It’s time for Singapore companies to start investing in coaching

I USED TO think career coaches were a scam – not unlike get-rich-quick YouTubers offering pricey courses of iffy substance – until I had the opportunity to receive coaching, and realised how much I needed it.

A couple of years ago, knee-deep in Covid pandemic restrictions and with my son on the cusp of turning a year old, I found myself on my way out of a company at which I had worked for six years.

In hindsight, that was a good time in my life and career to move on, but it was hard to recognise this in the moment. Instead, I felt like a piece of rotting driftwood floating in some unidentifiable patch of the Indian Ocean: defeated, demoralised, drained, filled with self-doubt, and crucially, directionless.