3 Steps to Unlocking Potential
3 Steps to Unlocking Potential
When you explore and uncover an individual’s potential, you can achieve surprising results.
As a job coach, it’s your role to see the potential that lives within each client’s so you can open up new pathways and develop their soft skills so that they feel more confident in their ability to find a job. When your clients realise their potential, they can create a plan for their goals with employment playing a very important part of reaching their dreams.
There are two important beliefs you need to deeply commit too when working with your clients:
- You have the potential to help your clients find their way (and this may look different for every client).
- Your clients have the potential to find their way and achieve anything they want.
This quote from Joahnn Wolfgang Von Goethe is incredibly powerful and forms a perfect frame for what we are trying to create with our clients:
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
These three essential steps will help you unlock potential and start to see your clients in a whole new light.
Step 1.
The first step to unlocking someone’s potential starts with us and our perceptions of the client. We first must take conscious steps to gear our thinking in the right direction.
Over the years, I have had job coaches and consultants ask questions like:
How are you doing it?
How are the Bounce Trainers getting clients to turn up every day?
How are they getting them to apply for jobs?
How did you get them a job?”
There’s no magic wand or secret sauce. It is as simple as deeply believing that everyone in my training room has the potential to be employed. Then, my unconscious communication is always geared to supporting the clients with a focus on succeeding at whatever they choose to be their next steps.
Step 2.
Step two involves affirming your client’s worth. You can do this by tapping into what they are good at and exploring opportunities that link to their strengths. By using the strengths assessment data inside Bounce Online, you can easily and consistently re-affirm their strengths and find ways to build their confidence, so they too can believe their worth and know what they can give to a potential employer.
Research from Linley, Nielson, Wood, Gillett and Biswas-Diener (2010) showed that people who used their strengths in achieving their goals were more likely to achieve goals and were more fulfilled as a result. So, taking a strength-based approach towards employment goals will also translate to sustainable employment outcomes. Your clients will love what they do and will be more likely to grow within their new roles, feeling more confident within themselves towards their own success.
Step 3.
Finally, you need to plan for success. The important part here is break the plan down into small, achievable steps that are driven by the client. If the client doesn’t take ownership, they are less likely to follow through. We, as job coaches can get it wrong by pushing our own agenda. What seems like the right way to us, may not be they right way of going about things for the client. Our job is to empower the client to create the steps and support them on their journey to reach their goals.
I love this African philosophy of ‘Ubuntu’ which means ‘I am because you are.’ It means love, truth, eternal optimism and inner goodness. If you can see every person as inherently good within and then treat them as if they are, you will get incredibly different results. So, the next time you sit down with a client, take a moment to open up to your clients potential and see them for who they really are.
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