|
Part One in Dan's Career Symposium
|
Humanistic Career Counselling
by Dan Lukiv
Often students approach us, not career counsellors, about career-related concerns. "What is it like to be an English teacher?" "Where did you go to school for training?" "I've been thinking about a career in engineering. Do you know anything about that?" "I'm not really sure what I want to do when I finish school. What do you know about journalism?"
Whether you're an English teacher, an other-subject teacher, a principal, or even a career counsellor, or whether you're a teacher thinking about retirement, this symposium of five articles should provide practical direction about counselling students or even ourselves. The five articles are:
- Humanistic Career Counselling
- A Career Counselling Interview
- Career Decision Making for Students in Grades 11 and 12
- Who Am I?
- Retirement Career Counselling
Humanistic Career Counselling
"Career counseling increasingly is being challenged to meet the needs of a society that is experiencing vast [technological] changes in the workplace" (Zunker, 1998, p.3).
Technology shock, to coin a phrase, makes many people dizzy as they try to keep abreast with that avalanche of change, and consequently, many young people find themselves literally overwhelmed with too many choices and too much information about those choices. Call their feeling information anxiety (Information Anxiety, 1998, pp. 1-12). Not surprisingly, "the role and scope of career counseling has expanded to include clients' mental health concerns" (Zunker, 1998, p. 3). I teach at McNaughton Centre, a secondary alternate school in Quesnel (British Columbia, Canada), which employs youth care workers specifically to deal with mental health, or socio-emotional, issues. Arguably (enter Dickens, Toffler,and Saul1), mental health issues will grow more diverse as "the workplace...[grows] more diverse in the 21st century" (p. 4); therefore, high school "career counselors will need a wide background of counseling skills to meet the needs of [adolescents]" (p. 5).
As "products of their social and cultural worlds," these adolescents need sound direction that validates who they are (Berk & Winsler, 1995, p.1). Here starts such direction: "Place the needs of the client above all other considerations....[,] select counseling interventions on the basis of the client's agenda....[,] make sure that your own values do not adversely affect a client's best interests....[, and] avoid cultural stereotyping" (Egan, 1998, p. 49). Easy direction to follow? It's made easier if we
understand diversity. While clients have in common their humanity, they differ from one another in a whole host of ways--accent, age, attractiveness, color, developmental picture, disabilities, economic status, education, ethnicity, gender, group culture, national origin, occupation, personal culture, personality variables, politics, problem type, religion. (Egan, 1998, p. 47)
I'm speaking about client-centered counselling here. Student-centered. This Carl Rogerian universe of counselling tells the counsellor "to be proactive in [his] search for the [client's] beliefs, values, and norms" (Egan, 1998, p. 44). The counsellor helps the client, in the truly holistic sense, to know himself, to know his "psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic," and spiritual sides (Zunker, 1998, p. 7). And, the counsellor needs to look in the mirror to evaluate himself, to evaluate his biases.
A physically attractive and extroverted [career counsellor] might have blind spots with regard to the social flexibility and self-esteem of a physically unattractive and introverted paient....Becoming aware of their own cultural values and biases together with taking pains to understand the worldviews of their clients can help counselors dispel such blind spots. (Egan, 1998, p. 48)
Discernment regarding biases and an appropriate client-centered focus sounds humanistic, don't you think? In Chapter 13 of my collection called The Master Teacher: A Collection, I speak about motivation from a humanistic point of view. I say, "meet a student's needs in class, and, very likely, he will be motivated to learn" (2001, paragraph 1). In terms of this article, I'd rewire that self-quote to say, "as a career counselor, help a student address his needs, in terms of his circumstances, and in terms of his 'psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic,' and spiritual sides and, very likely, he will be motivated to carefully address his career options." To quote Zunker: "The humanistic approach [is a process] designed to expand one's awareness of [his] life [and of his career possibilities]" (1998, p. 16).
Therefore, shouldn't the counselling process "account for how interests, values, aptitudes, achievement, and personalities grow and change[?] The major point is that clients can benefit from dialogue that is directed toward continually evolving personal traits and how changes affect career decision making" (Zunker, 1998, p. 23). This humanistic reasoning invites constructivist interchange in which "the process matters" (Kohn, 1996, p. 74). The client, "not [a] passive receptacle[ ]" (p. 66) for the counsellor's ideas and insights, "construct[s, with the help of the counsellor, his] own way of organizing information [about himself] and that truth or reality is a matter of [his] perception" (R. S. Sharf quoted in Zunker, 1998, p. 83).
In concert with the humanity of constructivist direction, that reality contains the client's "career values, interest, identity, and behaviors" (Zunker, 1998, p. 84). What does that mean in practical terms? "Through joint action activities, client and counselor develop joint goals that emerge from the joint activities" for the purpose of helping the client make career choices (p. 85).
These joint goals can exist as part of an Individual Learning Plan (ILP). "The counselor and the client collaborate when developing the ILP, which provides a sequence of resources and activities that will assist the client in meeting needs or goals [already] established" (Zunker, 1998, p. 75). Of course this ILP, from a humanistic point of view, implies a number of things: "the emotional and cognitive components of the client's problems" have been addressed; "the client's readiness for problem solving and decision making" (p. 74) has been established; and "the [client's] motivation to become a better career problem solver" has been fundamental (p. 71). His metacognition awakened, he thinks. He reasons along with the counsellor.
The humanistic conclusion would include a client employed in an environment that he finds "amenable" and that accommodates his "needs" (Zunker, 1998, p. 26). Obviously, "individuals are attracted to a particular [career] of an occupational environment that meets their personal needs and provides them with satisfaction" (p. 53). In short, "people search for environments that will let them exercise their skills and abilities, express their attitudes and values, and take on agreeable problems and roles" (p. 53).
Granted, the real world doesn't necessarily offer the client the perfect career, or, in different words, the perfect "person-environment fit" (Zunker, 1998, p. 24); however, D. J. "Prediger suggested a similarity model, designed not to predict success or to find the 'ideal career' but to provide a means of evaluating occupations that 'are similar to [the client] in important ways'" (D. J. Prediger quoted in Zunker, 1998, p. 24).
Humanistic direction here equals reasonableness. From a sociological perspective, "a satisfying career is not [always] one that has been planned but is more a matter of obtaining a preferred position when the opportunity presents itself" (Zunker, 1998, p. 64).
Again, reasonableness. Not even the humanistic colour of individuality wipes away the practical need for one to work to support himself. Sometimes practicality means the "person-environment fit" is not the best fit for now. "In essence, the individual is striving to integrate within society--more specifically, within a career--searching for acceptance by members of a career yet retaining some individuality" (Zunker, 1998, p. 41). "If [satisfaction] is not reached..., the individual may adapt to a career environment or may simply...begin a new search for [an occupation]" (p. 41).
Consider this story: twenty-five years ago, my wife worked for a successful, well-known chartered accountant in a major Canadian trust company, yet he found he had to find work elsewhere, because, as he said, "As time went on, they wanted me to do things that would have destroyed my reputation." He did find work elsewhere. Today he's a successful, famous chartered accountant.
But another dissatisfied employee might not find work elsewhere. In fact, he might actually compromise his values, integrity, or needs at work, eroding his sense of well-being, upsetting his mental health. He could become like the man in the following poem, whose life "appears" fine, but whose sense of himself is not:
THE NEIGHBOUR [Lukiv, 1999, p. 38]
He prunes and weeds and--
He's gift-wrapped
With "please" and "thank you"
And silk ties,
His wife counts fat-grams
On a rosary,
And his two children
Ride the honour roll.
But he does not like himself--
That's his secret.
In view of that poem, a humanistic question to direct career counselling sessions that, one hopes, would lead to client satisfaction in the workplace, could be: What do you want out of life? The "you" needs defining. Who is the client? Does he know himself? Does he know what he's interested in? Does he understand his circumstances? Does he know what training or education he might require for career x?
As I wrote earlier, "the counselor helps the client, in the truly holistic sense, to know himself, to know his 'psychological, sociological, educational, physical, economic,' and spiritual sides (Zunker, 1998, p. 7)." These sides find expression in Donald Super's comprehensive theory of career counselling that considers needs, values, interests, intelligence, aptitudes, personality traits, achievements, community ties, school circumstances, peer groups, the economic climate, societal influences, the labour market, family ties, social policies, and employment practices (p. 37).
Market tests abound for measuring or evaluating many of these areas, especially intelligence, aptitudes, values, and interests. Remember, however, that a time-filling psychometric extravaganza might not bear more fruit than relevant questions from an astute counsellor. "Williamson (1939) suggested that test results are but one means of evaluating individual differences. Other data, such as work experience and general background, are as important in the career counseling process" (Zunker, 1998, p. 23). Psychometric madness is not humanistic. It's mechanistic. To quote myself again,"as a career counselor, help a student address his needs, in terms of his circumstances [which could include technology shock and information anxiety], and in terms of his [holistic] sides and, very likely, he will be motivated to carefully [skilfully] address his career options."
That's humanistic. That's what I call reasonable.
Footnote
1"Dickens was a social critic who defied the easy optimism that remained in the popular image of Victorian England" (Spector, 1981, pp. V-XVII). His novel Hard Times "is a relentless indictment of the callous greed of the Victorian industrial society and its [related emotional woes and poor working conditions]" (Hard Times: Notes, 1992, p. 10). That was a time, like today, of "distress and disorientation brought on by the inability [of many people] to cope with rapid societal and technological change" (Future Shock, 2000). Would Dickens and Alvin Toffler have common ground on which to speak? If Dickens understood how the Industrial Revolution affected people's working careers, then Toffler understands how future shock affects the working careers of people today. In terms of career counselling, "[Career counsellors need] to teach students [clients] to think and to give them the tools of thought so that they can react to the myriad changes[, and to the technology shock, the distress and disorientation, and the mental health issues,] that will inevitably face them [or many of them] over the next decades" (Saul, 1995, p. 69).
