During my career I have coached many individuals on their next steps.
Maybe it was talking about a career move or thinking about retirement. You might think successfully coaching others means that I’ve also done a good job coaching myself.
Well, that is not the case.
This was my motivation for registering for Reframing Retirement for Women: Designing Future Possibilities. I’ve found that coaches are a lot like the shoemaker’s child. We are great at coaching others and asking the right questions for them to get clarity on what is important to them, but not so great at helping ourselves.
The program, facilitated by Susan Burnett and Joan Cheverie together with Catherine Dalipe, caught my eye at a time when I was reflecting on how much I enjoy the work I’m doing, but also feeling a need to begin to think about how I want to use my time when I’m ready for my own next act. I know that I enjoy meeting new people, listening to their challenges and helping them problem-solve. I also know that my next step doesn’t have to be focused on coaching, but that there may be other ways I can get my “meeting new people fix.”
The way the program is designed, you identify the problem you’re trying to solve and then brainstorm and design your possible future. Using design thinking, we prototyped what our possible future could look like in small pieces. This is not unlike the approach I take with coaching clients who are trying to solve a big hairy challenge, we break it into pieces. Things are a lot less overwhelming and achievable when we do this.
One of the many highlights was the idea of forming my own design team to help me design what my next act might look like versus trying to do my thinking alone. The interactive format of the program allows you to meet many of the other participants and really get to know each other. Their experiences provided me with fresh perspectives and a motivation to keep the design process going. I’m not in a rush to make a change, but I am someone who likes to have a plan. Reframing Retirement for Women: Designing Future Possibilities helped me get over the biggest hump for me which is I’m not retiring, but I am designing my next move or “nexting” as one person put it.
– Roxanne Hori
DYL Reframing Retirement participant and coach
