For parents and students · Launch League blog
How to Evaluate Your Career Coach's Effectiveness
By Nick Gonzalez, founder, U.S. Air Force veteranPublished
The short answer
Judge career coaching by what happens outside the sessions. Agree on two or three measures before you start, then check at session two, the midpoint, the end and 90 days later. Working coaching produces actions every week, real conversations with people in the field, and a written plan. If nothing has changed outside the room by the midpoint, raise it.
The leave-the-room test
After every session, something should leave the room with your teenager: a task, a name, a message to send, a question to ask someone. Three sessions in a row with nothing leaving the room means the coaching has become talk, and talk on its own isn't worth paying for.
Decide what 'working' means before the first session
Most families judge coaching by feel: does my teenager like the coach? That matters, but it's a poor measure on its own. Teenagers like plenty of adults who don't change anything.
Agree two or three measures at the start, in writing, with your teenager and the coach. The International Coaching Federation's competency standards expect exactly this: a coach should partner with the client to define measures of success for the whole engagement and for each session. If a coach won't name what success looks like, that tells you something.
Good measures are things you could check without asking anyone's opinion: 'has spoken to two people working in fields they're considering', 'has a written plan for the next 90 days', 'has chosen next year's courses with a reason for each'.
The four checkpoints
You don't need to monitor every session. Check at four points and ask the same plain questions each time.
- After session two: does your teenager know what the coaching is for, in their own words? Have they done the first task? Do they want to go back? This is also where a refund or exit should be easiest.
- At the midpoint: has at least one real-world action happened, such as a message sent, a call made or a workplace visited? Is the list of careers being considered getting more specific, not longer?
- At the end: is there a written plan your teenager can explain without notes? Have the conversations with people in the field actually happened? Did you get a summary you could follow?
- Ninety days later: did any of the plan happen? A plan that nobody has touched in three months was a document, not a plan.
The leave-the-room test
This is the one I'd use if you only use one. At the end of each session, ask your teenager a single question: what are you doing before next time? A vague answer once is normal. A vague answer three weeks running means the sessions are pleasant conversations and nothing more.
It's the same thing I watched for when I was turning students on work placements into apprentices. The ones who grew were the ones who left every conversation with a task they could finish before the next one. The task can be small. It can't be missing.
A checklist you can run tonight
Answer yes or no. Mostly yes is good. Three or more no's is worth a conversation with the coach.
- Did the coach explain what coaching is and isn't before starting?
- Were measures of success agreed, and do you know what they are?
- Does your teenager do most of the talking in sessions?
- Has something left the room after most sessions?
- Has your teenager spoken to at least one person working in a field they're considering?
- Do you get regular, short updates without having to chase them?
- Does the coach reply to messages within the time they promised?
- Has the coach ever said 'that's a question for the school' or 'that's not my area'?
- Is your teenager's answer to 'what's next?' more specific than it was at the start?
- Would your teenager notice if the sessions stopped?
Red flags
Any one of these is worth raising directly, and two or more is worth ending over:
- The coach talks more than your teenager, session after session.
- Promises of outcomes nobody can promise: admission to a program, a job, a scholarship.
- Pressure to buy more sessions before the current ones have produced anything.
- No answer when you ask what confidentiality covers and what you will be told.
- Wandering into therapy, diagnosis or medication. The ICF standards expect coaches to keep coaching distinct from psychotherapy and to refer clients to other professionals when that's what's needed.
- A plan written by the coach and handed over, rather than one your teenager wrote and can defend.
What the research does and doesn't tell you
There is decent evidence that coaching helps adults. A 2014 meta-analysis by Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen in The Journal of Positive Psychology pooled studies of coaching in organizations and found positive effects on performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation.
Two cautions. Those studies were about adults at work, not teenagers choosing a career, and an average effect across studies says nothing about whether your particular coach is any good. So use the research as a reason to take coaching seriously, and use the checkpoints above to judge the coach in front of you.
How the Future Ready Sprint is measured
I'd rather be judged by the checklist above than by how much your teenager likes me. The Sprint produces things you can hold: a Career Discovery Brief before the first session, a two-minute parent update each week, a 30/60/90-day plan in your teenager's words, a family wrap-up and a check-in at 90 days. If the first two sessions aren't worth it, you get the whole fee back. If your teenager does the work and doesn't end with a written plan and two conversations with people in the field, I coach them for up to four more weekly sessions, free, to get there.
Questions
Quick answers
- How soon should we see results from career coaching?
- You should see actions within two or three sessions: a task done, a message sent. A clear direction usually takes the full block of sessions, and for some teenagers the honest result is ruling things out, which is progress too.
- My teenager loves the coach but nothing seems to change. What now?
- Raise it with the coach, with your teenager in the room, using the leave-the-room test: what has happened outside the sessions? A good coach will welcome the question and tighten the tasks. A defensive answer is your signal.
- Is it all right to switch coaches partway through?
- Yes. Fit matters, and the ICF standards list working out client-coach compatibility as part of a coach's job. Ask about refunds and what happens to notes before you start, so switching is simple if it comes to that.
- Should a parent sit in on coaching sessions?
- Usually not, beyond an opening conversation and a wrap-up. Teenagers talk differently with a parent in the room. Ask instead for short written updates on what was covered and what was assigned.
- How can I check a coach's credentials?
- Ask what training they have and how they handle confidentiality and referrals. If a coach says they hold an International Coaching Federation credential (ACC, PCC or MCC), you can check it through the ICF's verify-a-coach tools. A credential is one signal; the checkpoints in this post are another.
Next step
Want help with your teenager's next step?
Read next
Keep reading
Sources: International Coaching Federation: Updated ICF Core Competencies (released 2019, in effect from 2021) · International Coaching Federation: Verify a coach and credential levels · Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen (2014), Does coaching work? A meta-analysis, The Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1). Coaching is not therapy, medical, legal or financial advice.