Why am I here? (Part One)

Recently, I have been asking myself what is my purpose as a careers adviser. I’ve been examining a few assumptions about what my role is and should be. This questioning has been prompted by various things, amongst which are: a reminder of something I had forgotten, a self-imposed target, a good read and a constrained conversation. I would like to describe those things in this post and then talk about my thoughts in relation to them in the next post.

The reminder came in the form of a blog post by Tristram Hooley on The Politics of Guidance in which he describes Tony Watts’ typology of guidance ideologies. Check it out and then come back.

When I saw the post, I remembered reading about Watts’ framework when I was slogging through the theories module of my guidance qualification. At the time, I was struggling to get to grips with working with clients. I didn’t pay much attention to this bit of thinking because I couldn’t see how it would help me in my immediate day-to-day work.

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Go on! Impress me!

What sort of impression are you making?

Aminder Nijjar’s recent post about Career Image sent me off on a little journey into the world of impression management.

• How do people try to control or influence the images they present to their work colleagues?
• To what extent is career success linked to one’s ability to present an acceptable image?

A commonly used list of impression management tactics was produced by Jones and Pitman in 1982. They listed the following tactics:

• Ingratiation — getting people to like you
• Self-promotion — telling people how good you are
• Exemplification — convincing people that you work really hard
• Supplication — getting people to sympathise with you
• Intimidation — threatening or appearing dangerous