YouMap® Coaching Strategy

In my previous blog, I’ve covered how I went about selling others on participating in YouMap. Now, you might be wondering: how does the YouMap® process actually work? Here is how I plan to structure out the programming with learning goals for both the participants and myself.

What is YouMap® and why you should care

YouMap® is a holistic self-discovery tool that reveals your Pillars of Career Fit:

Strengths — your natural, innate talents (not skills)
Values — your judgment about what’s important in life
Preferred skills — your abilities and expertise that you develop through experience
Personality-based interests — Your preferences relative to interests, passion, and motivation

This process includes 4 assessments — one for each pillar — and comes with a participant workbook, exercises, and a guide to creating a unique contribution statement, equivalent to a value proposition — what you do best that others need.

For me, YouMap® completely changed the way I saw my work. I understood myself better — my strengths, values, thoughts, emotions— things I felt to be true but that I couldn’t quite put into words. Going further, YouMap® helped me assess the types of role and organizational fit I was more likely to thrive in, and I gained the confidence to communicate those unique attributes during job interviews.

Self-awareness is the #1 predictor of career satisfaction, and YouMap helps you get that. Whether at Praxis or another value-driven company, I also want to demonstrate that I can help trouble-shoot people-facing problems — the nuanced, intangible aspects that make us who we are — and create an experience to develop individuals, teams, and communities.

Process Breakdown

Below is a breakdown of how the 4 weeks of YouMap® coaching are split up. Participants also complete 4 assessments which take them about 1 hour in one setting — with the option to pause and come back after each assessment. Once that’s done, I have everything I need to get started on the actual coaching.

Week 1: First group coaching, intro to YouMap — 2hours

During this session, I plan on walking participants through their strengths, values, skills, and career interests at a high level.

Step 1: 30-minutes on strengths coaching to discover your top five talents
Step 2: 30-minutes on values and motivating skills you enjoy and those you should avoid
Step 3: 30-minutes on career interest types and feasible best-fit roles and project assignments

I’ll have participants engaged throughout the sessions by asking questions and each step will conclude with an exercise — altogether worth 30mins tops. They’ll walk away with a holistic understanding of their YouMap®, and their call to action will be to craft their unique contribution statements for the following session.

Week 2: One-on-one deep dive into stories — 1hour

Here, I’ll meet with each participant one-on-one. Together, we identify stories that illustrate to the employer a specific moment when the participant faced a challenge, took action, or learned something new — in connection to their strengths, values, skills, and interests. After this week, participants will have a stronger understanding of their unique value proposition (unique contribution statement) and how to make their past experiences more compelling through storytelling.

Week 3: Group coaching part 2, team building — 1:30h

This second coaching will be all about team building: how to get participants to work together holistically based on their YouMap in a simulated work environment. This session includes breakout sessions and group bonding activities that enable participants to appreciate each others’ talents. They will also walk away with a clear sense of how they can leverage their strengths and preferred skills to tackle any projects, work in a team, and be productive.

Week 4: Final one-on-one & feedback session — 30mins

For the final coaching session, participants will meet with me 1:1 to discuss additional insights, concerns, or questions that came up doing YouMap. This is also an opportunity for participants to give me their own feedback on their experience and my performance throughout the project.

The perks

After the 4 weeks of coaching, participants walk away from the project feeling less stressed and more confident over who they are, equipped with:

A personalized strategy tailored to assess role, manager, and organizational fit
A set of compelling short stories that illustrate what they’re good at to wow employers during placement
A single page YouMap® summary of their strengths, values, preferred skills, and interests + a unique contribution statement to enhance their talent profile

My Main Goals:

At the end of this project, I want to walk away with a solid portfolio project that hit multiple birds at once:

To land a job coaching YouMap® within Praxis and similar talent-facing or mission-driven companies
To value-signal my talent for developing individuals, teams, and communities
To collect testimonials for my own private coaching practice, Silk Road Journey

Given the project breakdown and the value that I’ll provide my peers, I’ll be learning, enhancing, and implementing the following skill sets:

Survey Creation and Delivery — google forms
Zoom + Otter.ai live transcript
Virtual instruction delivery
Trello project management
Wiring blogs and documentation
Short-form video editing software — Screenrec, Loom, Snag it (for blurring out private or sensitive information)

Next Steps:

Check out my unique approach to project management, and how I did the actual coaching session!