Do you love your job? If not, what would your job need to be like for you to love it? Putting aside any lack of confidence you may have, is it realistic that you could change the situation so that you did love your job? (For example: improve your relationships with your colleagues or boss, work from home a couple of days a week, get a promotion). If there is absolutely no prospect of your being able to carve out for yourself a stimulating and rewarding occupation, you are almost certainly in the wrong job. However, if you could make some changes to improve things, even if this seems scary or even if other people might resist your changes, just think: in a few months - or even weeks - you could love your job!

A life coach can help you to bring about these changes (or to move on to a job you will love somewhere else).

Often, just having someone to bounce our ideas off, someone from the outside who is not caught up in the detail and the politics of our job, someone who will challenge our assumptions while never doubting our abilities, is enormously valuable in itself.

Beyond helping you to identify what changes need to be made, your coach will give you tools and techniques for increasing your confidence, improving your working relationships and staying focused, so you will be able to make these changes successfully.

Your coach will not tell you what to do. It's unlikely your coach will be an expert in your specific field and, in any case, this is not the point of life coaching. Your coach's job is to help you to find and implement the solutions yourself.

However, a life coach can offer you practical advice about:

Coaching for your team

If you are a manager, you might like to consider getting a business/professional coach to coach your team. If the team members are not happy, they won't be performing to the best of their ability. Coaching for employees who don't seem to be pulling their weight can be a fantastic investment. Since the coach is external to the organisation, the employee will feel safe to talk openly about his/her problems, which, although affecting his/her work, may or may not have anything to do with the company. The employee will benefit from the coaching in all the ways discussed above. If, at the end, he/she decides to leave, the organisation is free to replace this underperforming employee with one who will fit in better. A more likely outcome is that the employee will sort out the issues that were holding him/her back and blossom.