This jockey may not require bolstering

Several months ago, a series of discussions on the LinkedIn Group Careers Debate caused me to re-examine my counselling beliefs and methods, particularly as they apply to helping individuals  struggling with career indecision.  For the most part, I use a direct and sometimes confrontational approach in assisting individuals such as the panicked college junior who can’t seem to settle on a major,  the millennial who describes being miserably “stuck” in a job that she hates or the chronically unemployed 50 something professional who is resistant to change.  While no single methodology can guarantee success in counselling indecisive individuals there is one that seems to fit well with my direct approach.

In graduate school, one of my first classes was a course in which we examined various theories and procedures used in counselling.   Two theories particularly resonated with me:  Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and William Glasser’s Reality Therapy (now called Choice Theory) in that order.  Over the years, there were a few others but as the saying goes, you never forget your first.

REBT is a clear cut theory of personality that employs a straight talk methodology, based in large part on the hypothesis that there are three musts that hold us back:

• I must do well.
• You must treat me well.
• The world must be easy.

Ellis coined the term ‘musterbation’ to describe such thinking.

When a college junior says that she can’t choose a major she may well be dodging the decision fuelled by the irrational belief that making no choice will protect her from the threat of imperfection (i.e., choosing ‘the wrong’ major, or worse, failing in the major of her choice).  She may be held back by the irrational belief she must always do well and that it would be shameful to make a mistake in her choice.  The unemployed jobseeker who resists a longer commute or new course of action in his job search may well be saying, ‘I’m not interested in exploring these options because that will be too difficult and will require personal sacrifice; life must be easier for me.’

REBT maintains that, in large part, our absolutistic thinking and grandiose desires not only hold us back but lead to emotional disturbances if kept unchecked.  That resonates with me.  I’ve been guilty of such crazy thinking too, which is why I believe that many clients struggling with career indecision would benefit from a counselling approach that is directive, educational, at times confrontational.  Ellis’ straight-talk methodology offers clients a means to an end based on the belief that self discipline and hard work is the way to ‘get unstuck’ and moving in a positive direction.

Rational thinking vaporizes musterbation

The role of the practitioner in REBT oriented counselling is to ‘teach people to replace their musts, shoulds and demands with flexible preferences’ (Ellis & Dryden, 1987). According to Albert Ellis, our emotional reaction to having our goals blocked (or even the possibility of having them blocked) is directly tied to our irrational beliefs.

The way out of our musterbatory cave is to shine a flashlight on our thinking, using a simple format for examining our beliefs—the ABCD Model.  The model helps us recognize that there is little if any direct causal relationship between our emotional reactions (Consequences) and the Activating events that precede them.  Instead, our attention is directed to our Beliefs about the event (the thing that we tell ourselves between A and C ) where we are then asked to question the logic of our beliefs (Dispute) and replace them with rational thinking about the events in our lives.

For example, a client describes and exhibits great anxiety (C) following an interview that went poorly (A).  She believes that she will never find a job because she ‘bombed another  interview.’  The counsellor helps her to identify the Belief that is really upsetting her (e.g. interviewing should be easy and/or I must always do well in interviews) and to Dispute that belief  (e.g. ‘Who said interviewing should be easy? Can you prove it?).  Once the client acknowledges that interviewing is not easy for the vast majority, the counsellor helps her to replace her musterbatory thinking with a more rational preference: ‘It would be nice to have done well in my interview today but it doesn’t mean I won’t do better next time.  I wish that interviewing was less stressful but it’s that way for most people.  If I do a lot of mock interviewing and learn and practice stress reducing strategies I’ll get better at it.’  The counsellor may even point out as I once heard Ellis do in a live counselling demonstration, ‘So it’s difficult, so what?  Life is hard.  Show me the evidence that life is supposed to be easy.’

While REBT is not effective with all clients in mental health counselling (no methodology is) several studies document its efficacy in treating a number of psychological conditions (e.g., social anxiety, depression).  And the research points to its efficacy (Feltham, 1997; Lyons & Woods, 1991).  I believe this is precisely because it is based on a theory and methodology that  guides the individual away from musterbatory thinking toward unconditional and sensible acceptance of self, others and life in general.  As outlined below, the efficacy of the REBT acceptance model has numerous implications and potential for assistance in career planning and decision making (source: www.rebtnetwork.org).

Some think rationally all of the time, but most think rationally only some of the time.

Year ago, I latched onto a powerful metaphor while reading Laurence Gonzales’ enthralling book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.  ‘Reason is the jockey on the horse called emotion.’  In my lifetime I have know a few die-hard pragmatists who don’t even own a horse; incapable of making decisions fuelled by emotion, they saunter towards their goals on foot.  But most of us mount our horse straddling our grandiose wishes, dreams and desires and canter towards our goals. Some prefer to stay in the stable.  Recalling times when I did, I now recognize that it was my horse that was holding me back.  If I had it to do over again, I’d have my jockey yank on the reins and use spurs if necessary.   Perhaps when people seek help with career indecision it’s because their horse isn’t budging?

Karen A. DeCoster

Further reading

• Ellis, A. & Dryden W. (1987). The Practice of Rational Emotive Therapy. New York: Springer Publishing  Company.
• Feltham, C. (ed) (1997). Which Psychotherapy?: Leading Exponents Explain Their Differences. SAGE.
• Lyons, L. C. & Woods, P. J. (1991). The efficacy of rational-emotive therapy: A quantitative review of the outcome research. Clinical Psychology Review, 11, 357-369

Spot the difference?

It’s a new year — the end of one chapter and the beginning of another — a time to change.

The more dramatic the change, the more likely it is to lead to a transformation of your identity. Some changes involve integrating into new environments, building new relationships and developing new behaviours. You may have to leave behind some of the things that currently help you to define yourself and incorporate new things. This can be especially true if, like many of my recent clients, the change is something that has been forced upon you and is quite dramatic — such as redundancy.

Such a change may bring about a transformation of identity. A lot of clients undergoing this kind of process struggle with how to describe themselves. ‘I used to be a… What am I now?’

What makes for a successful identity transformation — whether it is voluntary or imposed upon you?

Editing our story

Narrative theories of identity assume that we build our sense of ourselves almost exclusively through constructing narratives. We select episodes from our mish-mash of experiences and imbue them with  self-defining significance by incorporating them into our life stories. Whilst I’m not convinced that narrative is the only technique that we use to define our identities, it does seem to be a very important one.

So, how do we use narratives to construct new identities in the midst of change? According to a recent paper by Ibarra and Barbulescu (2010), significant work role transitions involves rearranging our repertoire of self-defining narratives through a process of trial and error. When we take on a new role we often have to introduce ourselves to new people or, perhaps, change the nature of our existing relationships. This often involves justifying a connection between what we are aiming to achieve and what we have done in the past. Because the demands of the situation have changed, the justifications we used in the past may no longer work and we have to find new ones. This can be particularly important if we are going for interviews or networking with potential contacts in a new area. Through trying out these new narratives on ourselves and on other people we start to identify which ones are acceptable and helpful for making sense of the new situation. As well as constructing new narratives, we may drop older ones or amend them so that they are more consistent with our new situation.

Validation and authenticity

In order for our new repertoire of self-defining narratives to be successful in facilitating the transition, they have to be validated by the people in our new social environment. We need to receive some form of positive feedback on our attempts to explain ourselves. For this to happen, our stories have to make sense to the people listening and to fit in with their expectations of what is an acceptable narrative.

At the same time, we like to view our identity as being consistent over time (even though that might not be the reality). It can be unsettling to feel that there is no connection between how you were in the past and how you will be in the future. A narrative is more likely to be successful therefore if it feels authentic to the narrator and is consistent with other self-defining narratives.

Coherence and legitimacy

If a story has a coherent, structured plot, it is easy to see how one episode follows logically from the preceding episode. Even if the reality was somewhat chaotic and unstructured, people like to hear stories that flow with a certain amount of predictability.

It helps if there is an agentic protagonist — someone who makes choices and takes actions which make sense within the setting of the story. So, narratives that explain the link between seemingly disparate episodes and which explain a coherent rationale on the part of the main character are more likely to be validated by others and to be perceived as authentic by the narrator.

However, it’s not just the characteristics of the story itself that determine its validity in the ears of the listeners. Whenever we listen to someone else’s story we automatically compare it to our own story and to other archetypal stories relevant to our setting. When I hear other careers advisers talk about how they got into the field, I expect to hear something about how they always enjoyed listening to and helping other people with their problems. I also anticipate that they will say something about being somewhat confused about their own career direction, because I’ve heard this frequently in other narratives from careers advisers. If their story doesn’t contain these expected elements, it doesn’t feel quite so legitimate. Therefore, you are much more likely to be accepted within a new field if you are already familiar with some of the common themes of existing inhabitant’s self-narratives.

Variety and consistency

If we already have a varied repertoire of self-narratives, it is more likely that we will be able to find a story that can be adapted to meet the demands of a new situation. Variety isn’t just about having lots of different stories to tell. It’s also about being able to tell the same story in a variety of ways to bring out different messages and meanings. In the same way, the greater number of archetypal stories we have access to, the easier it will be to adapt our narratives to include these expected themes.

If there is a large degree of consistency in the themes and meanings of our new narrative repertoire, we are more likely to settle into our new identity quickly. This may involve revisiting older narratives and reinterpreting them in light of the elements of our new identity.

Take-away messages

For me, there arise from these ideas a few obvious tips for helping people to deal with transition (or even dealing with my own transitions):

• Work to increase the variety of your narrative repertoire — this means trying out new experiences but also regularly reviewing my existing self-defining narratives and experimenting with alternative interpretations and viewpoints.
• Collect more archetypal narratives from the target environment. Increasingly, I find myself encouraging clients to find someone who is already doing a job they are considering and getting them to tell some stories. Questions like ‘How did you decide to pursue this particular path?’ can be quite instructive.
• Practise telling your new stories in a safe environment before launching them on to the target audience.
• Concentrate on the links between episodes in your life. How did you get from A to B?
• Concentrate on the reasons for your actions (even if they are only evident after the fact).

Further reading

• Ibarra, H. & Barbulescu, R. (2010). Identity as narrative: Prevalence, effectiveness, and consequences of narrative identity work in macro work role transitions. Academy of Management Review, 35(1), 135-154. DOI: 10.5465/AMR.2010.45577925
• There is an interesting special issue of the Journal of Personality [72(3) 2004] on narrative identity and meaning making.
• Related posts: Telling tales; Time travel; Intentional change; Identity crisis

I thought perhaps we could contribute some career related lightbulb jokes. Hopefully, these will only cause offence to those with absolutely no sense of humour.

Are we sure these lightbulbs need changing?

Q. How many bankers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, plus twelve others to help carry away the bonus after the taxpayers bail out the lightbulb, which was too big to fail.

Q. How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Only one, but they will require 19 billable hours to conduct due diligence on the transaction?

Q. How many market researchers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. (a) None; (b) One; (c) Two; (d) Far too many and the government should do something about it.

Q. How many advertising executives does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Never have to change a lightbulb again with the new Zero-Energy™ bulb. Guaranteed to use absolutely no electricity.* Save a fortune on your lighting bills.
*Illumination not included.

Q. How many statisticians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. 0.93 ± 0.22

Q. How many management consultants does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. A team of six to conduct an analysis of your business model showing that the work of this bulb could be distributed amongst the bulbs in adjoining rooms in a strategic illumination restructuring process.

Q. How many occupational psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, to administer the BulbScope Adaptability Profiler™.

Q. How many librarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. I don’t know but I can look that up for you.

Q. How many ratings agencies does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. We don’t change lightbulbs but we are prepared to downgrade the bulb’s status from 100W to 40W?

Q. How many government ministers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. We’re not sure if the lightbulb needs changing, but it was put in place by the previous administration so we can’t possibly keep it.

Q. How many teachers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, but only if they have attended a seminar by the lightbulb examination board to get useful hints about the upcoming change.

Q. How many aerospace engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. None, it’s not rocket science!

Q. How many forensic scientists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. I’m afraid we can’t let you touch the lightbulb until we have established exactly why it failed.

A. One.
Q. How many particle physicists does it take to change a lightbulb if neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light?

Q. How many careers advisers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, but we don’t change it ourselves, we just help it to establish the best way to implement its own change.

Q. How many European politicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Twenty seven. They won’t actually change the bulb, but they will promise not to use the light quite so much in future in the hope that the Germans will pay for a new bulb. Meanwhile, the UK Prime Minister vetoes the whole thing to appease his backbenchers, who don’t trust this newfangled electricity and yearn for the good old days of gaslight.

If you have any more suggestions, please contribute them here…

Have a great Christmas and New Year.

How'm I looking? Lookin' good!

Self-esteem can play an important part in career success. This has been on my mind quite a bit in recent weeks. I have been doing a lot of work with people involved in organisational restructuring. Even when they are not facing redundancy, they are often having to deal with the prospect of applying for roles within a new structure or working under radically different conditions. When someone decides that all or part of what you have spent the last few years working at is not worth doing, it can severely dent your feelings of validity.

I have also been teaching on an introductory management course, where the issue of self-esteem came up in relation to staff motivation and performance management.

It is traditional to focus on the dangers of low self-esteem, which is usually linked to under-performance, lack of initiative, social withdrawal, fear of change, even depression and self-harm. Consequently, much of the advice around is about how to raise your self-esteem.

But there are dangers in too much self-esteem.

High self-esteem can lead to under-performance and self-handicapping, especially when people want to maintain the image of self-confidence and competence in front of other people. In trying to make it look easy, those with high self-esteem sometimes fail to prepare adequately for challenges and thus perform badly (Tice & Baumeister, 1990). Sometimes, the desire to maintain high self-esteem causes people to avoid feedback about their actual abilities. They may look for (and even set up) external causes for their poor performance, especially if they are afraid that their self-esteem is based on dodgy evidence (see Kim, Chiu & Zou, 2010).

So, too much self-esteem can cause similar problems to too little. But it’s more complicated than that. In another experiment, Kim & Chiu (2011) found that people with high self-esteem became dejected when they were given false feedback that they had performed badly in a task. No surprise there. However, people with low self-esteem who were given false feedback that they had performed well in the task also became dejected. They’re told they performed better than they expected and they get sad — what’s going on?

One possible explanation is that there are two types of self-esteem: explicit and implicit. Explicit self-esteem is based on the things we say about ourselves to ourselves and to others. These are conscious self-evaluations that we are able to put into words. This is the type of self-esteem that will be measured by the standard self-esteem questionnaires. Implicit self-esteem is about the self-evaluating thoughts and feelings that we are not consciously aware of. Psychologists test implicit self-esteem by seeing how quickly and consistently we associate positive or negative images and concepts with our own name or image.

Schröder-Abé, Rudolf and Schütz (2007) have proposed that many psychological problems derive from a disagreement between implicit and explicit self-esteem. If you are explicitly thinking good things about yourself but your unconscious feelings don’t agree it can lead to weird behaviours.

Interestingly, some researchers (Koole and the gang, 2009) have suggested that mindfulness practice can help to achieve greater congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem by making people more aware of their internal feelings.

Further reading

• Kim, Y. & Chiu, C. (2011). Emotional costs of inaccurate self-assessments: Both self-effacement and self-enhancement can lead to dejection. Emotion, 11(5), 1096-1104. DOI: 10.1037/a0025478
• Kim, Y., Chiu, C. & Zou, Z. (2010). Know thyself: Misperceptions of actual performance undermine achievement motivation, future performance, and subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(3), 395-409. DOI: 10.1037/a0020555
• Koole, S., Govorun, O., Cheng, C. & Gallucci, M. (2009). Pulling yourself together: Meditation promotes congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(6), 1220-1226. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.05.018
• Schröder-Abé, M., Rudolph, A. & Schütz, A. (2007). High implicit self-esteem is not necessarily advantageous: discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem and their relationship with anger expression and psychological health. European Journal of Personality, 21(3), 319-339. DOI: 10.1002/per.626
• Tice, D. & Baumeister, R. (1990). Self-Esteem, self-handicapping, and self-presentation: The strategy of inadequate practice. Journal of Personality, 58(2), 443-464. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00237.x

Think of your work values as the navigational guidance system for your career... oh!

How much do your work values change over time?

Are there times when your work values change more than others?

How much are your work values influenced by what is happening around you?

Do you adjust your values according to what is available to you?

Do some generations have more stable work values than others?

These are just some of the questions that a new meta-analysis by Jing Jin and James Rounds from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tries to answer.

But first… what are work values?

Work values

Jin & Rounds quote a definition of a value as an “enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable  to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence” (Rokeach, 1973, p.5). Another way of thinking about this is that a value is something you are willing to pay the appropriate price for, i.e. you would be willing to exchange or sacrifice something else in order to obtain what you value.

Many different people have tried to define and categorise different work values (often based on more general human needs and motivations). In the Jin & Rounds study they use four main groups of values:

• Intrinsic or self-actualisation values (e.g. personal growth, autonomy, interest, creativity, challenge, intellectual stimulation)
• Extrinsic or security/material values (e.g.  pay, security, work environment)
• Social or relational values (e.g. interacting with people, altruism, contribution to society)
• Status or power values (e.g. prestige, authority, influence)

How might things change

They looked at two ways of measuring change or stability in values over time: rank-order stability and mean-level stability.

• Rank-order stability looks at how much individuals change within a group. Do the same people rate the same values in the same order at different points in their life, or do they change their minds?
• Mean-level stability looks at how much the group as a whole changes over time. Do certain values become more important to everyone at certain periods?

It can be interesting to think about the different ways we can discuss work values with clients.

We can get clients to rank and prioritise their values. Is personal growth more important to the client than obtaining prestige? This ranking exercise can help to identify the order in which values need to be satisfied or what questions need to be asked first about any career option being considered. It could then be useful to look at what conditions would make them switch the order of these values.

We can also get clients to think about the optimum conditions for satisfying their values. How much personal growth is too little; how much is too much? And how might that change over time?

So, are they stable?

One of the main findings of the meta-analysis is that rank-order of values is pretty stable over time. This means that, in general, people don’t tend to change their minds about what values are more important to them than others. However, this stability was lowest for those aged 18 to 22 years (university students). University is generally a time when people do a lot of exploration and self-discovery. Values are likely to be questioned and shuffled at this stage. This raises a challenge to those of us working in the HE sector. Should we be asking students to pin down their values or should we be helping them in the process of values exploration?

Whilst rank-order was fairly stable over the lifespan, mean-level measures demonstrated significant movement. The 18 to 22 age group tended to attach more importance to intrinsic values over everything else. This could reflect the dominant values of the educational system in which they are immersed.

From age 22 to 26 extrinsic values increased in importance and everything else decreased. In the paper, this is put down to a move from idealism to realism based on the increasing need to fulfil worldly responsibilities (family, mortgage, etc.).

After age 26, extrinsic values continued to increase but so did status values. Perhaps this is down to the fact that more opportunities tend to exist for hierarchical advancement and you tend to value things more highly if you think you can achieve them.

Social and relational values demonstrated a continued decrease in importance across the lifespan. It is suggested that this represents the fact that as you get older work becomes a less important source for social relationships.

I’m somewhat sceptical about the hype over generational differences (see this excellent post by Jim Bright on the subject). However, one interesting finding of the study was that Generation Xers  (born 1965-1981) demonstrated lower rank-order stability than Baby Boomers (1946-1964).

As a group (mean-level stability), Baby Boomers showed an increase in extrinsic values over time but Gen Xers decreased their extrinsic values. Again, this may represent changes in external economic conditions and the fact that we value things more if they are accessible and downplay them if we don’t believe we can get them.

Further reading

• Jin, J. & Rounds, J. (2011). Stability and change in work values: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies Journal of Vocational Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2011.10.007
• Rokeach, M. (1973). The Nature of Human Values. New York: John Wiley.

What if you can't see what's ahead?

Is it possible to know the future? Most people would say not. Yet many careers theories and theories about entrepreneurial behaviour inadvertently assume that it is possible.

In 1921 Frank Knight, who once taught the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, wrote a seminal book called Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. Knight explained that there was a difference between risk (where the probability of success is known) and uncertainty (where the probability of success is unknown). More recently the economist Saras Sarasvathy, in her book Effectuation, pointed out that Knight had actually written about a third category – only no-one had noticed. This overlooked third category described a future that is not only unknown, but is unknowable, even in principle.

This observation, that there is an important difference between a future that is difficult to predict and a future that is impossible to predict, could lead to profound changes in our understanding of career choice.

The future isn’t just unknown, it is unknowable

If the future is risky but it is possible to roughly predict our chance of success, then the logical action is to analyse the situation carefully, for instance by thorough investigation of the latest labour market information. The course of action with the greatest probability of achieving a desired outcome should then be chosen. In this case, it could be applying to a company in an interesting industry sector which attracts a relatively low number of job applications.

If the future is uncertain and therefore it is impossible to predict our chances of success with certainty, then our analysis becomes unreliable. However, we can still estimate the best course of action and proceed on this basis. We can look at what others are doing, and we can make judgements based on anecdotal evidence: for example, on information received at an alumni event.

But what if the future is impossible to predict?

If this is the case, then any logic based on estimation or analysis is misleading. It will create a mirage of the future.

What should you do when your logic is illogical?

Is there a logic which is useful under these conditions, when the future is unknowable? Saras Sarasvathy claims to have discovered such a logic, based on the idea of non-predictive control, which she has termed ‘effectuation’ – the opposite of causation.

Sarasvathy conducted a ‘think-aloud’ experiment – where participants attempt to solve a problem whilst describing their thoughts to the experimenter – on 45 top US entrepreneurs. She found that they utilised different processes when compared to a control group. (Interestingly, the concept of entrepreneurial action as a process, rather than being driven by personality traits, handily solves some big problems in entrepreneurship research, not least that entrepreneurs don’t actually appear to be that much different from other kinds of people).

Sarasvathy (2007) found that the entrepreneurs used the following principles:

• The bird-in-hand principle — Create something new with your existing means, rather than trying to discover new ways to achieve given goals. What can you make with what you have today?
• The affordable-loss principle — Decide in advance what you are willing to lose on a project (time, money or other resources), than maximise what you can get with this investment.
• The crazy-quilt principle — Don’t carry out elaborate competitive analyses. Work with any and all stakeholders who are willing to make a real commitment to working with you. Whoever joins you will determine your mutual goals, not the other way round.
• The lemonade principle — Acknowledge contingency and happenstance by taking advantage of surprises, rather than trying to overcome them or work your way around them. If you get lemons rather than oranges as expected, then make lemonade!
• The pilot-in-the-plane principle — This principal refers to the fact that most plane crashes are caused by, or may be avoided by, human action rather than technical or environmental factors. You are in the pilot seat of your career. You can act upon an apparently risky situation to reduce the risk. Human environments are not static.

Together, these principles offer a vision of a world that is not fixed: a world that we can shape. It offers a bright new future which can be designed by us.

• Can careers be predicted?
• To what extent is career ‘choice’ a choice amongst false alternatives – mirages of the future?
• Can we empower our clients to construct their futures by applying these principles?

Further reading

• Knight, F.H. (1921) [2002]. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. 3rd edn. Washington, DC: Beard Books.
• Sarasvathy, Saras D. (2007). Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Up high! Down low! Too slow!

Yesterday I attended the NICEC workshop on the Blueprint for Career Development. This is a competency framework for career management skills that was originally developed in Canada and has been adopted by Australia and some European countries. I don’t have time to blog about the Blueprint properly at the moment so watch out for a future post on it. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at Tristram Hooley’s presentation from the workshop and poke around on the Australian Blueprint website.

For this post I wanted to refer to something that is mentioned, almost in passing, in the Blueprint material — the ‘High Five of Career Development’.

In 1995 a collection of Canadian career ‘experts’ were put in a room and told to come up with summarise all they knew about career development in a few ‘pithy messages’.

Here is what they came up with:

1. Change is constant

Continuous developments in technology, economics, demographics and society mean that it is virtually impossible to keep up with the shifting world of work and to predict the skills and knowledge that will be required for jobs that might exist in the future. In addition, people change over time; who you are now may bear very little relation to who you might be in the future. Setting goals that are too rigid in this kind of environment can be dangerous.

2. Follow your heart

In a changing environment, finding things that are relatively constant to provide a compass is important. Skills and knowledge are just tools that might go in and out of fashion. Personal values, beliefs and even dreams may a better starting point for career conversations than an emphasis on matching people to roles that are currently available but which may vanish in a few years’ time.

3. Focus on the journey

If the destination is unclear because it is constantly moving, perhaps it is better to help people focus on enjoying the process. This would involve moving away from helping people to make ‘the correct decision’ to helping them to be capable of evaluating the impact of their decisions on an ongoing basis.

4. Stay learning

If change is constant then learning must be constant and should be seen as part of the journey. However, it could be dangerous to limit the idea of learning to formal settings; this doesn’t work for everyone. Rather than focusing on particular qualifications and courses, we should be helping people to engage in everyday learning and personal development.

5. Be an ally

Rather than over-emphasising the autonomy and independence of career decision making, we need to help people to understand the importance of interdependence. We need to encourage people to understand the impact that connection to other people has on our decision making and on our ability to deal with change, to understand ourselves, to enjoy the process of an unfolding career journey and to engage with everyday learning.

…

So, what do you think of the High Five: profound pithiness or pumped-up platitudes?

Do you agree with all of these messages?

Do you think they are relevant to everyone?

If you were to sum up your career wisdom in a pithy message, what would you add to the High Five?

Further reading

Redekopp, D. (1995) The ‘High Five’ of Career Development. ERIC Digest.

Call for Papers: Issue 28 for publication in May 2012

Theme: Innovation in theory and practice

Papers are invited from career researchers and practitioners on the theme of innovation in theory and practice. This issue is inspired by Audrey Collin’s forthcoming NICEC Seminar (24/11/11). The seminar will offer the opportunity to outline the assumptions made by systems theory and consider the benefits for practice and how it might be applied.

Other articles are sought related to the broad theme of innovation in theory and practice in career education and counselling.

The deadline for final submissions is 31/1/2012.

See the NICEC Journal webpage for information about submitting articles.

What happens if your crystal ball is full of gloom?

Way back in 2009 I wrote about the social rejection self-fulfilling prophecy. This relates to the unfortunate fact that, if you expect someone you meet for the first time not to like you, you tend to behave more distantly towards them. This increases the chances that they won’t like you. The reverse is also true: if you assume that you will be liked, you tend to behave more warmly and thus increase your chances of being liked.

People who have high levels of social anxiety tend to fall into the trap of negative expectations. They are particularly sensitive to the possibility of social rejection. This threat triggers an avoidance approach which makes them behave defensively in unfamiliar social settings, leading to less than warm responses from the strangers they interact with. This, in turn, confirms their fears and insecurity about social rejection. A vicious circle.

This self-fulfilling prophecy can be a major handicap when it comes to career development. It means you are less likely to engage in appropriate professional networking, cutting off potentially useful sources of information, insight and advice which could boost your career. It makes you less likely to create a positive first impression during an interview. It can also affect your ability to establish important relationships in the crucial first few days of a new job.

How do you break out of this trap?

The good news, according to one group of researchers (Stinson et al., 2011), is that a fairly simple self-affirmation exercise can have significant long-term effects on this self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re-affirm your sources of validation

In their studies they got people to rank a list of strengths and abilities that were important to the individual’s sense of self worth. The list included items such as sense of humour, artistic skills, spontaneity, creativity, etc. They were then asked to write about their top-ranked value, why it was important to them, their reasons for picking it and the extent to which it influenced their lives and was an important part of their self-image. The socially-anxious  participants who underwent the self-affirmation exercise had improved scores on measure of social anxiety and were also rated as more calm, relaxed and appreciative in a subsequent social interaction compared to a control group who were asked to focus on a low-ranked value. This effect lasted up to two months after the self-affirmation exercise.

The authors speculate that this self-affirmation buffers the individual against potential perceived threats to self-image that might come from social rejection. This might be because the individual is shifted to a ‘higher level of construal’ in which they concentrate on longer-term more meaningful characteristics. This is in line with similar research on abstraction and self-esteem resilience.

Perhaps this research points to the benefits of taking a strengths-based approach, especially with clients who might be prone to social anxiety and negative self-fulfilling prophecies. It highlights the importance of developing a strong sense of personal identity as a pre-requisite to effective social interaction. (Interestingly, Erikson’s theory of personal development puts identity formation as a goal before intimacy.)

Maybe it would be even more effective if we were to get people to think about their core strengths and values from a third person perspective.

More effects of self-affirmation

As I run a fair amount of training on team-working, persuading, influencing and handling conflict, I was interested to find that self-affirmation exercises similar to the one described above have also been linked to people being more open to arguments against their strongly-held beliefs (Cohen et al., 2000). They also make people less defensive when hearing negative messages about valued behaviours that could adversely affect their health (Sherman et al., 2000).

Further reading

• Stinson, D., Logel, C., Shepherd, S. & Zanna, M. (2011). Rewriting the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection: self-affirmation improves relational security and social behavior up to 2 months later. Psychological Science, 22(9), 1145-1149. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417725
• Cohen, G.L., Aronson, J. & Steele, C.M. (2000). When beliefs yield to evidence: reducing biased evaluation by affirming the self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(9), 1151-1164. DOI:10.1177/01461672002611011
• Sherman, D.A.K., Nelson, L.D. & Steele, C.M. (2000). Do Messages about health risks threaten the self? Increasing the acceptance of threatening health messages via self-affirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(9), 1046-1058. DOI:10.1177/01461672002611003
• Read more about Self-Affirmation Theory on wikipedia.

How come softness doesn't appear on any of these lists?

According to Maslow we have five (or is it eight?). However, many other people have thought about what human beings need to be happy and fulfilled, what we strive for and what motivates us, they have come up with some different numbers.

ERG Theory (3 needs)

Clayton Alderfer (1969) set about rearranging Maslow’s needs. Rather than Maslow’s traditional hierarchy, he suggested that human needs were made up of three relatively independent factors and the order may vary between individuals.

• Existence — made up of Maslow’s Physiological and Safety needs.
• Relatedness — made up of the Social need and externally-sourced Esteem.
• Growth — made up of internally-sourced Esteem and Self-actualisation.

Acquired Needs Theory (3 needs)

David McClelland (1985) proposed that, rather than being born with them, we acquire needs over time. They may vary considerably according to the different experiences we have, but most of them tend to fall into three main categories. Each of these categories is associated with appropriate approach and avoidance behaviours.

• Achievement. People who are primarily driven by this need seek to excel and to gain recognition for their success. They will try to avoid situations where they cannot see a chance to gain or where there is a strong possibility of failure.
• Affiliation. People primarily driven by this need are drawn towards the achievement of harmonious relationships with other people and will seek approval. They will try to avoid confrontation or standing out from the crowd.
• Power. People driven by this need are drawn towards control of other people (either for selfish or selfless reasons) and seek compliance. They will try to avoid situations where they are powerless or dependent.

Self-Determination Theory (3 needs)

Self-Determination Theory is a complex set of inter-related theories about human motivation and personality mainly developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. One aspect of SDT is a triplet of basic psychological human needs proposed as essential for human well-being.

• Competence — feelings of capability and mastery over one’s environment
• Relatedness — feelings of caring and connectedness to others
• Autonomy — feelings control, choice and the freedom to act

PERMA (5 needs)

Martin Seligman (of learned helplessness and positive psychology fame) has recently (2011) proposed a model for well-being or ‘flourishing’ based on five pillars.

• Positive emotions — experiencing joy and contentment, minimising the impact of negative emotions of stress, guilt, etc.
• Engagement — experiencing a sense of flow or absorption in what you are doing
• Relationships — experiencing a sense of connectedness and belonging
• Meaning — experiencing a sense of purpose and understanding
• Accomplishment/achievement — experiencing a sense of progress and success

Ryff facets of psychological well-being (6 needs)

Carol Ryff and Cora Lee Keyes (1995) have developed a set of scales which they use to assess psychological well-being.

• Self-Acceptance — someone high in this factor possesses a positive attitude toward the self; acknowledges and accepts multiple aspects of self, including good and bad qualities; feels positive about past life experiences.
• Positive Relations With Others — someone high in this factor has warm, satisfying, trusting relationships with others; is concerned about the welfare of others; is capable of strong empathy, affection, and intimacy; understands give and take of human relationships.
• Autonomy — someone high in this factor is self-determining and independent; able to resist social pressures to think and act in certain ways; regulates their behaviour from within; evaluates self by personal standards.
• Environmental Mastery — someone high in this factor has a sense of mastery and competence in managing the environment; controls complex array of external activities; makes effective use of surrounding opportunities; is able to choose or create contexts suitable to personal needs and values.
• Purpose in Life — someone high in this factor has goals in life and a sense of directedness; feels there is meaning to present and past life; holds beliefs that give life purpose; has aims and objectives for living.
• Personal Growth — someone high in this factor has a feeling of continued development; sees self as growing and expanding; is open to new experiences; has sense of realising his or her potential; sees improvement in self and behaviour over time; is changing in ways that reflect more self-knowledge and effectiveness.

Taxonomy of Human Goals (24 needs)

Martin Ford and C.W. Nichols seem to have gone a bit overboard. Their taxonomy of human goals has two dozen separate factors.

Within person

Affective goals

• Entertainment — experiencing excitement, avoiding boredom
• Tranquillity — feeling relaxed, avoiding stress
• Happiness — experiencing joy, avoiding distress
• Bodily sensation — experiencing pleasurable bodily sensations, avoiding pain or discomfort
• Physical well-being — feeling healthy, avoiding illness

Cognitive goals

• Exploration — satisfying curiosity, avoiding ignorance
• Understanding — gaining knowledge and making sense, avoiding misconceptions, errors and confusions
• Intellectual creativity — engaging in original thinking and novelty, avoiding familiarity
• Positive self-evaluation — maintaining self-confidence or self-worth, avoiding feelings of failure and guilt

Subjective organisation goals

• Unity — experiencing connectedness or harmony with people, nature or a greater power, avoiding feelings of psychological disunity
• Transcendence — experiencing peak states of functioning, avoiding feelings of ordinariness

Person–environment

Self-assertive social relationship goals

• Individuality — Feeling unique or special, avoiding conformity
• Self-determination — experiencing freedom to act or choose, avoiding feelings of pressure or coercion
• Superiority — winning status or success compared to others, avoiding unfavourable comparisons
• Resource acquisition — obtaining support and approval from others, avoiding social rejection

Integrative social relationship goals

• Belongingness — building and maintaining attachments and intimacy, avoiding isolation
• Social responsibility — meeting social obligations and conforming to moral conventions, avoiding unethical social conduct
• Equity — promoting fairness and justice, avoiding inequality or injustice
• Resource provision — giving approval or support to others, avoiding selfish or uncaring behaviour

Task goals

• Mastery — meeting challenging standards for achievement, avoiding incompetence or performance drops
• Task creativity — engaging in tasks involving artistry or creative expression, avoiding mundane or repetitive tasks
• Management — maintaining order or productivity, avoiding inefficiency or chaos
• Material gain — increasing possession of money or material goods, avoiding poverty or material loss
• Safety — being physically secure, avoiding threat or harm

So…

How many needs do you have?

Further reading

• Alderfer, C. P. (1969). An empirical test of a new theory of human needs. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 4, 142–175.
• McClelland, D.C. (1985). Human motivation. Glenview, BL Scott, Foresman.
• Deci, E. & Ryan, R. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268. DOI: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01 (More resources on SDT are available here.)
• Seligman, M.E.P. (2011) Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being — and How to Achieve Them. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
• Ryff, C.D. & Keyes, C.L. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), 719–727.
• Ford, M. (1992). Motivating Humans: Goals, Emotions and Personal Agency Beliefs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
• Gordon Rouse, K.A. (2004). Beyond Maslow’s hierarchy of needs what do people strive for? Performance Improvement, 43(10), 27-31. DOI: 10.1002/pfi.4140431008