How can coaching support me through a career change?

We have a guest blog from Kim Croasdale who spent 15 years working in climate and sustainability, and almost a decade in NHS leadership, contributing to some of the most complex strategic challenges faced by society. After having 2 children and returning to demanding work, she felt the gap between what organisations expect and what they actually support. So she founded "Entela" to help women navigate the changes that matter most: in their careers, their lives, and their sense of themselves.

In this blog she gives us some great tips on how to explore our thoughts, goals and ways forward.

New mothers experience an average income loss of over £65,600 by the time their first child turns 5. 

It’s a strange, contradictory time to live through. You are celebrated as a serene, selfless, all-giving creator of life, but one who no longer needs sleep, adult conversation, or a bathroom door that locks. Meanwhile, you’re expected to continue contributing economically, when it’s easy to feel like you’ve lost your professional identity. Over time, that takes a toll. 

Contrary to what many believe about themselves, it is not because women are suddenly deskilled or less motivated once they’ve had children. In fact, a recent report asked women what leadership-related capabilities they felt they had developed after motherhood. Every capability that they measured increased. Not just the so-called "soft" skills, like empathy. Time management. Negotiation. Prioritisation. And yet, women leaders are leaving the workforce. The UK’s gender pay gap for all employees is 12.8%. The gap is widest for those 40 years and over. 

We go from channelling all of our skills and energy towards a career, to feeling fragmented, overwhelmed and behind on everything. Frankly, we have too much on the to do list. 

But that isn’t a personal failing. It’s a structural mismatch. 

The working world hasn’t caught up with the pace of modern family life. That’s a bigger conversation, and one I’ll keep having. But it isn’t one that can be solved by one person alone. Meanwhile, we need to find our own way through. 

I experienced my own version of this – a solid career spanning climate policy and NHS strategic leadership, followed by the realities of juggling a family and a career in a society that expects far more than it supports. It's part of why I founded Entela, working to create the working conditions that allow women to stay. 

So often, it’s the individual coaching work that clients say is most worthwhile. Because it helps you to identify how to move forward with your own story, in a way that fits with your skills, your experience and your to-do list.

Life is genuinely demanding. Needing a structured, dedicated place to think and explore gives you the space to move forward with intention. 

This is what coaching provides. It’s a safe, non-judgemental space to explore your thoughts, goals and ways forward. It can be a powerful form of support during difficult times. When changing career, there are three big reasons why:

Identifying transferable skills 

When you become a new parent, you spend a lot of time practising what feels like a very different skillset. You may have gone from chairing meetings and managing teams to changing nappies and managing meltdowns. It can be difficult to align your personal and professional identities. 

But nobody tells you that you haven’t lost your skills. You’ve just been using them differently. 

The same research skills that once helped you to build a business case or write policy briefings now help you to research your child’s needs (but they might send you down a rabbit hole at 2am if your baby isn’t sleeping). 

The same flexibility that allowed you to update plans based on resources available now helps you get everyone out of the door, perhaps with a messier house than before. 

The same creativity that helped you write engaging presentations or training sessions now helps you come up with games to get your toddler to eat their broccoli or brush their teeth. 

The skills are still there. But they’ve been pointed at different problems, so they’ve developed in an unexpected direction. 

It means that returning to your professional identity isn’t as simple as picking up where you left off. It’s toggling between two demanding, real, evolving versions of yourself. Both versions might feel a little unfamiliar for a while. 

Coaching can help you name those skills, in a language that feels appropriate both personally and professionally. It helps you bring your identity as a new mother alongside your professional identity, and see how the two can work together, rather than against each other.

Define your own version of success

For many of us, confidence has always come from the outside. From the result that landed, the meeting that went well, the praise that confirmed we were doing it right. It’s not necessarily a flaw; it’s simply how most of us learn what we’re capable of, especially early in our careers. 

Then you have a baby and your identity shifts faster than your understanding of what good looks like. There’s no external, objective review of your progress or your achievement, so the evidence you once relied on dries up. 

You’re quietly reframing what success even means. The picture of motherhood that many of us carried before (everyone calm, everyone cared for, everything somehow still running) needs adjusting. On plenty of days, the actual bar is lower and more honest: a moment or two of real connection, a healthy meal and everyone leaving the house. That’s enough. But, if no one has told you that you’re allowed to set your own parameters, it might not feel like it. 

It’s not a small thing to work out alone, while also juggling competing demands on too little sleep and a stretched emotional bandwidth.

A coach won’t hand you a new definition of success. But they can help you notice when you’re still measuring yourself against an old one. By helping you build a version that’s actually yours, rooted in what matters to you now, they can help you build confidence from the inside. 

Uncovering your own way forward

Once you can see your own capability clearly, the next question is what you actually want to do with it. No one else can answer that for you, and this is why coaching is different from almost any other kind of support. 

The coach isn’t there to bring their own experience into the room. They’re there to help you explore yours. It’s a non-judgemental space to bring your own thoughts, your own concerns, your own ideas, and examine them honestly. 

It’s not mentoring, where you are specifically seeking someone out because of their experience and their advice. It’s not a friendly chat, where you will share stories and prop each other up. It’s not a family relationship, built on love, and sometimes its own unspoken tensions. 

It is a space just for you. Designed around you. Working with what you bring to the conversation, and what feels big and live for you in the moment. 

But the real power of coaching lies within its focus on action. You create your own solutions. The responsibility is on you to take the conversation and develop it into specific things that you will do or change. There’s a real sense of accountability in that.

You’re carrying more than you’ve been given credit for, and doing it without much of a map. Coaching won’t hand you the answers. But it can help you find the evidence, the direction, and the version of success that is truly yours.