As a coach and assessor, I have been working with the Career Fitness Profiler for a number of years. This instrument offers me a nuanced and substantiated insight into the career perspective of the individual employee and has reshaped my coaching approach, helping me to cater to the interests of both the employee and the organization. These insights have led me to understand the nuanced challenges employees face with reintegration after burn-out.

In the case below, which revolves around the aforementioned, I describe how I was able to get to the essence of this specific coachee’s concerns based on the results from the Career Fitness Profiler’s report. It allowed him to firmly take his position in his negotiations with the company and ensure that there was a win-win resolution for both parties. The employee had just recovered from a burn-out period and, upon his reintegration, was facing an impending change to a new role in a different part of the organization.

What did I need to find out?

The Career Fitness Profiler gives me all the information I need to help facilitate reintegration after burn-out:

• A deep insight in the current energy level. I look at hope, resilience, self-efficacy and optimism. This gives me an idea if the coachee is really ready to return and to what degree support form the organization may be necessary.
• A clear view of what is important in the career in terms of motivation and career values. This helps the coachee in making the right career choices or both himself and the organization.
• The degree to which a person is capable of managing the own career, as this an important factor in preventing relapse into burn-out. If career management attitudes should be weak in my coachee, I would certainly dedicate a considerable amount of time to developing these.

Wat did the Career Fitness Profiler reveal?

While preparing for the feedback interview I found that the way in which the results of the Career Fitness Profiler were processed showed that the employee returned to the shop floor with the necessary confidence and hope for the future. Stability and predictability in the professional, relational, and financial fields proved to be important drivers. The report also showed that there was a strong desire to make a substantial contribution to the organization. However, based on the employee’s answers, there was little evidence of clear career orientation. This fact, combined with his limited desire for personal goal achievement and low scores on the career management attitudes, entailed risks for a new episode of energy loss. He would be swayed easily by the company’s proposal to change position and context.

The feedback interview revealed that the employee had been active in the same professional field for years, within a corporate business environment. He also seldom, or never, challenged himself to discover other insights and perspectives, neither inside nor outside the company. As a result, the employee had no knowledge whatsoever of what awaited him in his new role or the environment in which it was situated. However, through his optimism about the future, he displayed a strong motivation to take the next step.

Before setting specific coaching goals, a joint approach consisted of further mapping out his personal goals as well as his energy drainers and – givers.  We also looked for other experiences and situations within the new context to improve his mental openness.

All is well that ends well

Today, as a result of the in-depth study, the employee is working in a known field within a new, more hands-on context. He has discovered plenty of initiatives in the organization through which he expands his internal network and takes on assignments he feels good about.

In part thanks to the deployment of the Career Fitness Profiler the employee in question started to show more concrete signs of self-management. His previous lack of self-management was one of the key aspects that, due to the lack of drive to dare to walk his own path, was one of the reasons for his past burn-out. This focus on the development of self-management skills in the career really shines as one of the greatest assets of the Career Fitness Profiler! With this questionnaire, I have found that employees facing challenges of reintegration after burn-out are really able to pinpoint their areas of improvement and work on them so that they can develop the self-management skills necessary for positive change.

As a coach, the Career Fitness Profiler not only offers me a thorough insight into the perspective of the individual employee, but it also shows me what to focus on to help my coachee grow into a self-assured career actor. In this instance, my coachee developed strong negotiation skills that allowed him to responsibility for his own professional well-being while still respecting both his own interests as well as those of the company’s.

Written by Lesley Vanleke, Zest Academy Partner TalentLogiQs