Invisible Entrepreneurs: How Life Design & Systemic Coaching Reveal Unimagined Career Futures

In mid-career transitions, many professionals begin to question their career paths. While Life Design offers a structured, creative process to navigate such transitions, it often falls short when individuals are confronted with deeper limiting beliefs, unacknowledged fears, or systemic constraints. This chapter first draws on career construction theory, research on self-efficacy, and identity narratives as the theoretical foundation for Life Design. It then presents a three-month training program that combines Life Design, value-based systemic coaching, and behavioral nudging. Structured across five workshops and one individual coaching session, the program follows a two-tiered intervention logic: first building confidence and agency through small, low-risk routine experiments, then expanding into broader career and identity exploration. Drawing on experience-based insights from two program cohorts, the chapter shows that the program can prompt participants to consider entrepreneurial careers, even when this was not an initial intention. The findings suggest that whether participants move toward entrepreneurial or remain in corporate pathways is influenced by three interrelated factors: their initial career situation, their engagement in experimentation, and how they interpret these experiences in relation to their identity.