Bringing Clarity To Your Career ‒ Exclusive Interview With Aileen Carson
Updated: Jun 30, 2022
Aileen Carson is a professional coach who specialises in helping managers find ways of reducing stress and avoiding burnout to help them gain clarity on the next steps of their career.
Aileen works with people who are unclear about where their career is heading as they are under constant pressure to achieve results. She helps them work out strategies to deal with stress so they can focus on their career ambitions.
Aileen’s own career transitions and personal experience of burnout have given her valuable insight that feeds into her coaching work. Her previous clients have learnt to recognise their own needs, improve their wellbeing, work out their next career moves, recognise the signs of burnout, increase their confidence and improve their leadership skills.
Aileen Carson, Professional Coach
Tell us about your professional background.
I spent just over a decade working as an editor in the publishing industry and, following a period of burnout, changed career and moved into the housing sector. I worked with people with severe and enduring mental health problems before moving on to manage a variety of services for people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and dementia.
After about 15 years in the housing sector, I qualified as a coach and I now work with managers in the third sector to help them reduce stress and avoid burnout so they can gain clarity on the next steps of their career.
Who do you work with?
The bulk of my work is with middle and senior managers who are under constant pressure to manage services, meet targets and deal with staffing issues such as investigations, disciplinaries and grievances, all of which are extremely time-consuming. Trying to keep on top of all this can involve working long hours, leading to exhaustion. It might have been so long since their own manager did their job that they have forgotten how stressful it can be, so they often find they have little support.
Many of my clients don’t have the time or energy to focus on their careers and they spend most of their days firefighting. They’re passionate about their work, but the constant pressure can lead to burnout and they often feel so tired and stressed that they start thinking of either changing careers or finding another job in the same sector that is less stressful.
What do you do for your clients?
It can be really difficult for people who have devoted their careers to making a difference to other people’s lives, but have ended up feeling so exhausted with their work that they are heading towards burnout.
I work with them to work out whether they actually do want to leave their job or whether they want to find ways of reducing the stress in their lives. I also help them to identify behaviours that might not be helping them.
If someone decides they do want to leave their job and work in a different sector, I work with them to help them identify their skills and values and work out what kind of job they want to do. I help them set goals and work out a plan to achieve those goals.
I find that my own experience of managing services, dealing with staffing issues and being under pressure to meet targets feeds into my work with my clients. Although everyone’s experiences are different and we all have our own ways of coping with stress, I’ve experienced many of the issues my clients are trying to deal with and this enables me to empathise with them and help them work out a way forward.
What outcomes can people expect to gain from working with you?
I start by looking at where people are now and helping them imagine a different future. Some of the results people can expect to achieve after working with me include:
Clarity around whether to stay in their current job or move on
Clarity around the kind of work they want to do
Learning to recognise the signs of burnout and how to avoid them
Learning how to recognise their own needs and communicate them to others
Recognising that feeling under pressure doesn’t mean they’re weak
Setting boundaries with their team and their manager
Finding the confidence to move on
At the moment, I’m working with individuals on a 1-1 basis, but I’m putting together group coaching programmes so I can help larger numbers of people.
I’m passionate about helping people with their wellbeing. This is so important in every aspect of our lives, but it’s particularly important in our working lives as there is a direct link between wellbeing and productivity. If we don’t have the right balance in our lives, our work can have a detrimental effect on our physical and mental health and I aim to help people find a real balance between their work and their wellbeing.
