Heather is an accredited Career Coach with MI5’s Career Support team. In her role she supports people in taking autonomy over their careers; giving them the tools and opportunities to reflect upon what’s important to them, the conditions they need to thrive in the workplace and how they want to use their strengths, skills, and experience as they progress in their career. We sat down with Heather and quizzed her on all things career development.
Career coaching is very specific, focused exclusively on supporting people to make career decisions, plan for their future and ensure that they have the tools to keep refreshing this plan as their lives change. The emphasis of the process is on the fact that YOU are the best person to work out what is next for you. As a coach, I will give you tools to help you reflect and the space and support to explore your reflections through listening and summarising, questioning for clarity and gentle challenge.
Career coaching is quite often the only opportunity we have to take the time to reflect in a structured and supportive way on what our lives look like and how we want work to fit in with them. It provides the tools to help people consider what is important and decide what’s next, in a safe and supportive environment outside of our management chain.
Usually, staff are curious about what to do next, they want help with a CV, or they are thinking about leaving the agencies. I’ll often find that staff have spoken to their colleagues and managers about their next steps but they’re not sure which way to go or what they’re suited to.
I will tailor my approach to the individual in front of me and we’ll work together to find a solution. Sometimes situations change rapidly, and we’ll adapt accordingly; I’m happy to be flexible to support our staff member’s needs. We usually work through four different steps, but before we start, I set out what I can and cannot offer, and what we will each bring to our coaching relationship. I’m on hand to listen, summarise, question and gently challenge along the way.
Our four steps are explore (open self-reflection), clarify (understanding patterns and trends), vision (deciding what you want life and work to look like) and action (developing a plan to achieve your vision).
I am passionate about supporting others to identify, use and communicate their strengths in the workplace. The best part of my role is hearing about people’s backgrounds (who doesn’t love a good story) and being present at that ‘lightbulb’ moment when employees discover their strengths, how they’ve used them in the past, and how they’d like to use them in future. There’s a real sense of achievement when you hear someone who wasn’t sure what’s next, confidently tell you all about their vision for the future and how they are going to get there!
I like to think that the number of types of coaching we offer is evidence that the agencies support the career development of its people. While MI5 may be the only organisation to specifically offer career counselling, there is an agency-wide coaching cadre that can also offer similar support across the three organisations.
This is a great question – there are so many opportunities for career development across the Intelligence Agencies. It’s just about identifying or in some cases creating opportunities that work for you. Everyone uses and wants to use their strengths, skills, and experience differently, which is why I’d say that you are only limited by how much you understand about yourself and what you want!
Taking time to reflect can really help you identify opportunities to help you grow and develop in a positive and intentional way.
Please note - the model shown is not an employee of MI5, MI6 or GCHQ and is for illustrative purposes only.
