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| When a client says the market is terrible, do you correct them or coach them? |
| A large number of career coaches I know would correct them. |
| They would pull up hiring data and point to LinkedIn job postings. They might remind the client that their sector is actually growing. It feels like good coaching because it looks like reframing. |
| It isn’t. |
| Gallup just released data that reframes the reframe, and if you work with clients who are stalling out, second-guessing their search, or convincing themselves that now is the wrong time to make a move, this matters more than any labor report you could quote them. |
| The data is worth reflecting on, and so are the implications for your coaching. |
Your client isn’t making an economic argument.
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| Gallup’s recent global poll on the world’s most important problems found something that should stop every career coach in their tracks. |
| People who reported difficulty living on their household income were significantly more likely to name the economy as their country’s top problem, regardless of whether their national economy was actually growing. |
| Read that again: GDP growth had almost no meaningful correlation with how people rated economic conditions. |
| In other words, the felt experience of financial stress predicted behavior far more accurately than any objective economic indicator. |
| I can understand why. |
| Your clients are not reading BLS reports before they decide whether to apply for a job, whether to ask for a raise, whether to stay put or make a pivot. They’re reading their own lives. |
| They’re looking at their bank account, their rent or their spouse’s job security. That felt reality is what’s driving every decision they bring into your sessions. |
| Quoting them a statistic does not change their felt reality. It just makes them feel unheard. |
Diminishing trust
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| It’s understandable. |
| You know the data and you’ve watched clients catastrophize markets that were genuinely hiring. You’ve seen fear masquerade as market analysis so you offer a counter-narrative. |
| What happens when you correct a client’s economic perception before you’ve fully acknowledged it? |
| Most of the time, they stop sharing how they really feel. |
| They just get a little more careful about what they say to you and learn that certain feelings get reframed instead of heard. |
| This often leads to a tidier presentation of their inner world, and you lose access to the exact material that would let you do your best coaching work. |
| The Gallup data gives you a useful frame. |
| If a person’s felt economic reality is a stronger predictor of their behavior than actual economic conditions, then your job is to understand what their felt reality is doing to their search, and coach that directly. |
The more skilled move
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| Instead of: “Actually, your field is hiring. I pulled the data.” |
| Try: “It sounds like the market feels really uncertain to you right now. Let’s talk about what that uncertainty is doing to how you’re approaching your search.” |
| That one pivot does three things at once. |
| First, it validates the experience without confirming the catastrophe. You’re acknowledging that it feels that way, and that the feeling is real and worth exploring. |
| Second, it shifts the conversation from debating economic conditions (a conversation you cannot win, because their felt reality will always outlast your labor stats) to coaching the person in front of you. |
| Third, it opens the door to the actual work. |
| Once a client feels heard on the fear, they can usually start separating what’s real from what’s amplified. It’s something they do for themselves when they feel safe enough to look at it clearly. |
3 prompts to use when a client presents their fear as market fact
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| Keep these close. They work precisely because they don’t argue with the client’s experience. |
- “When you say the market feels difficult right now, what does that look like for you day to day? What are you noticing?”
- “If the market felt more stable to you personally, what would you do differently in your search right now?”
- “What would need to be true for you to feel confident taking one step forward this week?”
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| None of these prompts requires you to have an opinion on interest rates. |
The data doesn’t change your client’s behavior
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| But their experience of the data might. |
| That’s what Gallup’s research actually shows, and it has a hard, practical implication for how you run your sessions. |
| Your clients need someone willing to sit with what the market feels like to them, and then help them take the next step anyway. |
| That’s the work, and it starts with believing them when they tell you it feels hard. |
| Want a copy of the Gallup report I mentioned? |
| Reply with ‘Data’, and I’ll send it to you. |
| Heather |
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| P.S. If you want to build the kind of coaching skills that work in moments exactly like this one, my Facilitating Career Development (FCD) credentialing program through the National Career Development Association (NCDA) gives you a framework for coaching the whole person, not just the job search. Sign up for my next cohort here. |
