Career In Progress

Career In Progress Coach for Career Coaches:
Earn internationally recognized credentials as a career services provider. A seasoned professional in the mist of transition?

Join my Facilitating Career Developments (FCD) Training or get 1-1 coaching on how to amplify your coaching practice! Are you a new graduate navigating the world of work for the first time? A job seeker looking to reinvent in your professional brand? A career practitioner interested in furthering your skills and abilities? Career In Progress is designed to provide assistance with all aspects of yo

ur career and professional development. Together we will work to clarify and reach your goals, and set in motion your career satisfaction. An award winning Career and Professional Development Instructor, providing career literacy training to career practitioners globally since 2002.

Your inbox probably doesn’t need more career advice.It needs better-filtered career advice.There is no shortage of peopl...
09/04/2026

Your inbox probably doesn’t need more career advice.

It needs better-filtered career advice.

There is no shortage of people telling our clients how to find a job, build a career, lead a team, use LinkedIn, navigate AI, negotiate an offer, write a resume.

After a while it all becomes noise for them, and a roadblock between our support and their growth.

So I put together six career newsletters I think are worth knowing about in 2026.

Some are especially useful if you’re actively job searching. Others are stronger for experienced professionals making a strategic move. A few go deeper into executive positioning and leadership.

And I included Career Edge, my own newsletter, because it serves a different audience altogether: YOU! The career professional helping other people navigate all of this.

My six picks:
• Job Search Guide — Jan Tegze
• Career Essentials — Hannah Morgan
• Teal Talk — Lara Perlstein
• Career Edge — Master Career Coach
• Career Briefs — Sarah Johnston
• Career Accelerator — Adrienne Tom Tom
Swipe through to see which one fits where you are right now.

And if you already read a career newsletter you think belongs on my radar, tell me which one. I’m always looking for thoughtful voices worth following.

jobsearch

You coach your clients to protect their calendar, their energy, their weekends. Do you take your own advice?Career profe...
09/03/2026

You coach your clients to protect their calendar, their energy, their weekends.
Do you take your own advice?

Career professionals are some of the worst offenders when it comes to burnout, and it’s not because we don’t know better. It’s because the job runs on being available.

Does this sound like you: Answering the message at 9pm. Squeezing in one more session because saying no feels like letting someone down.

I am a huge fan of continuous skills development, but more training doesn’t close an energy gap. It adds weight to one that’s already there.

Burnout isn’t proof you’re not cut out for this work. It’s the notification that a boundary is overdue.

Being good at a job and wanting to keep it are not the same.Most performance conversations only ask one of them. Nobody’...
09/02/2026

Being good at a job and wanting to keep it are not the same.

Most performance conversations only ask one of them. Nobody’s formally checking whether the job is doing right by the person doing it, even though that’s usually what predicts who stays.

Dawis and Lofquist’s Theory of Work Adjustment (1964/1984) splits fit into two loops running at once, not one:
➤ Satisfactoriness: are their skills meeting what the role requires? The employer’s read on fit.
➤ Satisfaction: are the role’s rewards meeting what they need? The employee’s read on fit.

A client can be winning on one and losing on the other.

“I’m good at this job, I just don’t know why I want out” is satisfactoriness holding while satisfaction erodes underneath it.

“I love this job but keep falling short” is the mirror image.

Different diagnosis, different intervention.
Tenure isn’t one score. It’s whether both loops hold up or which one gives out first.

Save this for the next client who can’t explain why they want out of a job they’re objectively good at.

Yesterday I spoke about advocacy. Most career professionals think advocacy starts the moment a client walks into a negot...
09/01/2026

Yesterday I spoke about advocacy.

Most career professionals think advocacy starts the moment a client walks into a negotiation, an interview, or a hard conversation with their manager.

It doesn’t.
It starts earlier than that, and most of it never gets seen.

Advocacy isn’t just the courage to speak up. It’s the ability to state, specifically, what you want and why.

That’s the function of the four questions in this week’s graphic. They’re not a gentle warm-up before the real coaching starts. They’re the work that makes advocacy possible later.

Asking what still feels true separates the parts of the role worth keeping from the parts your client has just gotten used to.

Asking what they’d pursue without old titles in the way strips off a label that’s been doing the client’s thinking for them.

Asking which skill carries over turns a vague pull toward something new into evidence the client can actually point to.

And asking for the smallest test this month converts a belief into something real enough to defend, because nothing sharpens a position like watching it survive contact with an actual step.

A client can’t advocate for a shift they haven’t examined this closely. Our job is to help them build the position first.

These four questions are how thinking turns into something they can stand behind.

Advocacy doesn’t wait to be asked.➤ It’s reading the hard email before hitting send.➤ It’s being the voice in the corner...
08/31/2026

Advocacy doesn’t wait to be asked.

➤ It’s reading the hard email before hitting send.
➤ It’s being the voice in the corner during a dreaded negotiation.
➤ It’s saying “you earned that” until they can say it about themselves.

That’s advocacy.
Advocacy backs someone up.
Rescuing takes over.
One builds a client who can move forward confidently because of the work you’ve done together.
The other builds a client who will always need back-up.
Where do you draw that line in your own practice?
____
Save this for when you catch yourself doing the work instead of building the capacity.

I didn’t begin my career knowing exactly where I was headed.I moved through 14 different jobs as I honed my professional...
08/25/2026

I didn’t begin my career knowing exactly where I was headed.

I moved through 14 different jobs as I honed my professional direction. Some were useful stepping stones. Some taught me what I didn’t want. And most made me wonder why career decisions were so much harder than they looked from the outside.

For more than 20 years, I’ve worked in career development as an educator, coach, trainer, and leader. Along the way, my work gradually shifted from helping people navigate their own careers to training the professionals who help them do it.

That’s the work I love most now.

I help career professionals deepen their expertise. I teach the theory behind the work, practical coaching tools, assessment and exploration strategies, professional judgment, and the skills that help us move beyond surface-level career advice.

To learn more about me, visit careerinprogress.com

08/24/2026

The moment you realize you’ve become very good at making a bad fit work.

Most of us can make an ill-fitting role work for quite a while.

We adjust.
Take on more.
Lower our expectations.
Find workarounds.
Tell ourselves the next project might change things.

And sometimes adapting is exactly the right move.

But there is a point when staying becomes less about resilience and more about trying to fit yourself into something you’ve already outgrown.

That can carry a cost.

You may stop learning because you’ve mastered what the role can teach you.

You may keep solving the same problems without gaining meaningful new experience.

You may become known for work you no longer want to do.

And perhaps most importantly, the time you spend maintaining an old fit is time you’re not spending exploring what might fit the person you’ve become.

Of course, feeling restless isn’t necessarily a reason to resign.

When I work with clients navigating a similar situation, I initiate a growth cost audit.

Here are three questions to ask:
1/ What is this role still giving me?

2/ What am I continually having to compensate for?

3/ What is staying costing me?

4/ If nothing meaningful about this role changed over the next year, would I still choose it?

A “no” doesn’t mean you need to hand in your notice tomorrow.

It may mean it’s time to stop putting all of your energy into making the role fit.

And start exploring more comfortable options.
_____
Follow Career In Progress, for research-backed career coaching strategies and practitioner tools.

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter: careerinprogress.com

08/20/2026

Success is a great confidence builder. But failure is the better teacher.

When something works, we celebrate it, repeat it, and rarely spend much time pulling it apart. Instead, we keep moving.

Failure makes that harder.

As a career coach, I’ve seen clients navigate interviews that went nowhere, promotions that didn’t happen, career moves that started out as the right decision but turned out to be all wrong once they got into it.

Those experiences give us information that success often doesn’t because they expose assumptions.

They show us where preparation was thin, where expectations were off, where a skill needs work, or where we were pursuing something that wasn’t actually a good fit.

There is even a body of research around productive failure, which is the idea that struggling with a problem before being shown the solution can deepen later learning.

The important word is productive.

Failure by itself doesn’t teach us much.

The learning happens when we go back and make sense of what happened.

That is one of the places career professionals can be extremely valuable.

We can help clients move beyond what didn’t work and look at what the experience revealed.

Not every rejection means the strategy was wrong.

Not every missed opportunity means the client lacked ability.

And not every career decision that didn’t work out was a mistake.

Failures teach us preparation.
They teach us timing.
They teach us about fit.

Success gives us evidence of what worked.

Failure gives us material to learn from.
———
Check out the biggest mistakes coaches make and how to fix: https://lnkd.in/epyeuSwU

Research: Sinha & Kapur, 2021

Follow Career In Progress for more like this

We spend a lot of time clarifying what we want. But clarity alone rarely moves us forward.A client may say they want a n...
08/18/2026

We spend a lot of time clarifying what we want. But clarity alone rarely moves us forward.

A client may say they want a new career, more meaningful work, a promotion, better boundaries, or a business of their own.

And all of those goals can sound very appealing when our client focuses on the outcome. But the harder work begins when the goal starts bumping into the life they already have.

A career change may require tolerating some uncertainty.

A promotion may require stepping into a role before confidence catches up.

A return to school may mean restructuring evenings, finances, or family routines.

A job search may require making time for networking when the client would much rather spend that time tweaking their application materials one more time.

This is where career coaching becomes more than helping someone name a goal.

We help clients see the tradeoffs attached to it.

Helping reveal these tradeoffs is not meant to talk them out of what they want or to glorify their sacrifice. And certainly not to suggest that every career goal should come at a high expense.

But meaningful change usually asks something of us.

Time. Attention. Comfort. Certainty. An old habit. Sometimes even an old version of ourselves.

Part of our work is helping clients make those choices.

This is the beauty of our work.

Goals become much more useful when the client understands where they want to go AND what they may need to make room for along the way.
_____
Catch my free masterclass on the biggest mistakes coaches make: https://lnkd.in/epyeuSwU

08/17/2026

Most people miss the moment growth begins.

It often hides inside your hardest tasks.

Growth-minded professionals see possibility everywhere.

➜ A task becomes a teacher
➜ A setback becomes a stepping stone
➜ Opportunities bloom from barriers

Career growth is about changing how you see yourself.

Spotting your potential is powerful.

To help develop it?
That’s self-leadership.
That’s career growth in action.

3 ways to turn your potential into career progress:

1/ Name the wins
➜ Recognize your strengths and the strengths of others.
➜ People dismiss their natural talents until someone reflects them back.

2/ Step into stretch
➜ Seek projects that push you beyond your comfort zone.
➜ Growth happens where challenge builds confidence.

3/ Shape, don’t shrink
➜ Don’t mold yourself into someone else’s path.
➜ Ask questions, seek mentors, and design your own trajectory.

Shifting your mindset from “What’s missing?” to “What’s possible?”
changes everything.

Next time you’re in a professional rut, try looking at your career with an artist’s eye.
_______
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Muraliat: Zhang Xiaoyuan

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