How Career Coaching Can Lead to a Career Awakening – An Exclusive Interview with Coach Ruth Hutchins
Ruth Hutchins is a Career and Life Path Coach, founder of Creating Healthy Careers, and creator of Career Awakening™, with more than 30 years’ experience across recruitment, career development and leadership coaching. In this interview, Ruth explores what it really means when a career no longer fits, why accomplished women can still doubt their own authority, what organisations miss about the human side of restructuring, and how to make your next move from clarity rather than reaction.
Ruth Hutchins, Career Awakening Coach
What does a “career awakening” look like when someone first realises their current path no longer fits?
It’s when someone moves from knowing that what they are doing is no longer a fit and feeling that something is missing or needs to change, to a place of clarity, knowing and inner confidence. All of a sudden, they see what life has been trying to show them, including why certain challenges have come across their path. They gain an understanding of themselves, the value they bring, and what they are here to do. Without realising it, they shift into taking responsibility for their future and feel more in control of navigating their path, rather than being pushed along it. The missing pieces become visible to them.
After more than 30 years across recruitment and career development, what have you learned that conventional career advice often misses?
When I worked in recruitment, it always amazed me how often people I’d placed in new roles, even CEOs, would get in their own way. Self-doubt would rise to the surface, which is very natural when you’re in new territory. They would then go off and undertake further skills development instead of taking the opportunity for deeper personal development.
Skills will get you the role, but it’s what’s happening on the inside that decides whether you thrive in it.
There are two pivotal things I look at with clients that help them see their career from a whole new perspective. The first is how and why to align their career with their personal values. When our career is aligned, we achieve greater success, fulfilment and wellbeing. When it isn’t, we often self-sabotage our career, no matter how hard we try to do the right thing. The second is helping people to stop and reflect on how their life so far has shaped their path. Every experience, including the difficult ones, and the key influencers in our lives have equipped us with unique knowledge, skills and experience.
How do you help someone distinguish between needing a new job and experiencing a deeper shift within themselves?
It often comes down to whether someone is moving away from something or towards something. If they’re running away from something they haven’t confronted or are being challenged by, a new job won’t fix it. If, however, they’re searching for something their current job or employer can’t give them, then they need to look outside their current organisation. Even then, don’t go looking for that one missing thing to the exclusion of all the other ingredients that give you a sense of fulfilment. Build on what you have.
The other factor is whether there’s still a values alignment and, if there isn’t, whether that can be addressed within your current role or organisation. For example, after a restructure, you might no longer have as much autonomy to make decisions as you used to, and that might be something you can negotiate some boundaries around. If the values gap can’t be closed, then the time has come to look elsewhere. Typically, there’s a six-month window where you can still operate at a high level before performance starts to slip.
What do organisations tend to underestimate about the human impact of restructuring and workforce change?
The piece that gets overlooked is what’s required for the human transition to occur. At a time when organisations want people to adapt and adopt, people are often in survival mode. As Maslow’s hierarchy shows, we can’t operate at higher levels until our basic needs for safety and security are met. While organisations are talking benefits, improvements and efficiencies, people are wondering: Where do I fit? Am I still valued? Is there a future for me here?
Under that kind of threat, the amygdala takes over and the brain shifts into fight, flight or freeze. Creative thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving, all vital during change, go offline. It presents as resistance, withdrawal, silence or poor performance, but underneath is uncertainty, identity disruption, a loss of belonging and exhaustion, which can lead to burnout or people leaving.
Timing matters too. By the time a change is announced, leaders have usually had months to process it, yet their people are expected to get on board quickly. And those who stay are often carrying extra workload, guilt about colleagues who’ve gone, and uncertainty about what’s next. When that gap isn’t recognised and honoured, it shows up as disengagement or good people quietly leaving.
When organisations treat psychosocial safety as part of the change and offer career transition support that gives people clarity, safety and space to reconnect with what matters to them, change is far more likely to land well, and they keep the people they most need.
Why can accomplished women still struggle to trust their own authority even after years of professional success?
It goes back to years of programming from an early age, and it takes consistent practice to ‘unwire’ that thinking. I’ve witnessed so many women not applying for roles because they don’t think they ‘have it all’ or are good enough, or that there is someone better equipped within the organisation. Or they don’t ask for the same money in salary negotiations. I’m not denying there are external biases at times, but in many cases, it is women holding themselves back, which means that the solution is also within their control.
The first step is identifying where it’s coming from. Once someone has that awareness and has joined the dots, 80% of the issue dissipates. I was coaching a senior executive who had grown up in a household where girls were not meant to be heard (yes, it still happens). Her organisation was going through a major restructure, and she needed to compete for her role. The fear of having to do that almost stopped her applying. When she saw what was stopping her and where that pattern had come from, she was able to dismiss enough of the fear to move forward. These limiting thoughts are rooted in our past and are triggered in the present, so the key is to stop and explore the underlying belief whenever you are triggered, and where it came from. Quite often, it came from someone else.
Another element is that women often don’t see their own value. Many of us grew up watching role models who put others first. That can be a great leadership strength, but it means we rarely stop to notice the impact we’re having. Acknowledging positive feedback or reflecting on what you’ve achieved each week helps counter this ingrained thinking.
When someone feels stuck in their career, which clues from their past are most useful to examine first?
I’d start by looking at what you loved before the world told you who to be: the activities that absorbed you as a child, the subjects you gravitated towards, the things you did simply because you enjoyed them. These often point to natural strengths that have been sitting quietly in the background.
Next, look for the moments in your working life when you felt most like yourself. When did time disappear? Which projects left you energised rather than drained? Those moments show you what you’re best at doing.
Then look for patterns. What do people consistently come to you for, even when it’s not in your job description? And who were the people who shaped you along the way, the ones you looked up to and even the ones who challenged you most?
When you start joining these dots, a thread emerges. It’s rarely a brand new direction. More often, it’s part of you that’s been there all along, waiting to be given more room.
What practical step can someone take to start building a new professional identity before they feel completely confident?
A good place to start is noticing what traits you admire in others. Typically, these are characteristics you have within you but aren’t expressing. It can also show up in situations where you get jealous of someone else. It’s simply because that person is demonstrating the trait you want to express but are suppressing. Once you have an insight into the characteristics you want to form part of your professional identity, start to build that muscle. Start experimenting in an environment or with people you feel safe with. It might even be outside of work. It’s like building confidence: you don’t develop it first and then put it into practice; you develop it through practice.
This is the essence of the ‘act as if’ principle. Rooted in William James’s insight that action shapes feeling, and developed by Maxwell Maltz in his work on self-image, it suggests that we grow into a new identity by first behaving as that person would.
How has learning to trust your own inner guidance changed the way you make career and life decisions?
This has been an ongoing learning process, and still is. Where I’ve landed is that I will still listen to external opinions, but then take time and space to sit with a decision and see what that quiet, inner voice comes up with. I also tune into how my body reacts, as the body also gives us clues. Each time I make a decision, my body reacts, so I’ve become increasingly aware of what those reactions are. It goes back to whether something feels expansive or contracting.
One of the biggest messages I got through listening to my inner guidance was in my first year of business, about six months in, when things weren’t going to plan. I was out on my morning beach walk on a wintery day and was questioning why things weren’t working and whether I should give up. In the silence, the message that came through was, “We didn’t put you on this path to fail.” That guidance has stayed with me through the tough times, and I’m now in year 9 of my business. The key is that once you ask a question, be silent and observe what thoughts come to mind.
What would you want someone questioning their career today to understand before rushing into their next move?
Quite often, when something isn’t the way we want it, it’s tempting to think a new job will solve the problem, whether that’s a difficult manager, an annoying colleague, or missing out on a promotion. The truth is, if you don’t resolve it in your current job, the situation will pop up in a future one. So before you head out the door, look for what that experience is trying to teach you or equip you with. If you’re in a conflict with a colleague, perhaps you need to develop the courage to have an honest conversation with them. If you’re feeling undervalued, take a look at whether you truly value yourself.
You may still leave that job, but at least the same problem won’t follow you because once you learn the lesson, the lesson disappears.
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