The best way to illustrate value of a career coach is to compare them to personal trainers. Anyone can go to a gym and work out. Having a personal trainer is not a prerequisite to fitness. The value of a personal trainer is that he/she helps their client achieve their fitness goal quicker and with better results. Similarly, a career coach accelerates job search process resulting in significantly higher starting salary.

A job-search campaign demands specific skills such as resume and cover letter writing, networking, interviewing and negotiations. The best jobs don't necessarily go to most qualified, but rather, to those with sharpest job-search skills. An effective career coach provides expert advise, insight and training on these essential skills giving their clients a tremendous competitive advantage.

Although you know better, you do not apply all that you have learned when it comes to making most of yourself. If this is true for you, then how are you going to improve?

Awareness is key. Until you spot what you are doing you will not know where to make changes to how you talk to people. How can you change what needs to be improved if you do not see it yourself?

There is a very simple way to generate awareness of how you behave with other people. A way to develop perspective that is not clouded by your biased perceptions.

Three Steps to Powerful Communication:

1 Be a neutral observer

Choose a recent conversation you had which did not go as well as you would have liked. Next, pretend for a moment that you are a neutral observer of conversation. In your imagination go back in time to that incident and see yourself talking to that other person. Picture surroundings, hear sounds and feel atmosphere of place.

Then run through entire conversation again, only this time imagine that you are neutral observer. See yourself and other person talking and listening to each other and notice dynamics of conversation. Pay special attention to non verbal reactions.