Feeling stuck in your career? 5 signs it's time for a coach

Everyone has flat weeks. But there’s a difference between a rough patch and a real crossroads, and knowing which one you’re in changes what you should do about it.

1. You’ve been circling the same decision for months

Stay or go? Apply or not? If you keep having the same conversation with yourself (or your partner) without moving, the problem isn’t a lack of information: it’s that something unnamed is blocking the decision. Naming it is exactly what coaching is for.

2. Sunday evenings feel heavier than they should

A persistent dread before the work week is data. It doesn’t automatically mean “quit.” Sometimes the job is right and the way you’re working in it is wrong. But it always means something needs to change.

3. You’re succeeding, and it feels like nothing

Promotions land, targets are hit, and the satisfaction lasts about an afternoon. That gap between achievement and fulfilment usually points to goals you inherited rather than chose. Worth examining before the next five years run on autopilot.

4. Your confidence is quietly shrinking

You used to speak up; now you hedge. You used to apply for stretch roles; now you talk yourself out of them. Confidence erosion is gradual and self-reinforcing, and it rarely reverses on its own.

5. Everyone you’d normally ask is too close to the problem

Your manager has an agenda, your partner has a stake, your friends have loyalty. A coach is the one person in the room whose only interest is you making the best decision, and following through on it.

What a coach actually does about it

Not advice, and not therapy. In my practice we map where you are and where you actually want to be, use Positive Intelligence to quiet the inner noise that’s kept you stuck, and build a concrete plan: with me holding you accountable to it. Most clients feel the shift within the first few sessions.