08/01/2025
Clarity Before Strategy: Helping Clients Define Fit
By Colleen Conway-Nobert
Interrupting Disengagement
Across life stages and industries, clients are sharing the same story: they are doing the work, meeting expectations, and getting by, but feeling increasingly disconnected from their careers. Misalignment, not just burnout, is a key factor behind this disengagement (Hansen, 2023).
Career development professionals are uniquely positioned to interrupt this pattern. By helping clients gain clarity early in the career development process, they can shift conversations from being reactive to being intentional. The key is helping clients distinguish between capacity and fit sooner rather than later.
Capacity vs. Fit
Career support systems have long focused on capacity- an individual's mental or physical ability, aptitude, or skill to perform specific tasks or roles (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). But people rarely leave jobs because they lack skills or qualifications. They leave because the work drains them, the environment misaligns with their values, or the culture does not support how they work best (Harter, 2024).
Shifting the conversation by starting with fit, rather than capacity, can help clients make career decisions that are more sustainable and energizing. Fit focuses more on how well the work and environment align with who the client is. It includes a client’s:
- Strengths and natural energy
- Core values and motivators
- Clarity and confidence in their choices
- Cultural and structural preferences (e.g., pace, communication flow, leadership style).
Understanding fit begins with self-awareness and self-awareness requires language. Clients must clarify what fit means to them personally before they can use it to make intentional career choices. Career development professionals can play a key role here, using targeted conversations and reflective questions to help clients articulate and refine their personal definition.
Define Key Career Terms
To truly understand fit, however, clients need to first define what terms like success, growth, impact, and culture mean to them personally, and rank their relative importance in determining fit. Without personal definitions, clients may unconsciously adopt inherited ones based on factors such as industry norms, family expectations, or workplace metrics. Helping clients name and own these definitions builds the foundation for assessing whether a role or workplace truly aligns (or fits) with who they are. Help clients create their own working definitions by asking:
- What does success look, sound, and feel like to you?
- When you hear the word career, what comes to mind? What about the words pressure, purpose, stability, or status?
- What does impact mean to you? What would you want to be thanked for?
Defining these terms is not abstract, it sets the direction. Without this clarity, career strategies remain reactive rather than personalized and focused on the client’s needs and goals.
Energy as an Alignment Clue
Once clients define their terms, the next step is identifying where they gain, and lose, energy at work. Feeling energized is a reliable indicator of career alignment. Studies show that nearly half of employees experience energy-building moments in the right environments (Ejlertsson et al., 2020), and using one’s strengths daily correlates with increased energy and confidence, a key marker of a strong career fit (Nelson, 2021).
Because energy is an indicator of career alignment, use these reflection questions to guide clients to explore when they feel most energized or drained at work. The patterns that emerge can reveal what fit truly means for them. Questions for reflection include:
- When are you most alive during your workday?
- What are you doing when you lose track of time?
- Where do you feel most effective?
- What conditions support your creativity or focus?
- When do you feel your contributions matter?
These personal reflections are just the starting point. Fit is not only about what you do, it is also about where and how you do it.
Consider the Work Environment
Pair these reflections with environment-focused questions:
- What kind of communication flow helps you thrive?
- What type of leadership motivates, or demotivates, you?
- What work pace feels sustainable?
Too often, clients are encouraged to be resilient without assessing whether their work environment is workable for them. Thriving is not just about mindset, it is about finding structures that support their best work. As clients explore these questions, the conversation often shifts from surface-level job choices to deeper questions of meaning and purpose.
What Clients Are Truly Defining
This clarity work often reveals that many clients are not just looking for a new job, they are redefining what they want their work to mean. When clients articulate what they want their work to represent, the entire conversation shifts. They stop chasing titles or promotions and start focusing on:
- The kinds of problems they want to solve
- The environments that support their best thinking
- The ways they want to grow, not just perform
Helping clients connect their work to personal meaning can increase their motivation and long-term career satisfaction (Brooks, 2021).
Clarity Is a Professional Imperative
This approach is a shift from traditional career development services that offer immediate value like résumé writing, LinkedIn tweaks, or interview preparation (NCDA, 2025). Those strategies matter, but, without grounding clients in clarity first, providers risk sending their clients back into the same cycle that brought them to seek help in the first place.
Clarity has to come first. When clients develop their own career language, identify what energizes them, and name the environments that support their growth, they are far more likely to make aligned, sustainable career decisions that bring personal satisfaction.
If nothing else, begin with these questions to guide the work and help clients gain the clarity they need:
- What are you building toward?
- How will you know when you are on the right path?
- What kind of change do you want to make and for whom?
Starting here allows career development professionals to move beyond surface-level solutions and helps clients build careers that truly fit, energize, and sustain them. Definition before direction. Clarity before strategy.
References
Brooks, A. C. (2021, September 2). The secret to happiness at work. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/dream-job-values-happiness/619951/
Ejlertsson, L., Heijbel, B., Brorsson, A., & Andersson, H. I. (2020, December 17). Is it possible to gain energy at work? A questionnaire study in primary health care. Primary Health Care Research & Development, 21, e65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1463423620000614
Hansen, A. (2023, August 1). Values clarity: Why it matters in career development. NCDA Career Convergence. https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/525122/_self/CC_layout_details/false
Harter, J. (2024, January 23). In new workplace, U.S. employee engagement stagnates. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/608675/new-workplace-employee-engagement-stagnates.aspx
Nelson, B. (2021, February 3). Are you on the right track to career path fulfillment? Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/328991/right-track-career-fulfillment.aspx
National Career Development Association. (n.d.). Career help. NCDA. Retrieved July 22, 2025, from https://www.ncda.org/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/career_help
Colleen Conway-Nobert is a Career and Life Coach, Course Leader, Finding Career Fit™ Coach, and Senior Career Strategist. She helps clients identify and leverage their strengths to create meaningful, sustainable career paths. As a Director at Executive Career Partners, she develops personalized career strategies for senior executives, including resume and LinkedIn optimization, interview preparation, and professional branding. Colleen is passionate about helping individuals align their work with their values to thrive in roles that are the best career fit for them. She can be reached at:
EMAIL: careerfit4life@gmail.com
PHONE: (207) 305-2220 ext 210
LINKEDIN: colleen-nobert-careerfitcoach
WEBSITE: https://www.findingcareerfit.com/