Demystify Career Coaching Volume 1: Parents as Career Coaches

Demystify Career Coaching

Volume 1: Parents as Career Coaches

Written for parents by parents

By

Ms. Poonam Abichandani

and

Dr. Ajay K. Pandit

Demystify Career Coaching Volume 1: Parents as Career Coaches

Ms. Poonam Abichandani and Dr. Ajay K. Pandit

Copyright © 2019 Ms. Poonam Abichandani and Dr. Ajay K. Pandit

Published at Smashwords

Dedicated to

Our babies – Saahil, Krivi and Eeshaan

May God bless you with all that your hearts desire and lives need

God forbid that we ever be found wanting, but if we do

Then let it be for reasons beyond our control

And not for lack of intent, efforts, love or neglect

Also dedicated to our parents, brothers and scores of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, teachers, friends and colleagues who helped us with their coaching, support, love, tough love and encouragement in our career journeys.

With our sincere love and gratitude

Poonam and Ajay

About Ms. Poonam Abichandani

Ms Poonam Abichandani is an accomplished global IT professional with over 22 years of experience as a business leader in the global IT industry in various roles across US, Europe and Asia. She has a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Computer Engineering from VJTI College of Engineering, University of Bombay. She is a Director, Consulting with Oracle (Division – OFSS) and a dedicated mother balancing her professional and personal responsibilities like many other inspirational women leaders of her generation. Ms. Abichandani is passionate about her parenting responsibilities as well as her views on how to coach young children in their journey in achieving their potential. Ms Abichandani loves getting exposed to new cultural experiences through travel, food, music, dance and celebration of life. She is married to Dr. Ajay Pandit and is co-creator/thought partner in many discussions contributing to his publications including Demystify Career Coaching: Parents as Career Coaches where she is a co-author.

Connect with Ms. Abichandani on:

• Email: [email protected]

• Tel: +91 9820445601

• LinkedIn profile: in.linkedin.com/in/poonam-abichandani-521507180/

About Dr. Ajay Pandit

Dr. Ajay Pandit is a trained physician, a well-published scientist and a business leader in pharma life sciences, medical devices and healthcare industry with over 2 decades of leadership experiences in various roles across US, Europe and Asia. His medical degree is from University of Bombay, India and he has 2 graduate degrees – MS and an MBA both from Penn State University. He has held leadership roles in the past with companies such as Deloitte Consulting, WellCare Health Plans, Campbell Alliance, GlobalData Publications, Novartis and Tata Consultancy Services. He has worked extensively with the senior business leaders and CXO-level clients across top global pharma companies in US, Europe and Asia. Dr. Pandit has led teams with 350-400+ healthcare professionals in companies such as GlobalData Publications and Novartis and is passionate about developing and training talent. Dr. Pandit is an avid reader of quantum physics, economics and loves to create hypothetical solutions to real world problems. Dr. Pandit is the author of the Demystify Pharma series of which 2 volumes have been published. Dr. Pandit has co-authored the book Demystify Career Coaching – Parents as Career Coaches with his wife Ms. Poonam Abichandani.

Connect with Dr. Pandit on:

• Email: [email protected] OR [email protected]

• Tel: +91 9820582922

• LinkedIn profile: in.linkedin.com/in/ajaypandit1/

Contents

Detailed Contents

Preface

1. Career Journey – Definition and Longitudinal View of Career Journey

2. Understanding Career Journeys in Real World Scenarios

3. In-depth Review of Career Coaching and Impact on a Child’s Career Potential

4. Parents as Career Coaches

5. Coaching the Coach

6. Approach to Career Coaching

7. APPENDIX – SPECIAL TOPICS

Detailed Contents

Demystify Career Coaching

Volume 1: Parents as Career Coaches

Preface

What has been our research and analytic approach in writing this book?

What are the objectives of this book?

What is this book clearly not?

How to use this book?

1. Career Journey – Definition and Longitudinal View of Career Journey

1.1 Career as a part of Life

1.2 Longitudinal View of Career Path Measured in Financial Networth

1.3 Converting Career Path in to a Career Journey

1.4 Example:

1.5 Reflections on example above

1.6 Key Takeways

2. Understanding Career Journeys in Real World Scenarios

2.1 Death of earning parent

2.2 Alcoholism in College

2.3 Choosing the wrong 1st job

2.4 Office politics

2.5 Overspending

2.6 Rebuilding career journey

2.7 Beliefs and Attitudes

2.8 Key Takeaways

3. Indepth Review of Career Coaching and Impact on a Child’s Career Potential

3.1 Fatalistic vs Deterministic Career Ownership Philosophies

3.2 What career owner profiles find career coaching useful?

3.3 Impact of Adopting Career Coaching Concept on Parent – Child Teams

3.4 Understanding Dynamics of Career Coaching and How They Impact a Child’s Career Journey

3.5 How Long Should the Career Coaching Last in a Child’s Career Journey?

3.6 Key Takeaways

4. Parents as Career Coaches

4.1 Who is a good coach?

4.2 Comparative Assessment of Parents vs. Others as Career Coaches

4.3 Key Takeaways

5. Coaching the Coach

5.1 Thought exercise:

5.2 Checkpoints:

5.3 Key Takeaways:

6. Approach to Career Coaching

6.1 Envision the Career Journey and Script a Compelling Career Story

6.1.1 Desires and Blessings

6.1.2 Career Potential

6.1.3 Career Path

6.1.4 Functional Roles and Training

6.1.5 Motivation and Winning Mindset

6.1.6 Investment Plan

6.2 Career Planning and Building a Winning Career Strategy

6.2.1 An Overall Roadmap and Periodic Career Phases

6.2.2 Milestones and Targets (for each phase)

6.2.3 Investment Plan for each phase

6.2.4 Scenarios and Outcomes for each phase

6.2.5 Screening for early warning indicators and Course-correction

6.2.6 Checks, realignments and re-testing commitments

6.2.7 Life Experiences

6.3 Living the Career Plan or Operationalize the Winning Plan

6.4 Preparing for Life does not move in a straight line

6.5 Key Takeaways

7. APPENDIX – SPECIAL TOPICS

7.1 What happens when if my career doesn’t go right?

7.2 How much money can I make?

7.3 Show me the money

7.4 I don’t want to study, I only want to play cricket (or follow my passion)

7.5 Emotional mines that blow up career decisions

7.5.1 Parental aspirations:

7.5.2 Delusion or Hysteria:

7.5.3 Herd Mentality:

7.5.4 Fear:

7.5.5. Love:

7.6 Apathy and Inertia

7.7 I don’t need to earn – my parents have enough money!

Preface

We would like to start this book by explaining who we are and why we wrote this book before we explain how to use it. Although more details are included in the author’s description about us and our LinkedIn profiles, it may make sense to include an overview of who we are. We are parents – teachers – authors – global professionals with combined 45+ years in field of pharmaceutical – healthcare and information technology management consulting.

We grew up in Mumbai and graduated from University of Bombay with our medical and engineering degrees. We were blessed to have been part of the global professional industry during the time when it was expanding rapidly in 1990’s till date. This allowed us a mix of experiences – good, bad and ugly but left us enriched with every experience nonetheless. On the personal side – we married in our mid-30’s which is somewhat late, but this allowed us to identify a common purpose of building a family life on a long term basis rather than just seeing where life took it. We both had plenty of time to think, talk and listen to each other as we started our journey together. We both are very close to our families, which meant that when we were blessed with our nephews – Saahil and Krivi – we became parents mentally long before we became parents physically when our lives were blessed with Eeshaan. Becoming parents, especially after a high – risk pregnancy made us value the blessings that God gave us and we feel, that we need to do things right.

In spirit of doing things right we often wonder about our 3 kids and the career journeys that they might take on. What will they do professionally and in life in general? How will they get started, what peaks will they scale, what attitudes and motivations might they adopt as they ride out life’s rollercoaster, where might they get challenged, what roles could we do to help support them. We supported these kids from the time they first turned on their bellies to crawling – standing – walking and now running. Physically it was easy to do so, but we often wondered as to what might we do to help them professionally in the same manner? We also recognized that it is extremely important for them to get all the support that they need because the world is becoming VUCA (volatile, uncertain, ambiguous) with inverted demographics which places today’s generation in very complex, unprecedented situations. They will grow up in a world to live up to almost 90+ years and where all traditional jobs and roles might be automated, so then the question is that what do these kids do in their almost 70+ years of productive lives? Will the traditional doctor or engineer career options that our parents drove for us, work for them? It was clear to us that not only are multiple careers in this 70+ year timeline an eventuality for them but also that we might need to closely coach them as they learn to professionally turn on their bellies – stand – fall – walk – run and scale the Mount Everest of their own careers.

Beyond doing what we do as parents for our kids, we had another reason to do so. We both had to take a tough career decision to balance our personal responsibilities with our professional career trajectories. We gave up our US-based roles and chose to be based in India to ensure we could take care of both of our old parents and an aunt who is a quasi-mother to us. This sense of responsibility is not only limited to our parents. We also believe that raising grounded, responsible, happy children is a service that we do for our community and strengthen it by raising responsible, happy citizens who build the nation of tomorrow.

With these thoughts in our mind and leveraging our past experience of authoring books, we decided to put our heads together to author a book on a subject that both of us are deeply passionate about with the hope that we can impact our communities by starting some discussions and providing children a head start in achieving their potential. We hope you will appreciate our efforts, motivations and intents which may be genuine, but may appear amateurish and common sensical rather than steeped in science and research. But then we take comfort in the fact that Einstein’s mother was no genius but she gifted the world with the greatest mind packaged in a body that the world thought was Dyslexic and had written off.

What has been our research and analytic approach in writing this book?

As authors of this book, we fully acknowledge that many of the thoughts presented in this book are not our original thoughts. As we have gone about our collective 90+ years of life, we have absorbed all the influences that we have been exposed to in the last 90+ years – which includes but is not limited to our parents/grandparents/siblings and extended families stories, folk wisdom, common sense, text books, training programs, education, self-help books, religion and many other sources of knowledge. The dots were always existent and contributed by many researchers long before we wrote the book, however what we bring new to this book is the way in which we have chosen to connect the dots. Just to help our readers understand our mindset we want to take the readers thru a brief exercise below.

Thought Exercise: If as readers we were to ask you to look at the 5 dots presented below - on the left side of the figure and ask you to connect the dots what pattern will you suggest is most likely to exist?

Chances are you might either have chosen to see the dots as either a circle or a pentagon or a star or some other shape of your choice including answering that there is no specific pattern and the dots are merely a random set of distributed dots. All answers are correct. In fact in absence of any other information there is equal probability that all 4 answers are correct. However, you may have given an answer based on the seriousness of your thoughts, including why other answers are not as perfect as your choice of answer.

Our hypothesis of Parents as Career Coaches is somewhat similar to this connecting of dots or painting a larger picture of life in which our careers fit perfectly. We are aware that there may very well be other patterns that other researchers in this field might suggest based on their approach, but we believe that the approach we have presented works for us in reimagining a career journey for a child as he/she achieves his/her potential. This does not mean we are wrong or others are wrong, it only means we choose to believe our approach makes sense based on our seriousness of thought and the effectiveness it possibly brings in career coaching our children in their career journeys.

We hope our readers are able to see the approach in which we connect the dots. We will also view our book as a success if by reading this book some spark is ignited in your mind that leads you to connect the dots in a different way in which it makes sense to you and your child in your collective journeys to achieve your child’s career potential. The aim is to help you have your child in reaching their potential, not in forcing you to see things the way we see them.

What are the objectives of this book?

We have 4 primary objectives in writing this book:

• Invite parents to positively reimagine

o Their children’s careers and future

o Their own participation in their children’s career journeys

• Present three concepts for discussion or introspection:

o Parent – child teams

o Career coaching

o Parents doing the role of career coaching

• Learn some simple techniques that will empower parents to achieve their goals of supporting their children in building a rewarding, long term career for their children.

• Lastly, help parents in assessing their readiness in becoming a career coach for their children as well as build awareness of their own parent – child team dynamics.

What is this book clearly not?

We are quite clear what the objective of this is book clearly not supposed to be:

• This book is