot of self-critique that comes

along with it, along with individuals that are critiquing you based on your

job performance that happens, but I think that we have to take a big step back and

think about it in the context of where your direction is that you want to go in.

In a previous episode, we talked about life coaching and what I provide as an

offering through that sort of lifestyle experience that you want to change,

but this is a little bit more focused because it works on the dissatisfaction

that you might have on the job, addressing problems that work that have

a longer term solution that you might need to address, but more importantly,

having some of those combinations of all those items above to help you be

able to take it to the next level.

Professional development does not mean that you are going through

these different types of courses or different types of things to

ultimately end to a dead end path.

I cannot stress that enough that all the things that we do in our lives

all have applicability and roll over into the different types of things

that we might want to eventually do to find quote unquote our calling.

Now, I get it.

To be able to do certain things, you have to be able to be certified or

get a professional license to do.

I certainly do not want to help other people on the fine art of understanding

or learning how to operate on a human body, so I am not a medical professional.

I could not educate you on the real estate laws, or even estate planning or

even divorce, or anything of that nature to change your career path to become

a lawyer in any one of those fields.

Even more importantly, I would not be the one to teach you how to be a civil

engineer to work on bridges, road design, and all kinds of other infrastructure

that is needed to help support society.

All of those things are definitely off the table, and I highly encourage you

to seek out a professional college to do all those things because you need to

have the formal education, along with the requirements of testing, to become

proficient in, but I have to say that for some people, being able to move into

those fields, whether you want to be a medical doctor or a lawyer, or even an

engineer, often can be confusing and often temperamental, especially if you're

already 15 years into your current career, and that is what the heart of professional

development coaching is all about.

It's about taking what you already have and utilizing it and

applying it into different things.

I'll give you a perfect example in my own personal life.

For many years, I actually wanted to be a lawyer.

I wanted to see people be defended in the court of law, maybe even

be a public defender myself, to be able to represent and be able to

go through the different types of things that we have in our own life.

We want to be able to say that we have those skill sets that allow us

to challenge and even create some of those best opportunities in our own

life if we're willing to be able to change and pivot into that direction,

which does that sound familiar to you?

It does for me, and that's why being a lawyer for the longest time in my

life was my passion, but I learned that as I went through school graduating

from Alvernia University, located in Reading, Pennsylvania, I could use some

of the skills that I was learning and being able to pivot into a completely

different career, which is why then I decided, 13 years ago, to enter into

the state civil service, and I've been able to expand my skills into multiple

formats, which includes information technology, database management, helping

other people being entrepreneurs in their own right, especially if they

were blind, which is what I worked with, but also deal with legal compliance,

procurement, and even budgeting and reporting on various figures and numbers.

That's just the cream of the crop of what I've been able to do to expand

my knowledge and abilities to create some of the opportunities that I have,

and continue to have, in my life, but that is exactly what this is all about.

Being able to take what you currently have and being able to move it into a

new direction, but it also means facing some of the existing realities that you

often have, and I often pair professional development coaching even with public

speaking coaching, which I've talked about in the previous episode, because

for many of us, they're all interconnected with the ways in which we expand,

clearly communicate, and even provide some of the skill sets that we want to

work on to be able to be transferred to those different industries, and to

give you a perfect example of this, we have to go back number of years ago

in which I started in Toastmasters.

Now for those that are listening for the first time, Toastmasters is a great

organization that allows you to work on your communication and leadership skills

in a group setting, which I have often talked about in previous episodes with my

guests, which if you're interested, I'll leave a link in the episode notes to check

out a local Toastmasters club near you and to learn more about the organization

itself, which will soon be celebrating its 100th anniversary, but Toastmasters

allowed me to understand a little bit more in my mid twenties, of the importance

of being able to create those things in my life that were not being created by

other existing facilities or activities for that matter, because what it really

did for me was realize that I was lacking in being able to provide presentations.

It was lacking in me to be able to communicate with my boss.

It was lacking in me to have a basic structure of how to move forward when it

came to all those different things that are needed in the workplace, and that's

what makes this so important to be able to work on those different skills so that

you're able to be in front of your boss, maybe even your senior management, and to

convey different points of information, which no matter what industry you're in,

whether that is a blue collar or white collar one, you always have to have

the ability to communicate effectively, be able to work through problems that

come up with coworkers, and be able to address a bigger longer term solution

that might be needed for a particular set of problems or issues that you face.

That's what makes this completely different from going to a career

center, which in Pennsylvania, there are many organizations that do basic

resume writing, which I offer as well, in addition to the different types

of things that you might be going through in your own career development.

They have job tracking software, they have different things

that you can go and shadow.

They can help you with apprenticeships.

There's a variety of governmental and non-governmental resources available

at your fingertips, often for free, but this goes a step beyond all of that and

to help somebody, or a group of people, go through a particular situation,

often through organizational or even strategic planning for that matter, to

help get to that end goal, which in a future episode, I will talk more about

that sort of service, which is called business coaching, but when it comes

to even professional development, we're focusing more on the individual itself;

what you are specifically dealing with in order to help you see the light that

might be at the end of the tunnel that you don't see right now, because we

often have these problems of seeing what is right in front of us, and that's the

value of having a coach when it comes to professional development, because they

can help you and diagnose and see things that you often might not see in itself.

I have worked with a variety of different people since I've opened this year, to

be able to understand with them what are some of the things that they are looking

to do, what do they wanna focus on to get from point A to point B in their

goals which we set, but we also help them to go and explore some of those

opportunities, whether that's through networking, whether that is through

some sort of communication plan, whether that is just working on what are some of

the obstacles or some of the mind traps that we set up so that we're not able to

become the best versions of ourselves.

I can't stress enough the value of having somebody to help you when it

comes to this realm of coaching because it allows you to see what your existing

skill sets are, or even the abilities that you have, and to be able to move

from that sort of point in the next juncture of your next potential future.

I know that for many people that can be often difficult.

It can be often scary.

It can be often something that creates that opportunity for all

of us to help see deep inside what we're truly capable of doing.

I know for many of us to see that can be so stressful.

It can be often scary and fearful in itself, especially if we're thinking

about changing careers altogether.

It means taking a big risk on some of the things that we've already

done and possibly starting over.

I know many people in my life that have done just that, including even myself,

your podcast host, in which I have completely pivoted my life and being

able to provide the services that I provide today after seeing that awakening

happening in my life, which in tomorrow's two part episode, you're going to hear

quite a lot about how even one individual was able to change their life completely,

but I think that for many of us, just seeing and experiencing what we're

potentially capable of doing oftentimes means seeing the light at the end; being

able to say to ourselves that even though that this is going to be very difficult

to go through, we are every ounce capable of being able to do this, to make this

happen in our lives, to create some of the best versions of maybe the future self in

the multiple paths that we're exploring.

Professional development does not always mean getting a whole new

set of skills every single time.

Those are called trainings.

Those are specific to what you're providing and even getting developed on

to be able to have the career that you want to explore, but I think professional

development goes so much more beyond what we often think in layman's terms.

It means seeing deep down inside of yourself of what the capabilities

are for you to objectively work together, not only with different

people, but with the different career opportunities that exist in this world.

Especially in the last two to three decades, the explosion of information

technology, let alone the Internet itself, with the variety of different

services that it provides, along with the on-demand content that our world

has created, has certainly shown the vast realms of possibilities that many

different influencers, even different types of people, have expanded into to

help fill the void of often a need that we never thought we would ever need, and

I think professional development helps to do just that: to expand into those

vast new worlds, vast opportunities, to be that lighthouse at the end to help

us see and create some of those best versions of what we could potentially be.

Being able to see our value at any stage of development can be a tireless,

thankless exercise, because it often means looking beyond what you are.

It's almost having an out of body experience to know what you could share

to the whole world, and I think that for many of us, we don't take that time

because of the many different demands, different things that happen in our life,

let alone the different sort of choices that we make, but it doesn't mean that

you're a failure because you're seeking help to solve a problem that you can't

solve by yourself, and you're not a failure to understand the simplicity

of the solution that you might already have and just need that validation.

Coaching has always been about for me, understanding how we can move to the next

level without sacrificing what we have already gained, because no matter what

experience that we've gone through, there is always something to learn from it.

We are always capable of being able to do more than what we were ever able to

do in high school, let alone college, and even if you didn't go through

high school or college and you have equivalent degrees, this is why it's

even more important to be able to know that you have value in this world, and

having someone to show you that, and to unlock that potential, especially if

you're doing something that you don't like, will help you to achieve the

success that you often are looking for.

You can look at what is underneath the surface of it all and be able to translate

this to whatever possibility that you want to become, because we all have that

hidden potential inside of ourselves, and it means being able to show what's

on our chest; to be able to see what's in our brain, but more importantly, it isn't

just about the physical aspects of it, it's about the emotional, the knowledge

that we all bring to the table, and the qualities that make us unique, because

we're all unique in one way or another, and I believe in you being able to change

from where you are right now and move to that next destination that you are in your

work career, because we all have something that we can potentially offer, and all

that means for you is to just have that second voice, to have the voice of reason

in your life, to be able to help you to get to that next plateau, to be able to

help you get to the point on the very top where you have achieved the ultimate

pivotal point in your whole entire existence, and that is self-actualization

because when you are self-actualize and you're fulfilled with the opportunity

that you have been destined to do, nothing will ever stop you, or stand

in your way, in becoming the next awesome person, because you are awesome.

You just have yet to see what's truly inside of you.

Thanks for listening to episode number 25 of Speaking from the

Heart, and I look forward to hearing from your heart very soon.

Thanks for listening.

For more information about our podcast and future shows, search for Speaking From

The Heart to subscribe and be notified wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Visit us at www.yourspeakingvoice.biz for more information about potential

services that can help you create the best version of yourself.