Career Theories in Action: What and How

I'm involved in a couple of projects looking at the use of career theories in practice. I've been talking to a lot of career practitioners about their use of theories in practice, and can't help but feel that we're missing a trick. 

The careers advisers I've been talking to do, all, draw on theories, but not that many theories, and not all that often. I feel that something has gone wrong with the system: either we're not coming up with the right theories; or they are not written usefully, or published accessibly; or careers advisers don't value them; or don't know how to use them. 

I've been thinking about why this would be, and I wanted to spend a bit of time unpicking my own assumption that theories are useful. I love a theory, but are they actually useful? Are career conversations better when they include some theories?

Career Theories in Action: What

I think there are two broad types of theories I use in my practice (NB I'm using the word 'theory' very broadly here, to include approaches, models and frameworks).

Theories which inform the process of career coaching. 
There is one approach I use ALL the time, and one I use fairly often. The one I use all the time is Roger's theory of person-centred counselling (AKA humanism, client- or person-centred counselling). I use this as an underpinning philosophy, and it informs my whole understanding of the process: who has the answers (the client), how I should talk to them (open questions, lots of reflective listening) and how I should strive to understand them (unconditional positive regard). This one informs every single career conversation I ever have. 
Next up is the GROW model (or T-GROW, or RE-GROW, or GROWTH), which is my go-to structure for most of my conversations. Specifically, I am entirely sold on the need to set goals for a session, and the value of identifying specific actions for my client to take away. 
Then I think there are half a dozen other approaches that I use quite often. My favourite ones at the moment are strengths, possible selves, ACT, solution focused coaching, art therapy tools, narrative coaching, career style interview, motivational interviewing, MBTI and transactional analysis. 

I draw on two or more of these in every career conversation I have, and I definitely think that these theories make me a better practitioner and add value to my clients. In fact, I might even go so far as to say it is these theories that make me a practitioner - without them, I'm just having a chat.

Theories that help me understand careers  the content of my career conversations 
There are more of these kinds of theories, and I think I can put them in four groups (a slightly artificial division - but this is how I see them):
1) Theories that tell us about people's motivations - what drives them and what makes them happy.
2) Theories that help us to understand career transitions - how and why people change direction, and how they cope
3) Theories about making decisions, and what kinds of factors influence people's choices
4) Theories about how people make decisions - how they learn about jobs and the process of career decision making.

I've identified my go-to theories here, those that most often actually help me to understand my clients' career journeys. I am interested by the fact that less than half of them are career-specific theories most are broader psychological theories. I've also noticed that there are a number of big-hitting career theories that I haven't included. I haven't included them because they don't help me, but I might need to spend some time working out why that is. 

Career Theories in Action: How

As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to see how the process models influence my practice, but with the theories that help to explain the nature of career, the influence is a bit more subtle. I think I can see four ways that they help

1. They help me to understand what is going on with my clients - they offer a shortcut which can help me to see what's going on. This is useful because:
1. It helps me to empathise which makes me a better practitioner
2. It helps me to work out what to do next - what questions to ask, what approaches to use and what direction to take the conversation in
2. I sometimes share the theories explicitly with clients. This offers clients:
1. Validation: it's amazing what an impact it has when clients can see that they are not alone, not strange, not abnormal, and that what they are going though is 'a thing' that lots of other people have experienced too. 
2. Reassurance: if clients can see that other people emerged unscathed from this process, and have found a way through, it can be hugely encouraging to them.
3. For me personally:
1. It's interesting. I'm just interested in people's careers and I just like understanding how this part of the world works
2. It boosts my confidence. I feel more certain that the approaches that I'm using are the right ones and are likely to do what they need to
3. It helps with my credibility. The joy of a Rogerian, person-centred approach is that the client solves all their own problems and provides all of their own solutions. This involves a huge amount of skill on the part of the practitioner, but the more skilled you are, the less the client notices what you have added. But the career theory aspect of my professional expertise is more visible, and makes me feel that my skills and knowledge are more likely to be noticed. This is of course linked to the previous point about confidence, but I think that it's important to our clients and to our profession as a whole that we are seen as experts from the outside.

So that's what I use and how I use it, and I definitely think this makes me a better practitioner and adds value to my clients. 

I haven't come across any research evidence that using theories adds value in career conversations, and I'm sure that career conversations can be hugely helpful without any of this. But that's what people get from talking to their friends and family about careers. What they get from us needs to be a bit different, otherwise what is the point? We need to offer something that our clients can't get elsewhere, and for me, a knowledge of these kinds of theories offers exactly that. 

There is still a job to be done, in making sure the theories are relevant and accessible, making sure that practitioners have the time and motivation to learn about them, and making sure we are all equipped to integrate theories in our practice. And some empirical research would be great, if anyone has a bit of time on their hands...