Meaningful Work(TM) Career Coaching, FUTUREU'S 5-point STRATEGY FOR HEALTH CARE

ersonal meaning is the key to employee, manager, and executive retention. The search for personal meaning is a key factor in today’s high employee turnover. Most careers begin with a desire for personally fulfilling work that is also financially secure. Even people who stumble into their chosen field, or who take it up because of family pressure, tend to start out feeling that the work itself has value. Too often, however, this initial vision gets lost amid the heavy workload, paperwork, tight budgets, rigid regulations, and uncertainty associated with many industries.

Modern expectations also play a role. In days gone by, employers often promised life-long employment in exchange for loyalty. That strategy is hard to find now, not that it would satisfy the modern workforce. Not even today’s more generous salaries and benefits, better working conditions, and in-house training are enough to keep employees from continuously looking for a more satisfying job. Even in recessionary times, workers are more mobile than ever before, even changing careers altogether in search of something more.

Applying proven mind-body techniques to Career Coaching

When physician Jon Kabat-Zinn started treating stress and chronic pain with "mindfulness" meditation in the early 1980s, he surmised that "cultivating the ability to pay attention in the present moment," would give his patients a greater sense of control over their lives. This in turn would reduce their suffering. To sustain the benefit across time, he believed, would require a strong personal vision based on a "commitment to continual inquiry." So successful was Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s approach that health-care providers around the world now integrate mind-body techniques into their treatment of medical and psychological problems.

In 1989, FutureU co-founder Claude Whitmyer started integrating these concepts with similar findings from Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer to develop a unique approach to Career Coaching. A business consultant who had helped countless entrepreneurs attain their goals, he started teaching mindfulness practice and rigorous self-reflection to help working adults overcome self-doubt, cultivate intuition, clarify personal goals, and make the most of available resources in their search for greater meaning at work. Nearly 1,000 professionals have now benefited from this process. They include artists, bankers, educators, entrepreneurs, health professionals, lawyers, nurses, physicians, stockbrokers, and corporate managers and executives from such organizations as Apple Computer, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Esprit, Hewlett Packard, Levi Strauss, Prudential, SBC, the University of California, and Wells Fargo Bank.

Meaningful Work™ Career Coaching for Your Employees

This unique approach to Career Coaching is now available to your employees in a variety of formats.

Private Sessions. Clients meet individually with a trained counselor for 90 minutes. Although a face-to-face meeting is recommended for the first session, telephone consultations have served well for clients in Alaska, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and throughout California, as well as Argentina, Mexico, Japan, and the Cayman Islands. Some individuals benefit from weekly sessions for several months, others have been checking in with their Meaningful Work™ coach once every six months for a dozen years. To offer Meaningful Work™ Career Guidance sessions on site at your location, four back-to-back sessions are the minimum.

Workshops. With a personal plan as the deliverable, a workshop may take whatever configuration of length and delivery method best fits your organization’s unique needs.

Online. The FutureU team has started converting the Meaningful Work™ Career Coaching exercises into an eight-part, 40-lesson program for delivery online. Participants will be able to work their way through the lessons at their own pace and receive support from group email discussions (anonymously if they wish), while also taking advantage of private sessions. This is the most cost-effective way to help a large staff.

Customized. Any format may be tailored to help participants become aware of possible management track opportunities within your organization. Arrangements may also be made to educate participants about what they must do to progress along that track or to pursue any other professional development opportunities available to them.

Who benefits from Meaningful Work™ Career Coaching

Any organization with a commitment to employee retention and development should offer Meaningful Work® Career Coaching as a benefit. The process is valuable to anyone suffering from burnout, contemplating a job change, eager for something new but unclear in their goals, or clear about what they want but unsure how to get it or convinced they can’t have it (or don’t deserve it). Employees considering a step up to management also benefit from the process as they weigh the pros and cons of such a change and consider their readiness.

Many participants start out saying, "I want out of this profession," and then end up deeply re-committing to their existing work. Others decide to make a lateral move inside the same organization, to some position they realize will better suit their personal vision. The process is the perfect fit for anyone struggling to recapture a sense of purpose and direction at work. Those who do decide to leave your employ will clearly be the ones who belong somewhere else.

There is something about being human that makes us yearn for the company of others, to be members of a family of the spirit, a team, or a clan in which we are fully seen and understood. Stuck inside our own skins, we often feel alone and cut off; we want to be with others who share our problems, challenges, and hopes. Today people everywhere are finding ways of ending their sense of isolation by joining together in loosely and tightly structured communities of peers. In the Company of Others explores how people are solving the dilemma of separation and building deep community.

Running a One-Person Business, (Ten Speed Press, 1989, second edition 1994):

This hand book for the free agent has sold more than 70,000 copies. In it, Claude and his co-author Salli Rasberry provide step-by-step guidance for starting, managing, and growing this life-style business. A simple, practical, honest guide to long-term success. Written for the solo operation, but equally helpful to any business. Contains the obligatory chapters on bookkeeping, financial management, and time management, but goes further to talk about special ways of organizing information, how to lay out a work space, and the special concerns of working from home. Most important are chapters on choosing technology, emotional support systems, and how to manage the growth of a one-person business. This book could also serve as a handbook for managers who want to develop an entrepreneurial mindset for application within an organization. http://www.futureu.com/booklist/blurb-ropb.html