If you ask people what career coaching is, many will say it involves helping someone find a job. While this is true in many cases, career coaching is significantly more far-reaching. Career coaching is an ever-expanding field as more people look to coaches to help them create and achieve short- and long-term career objectives.

Some of the areas where a career coach can support you include:

Assessments — a number of professional assessments can shed light on your strengths and weaknesses as a manager and leader. Myers-Briggs, Print, and DISC are examples of assessments that can help you sharpen your skills and identify blind spots. When taken as part of a coaching program, he or she can help you address and integrate elements of your assessment into your daily routine.

Finding a balance between your personal and professional lives — a coach helps you prioritize your life around your values and responsibilities. Making conscious decisions about how to spend your time and being accountable to these decisions can be a very valuable coaching endeavor.

Providing a confidential sounding board — managers and leaders can benefit from having a confidential sounding board to help them test and refine key strategic or operational initiatives prior to launching a new program or concept.

Creating and refining long-term career objectives — a career coach can help you better understand how what you are doing today (or what you are not doing) might affect your long-term career vision and goals.

Innovation and creativity — career coaching can help provide innovative ways to look at routine tasks and situations. Coaching can help pump renewed energy and life into a “stale” organization or bring about realignment with an organization’s mission.

Providing an executive perk — providing valued employees with career coaching is a way to show appreciation for their contribution to the organization. It’s also a great way to assess not only an employee’s present “worth” to the organization, but his or her potential contribution as well.

Planning for retirement — retirement coaching is booming! Retirement offers many people the financial flexibility to try something new. Just like most other things in life, however, a solid plan is essential. A coach can help you sort out the possibilities for your retirement including launching a second career.

Coaching is all about increasing your self awareness and opening possibilities. Working with a career coach ensures that your career path is intentional rather than coincidental.