Credibility, confidence and compassion: how career theories can boost our practice and our profession

I have spent a lot of the last few years thinking about career development theories – the ones that try to explain how and why people make their career choices, and how careers develop. I find them fascinating but they are not without their flaws: there are too many, they aren’t generally very clearly explained and it’s hard to know how to use them in practice. I have seen career theories taught very well in courses, and have seen lots of accessible, clearly written guides to the key theories. But despite this, most of the career practitioners I speak to – both those who are very experienced, and those fresh from their studies - generally say that they don’t really use these theories; they would like to, but just don’t quite know how to.

I thought I would see if I could find some positive stories – from practitioners who do use theories in their work and who find them beneficial so I interviewed 30 theoretically-minded career practitioners. Their stories bowled me over. Their knowledge of theories was brilliant, they applied the theories in their practice skilfully and expertly and they all had some great examples of using the theories in a wide range of different contexts. They were very impressive.

Why use theories?

The practitioners identified three key reasons for using theories.

1.     Theories lead to deeper understanding

Most commonly, the practitioners found that using theories helped them to understand their clients more deeply and more quickly. One of the participants gave a good example of this, explaining that when she was a client who was interested in law:

‘rather than just accepting that a client wants to be a lawyer, you think about where the idea came from (opportunity structures), whether they would fit in (trait and factor), how it suits their life roles (LifeSpan LifeSpace) how it fits with their identity (identity theory).’

The theories can have the same impact on the clients themselves and the practitioners spoke about how explaining a one idea from a theory can help the clients to see themselves more clearly.

2.     Theories lead to greater confidence

The practitioners in this study talked about theories as a way to boost their credibility and confidence. Their understanding of the theoretical basis for their work made them feel more professionally credible, and they used their knowledge of theories to explain their work to stakeholders, often saying that theories proved to others that ‘it’s not easy to become a careers adviser’.

For clients, the confidence came from the way that the theories can normalise or validate their own choices. Knowing that their experiences are the subject of a theory seemed to make clients feel less isolated and less unsure of their own decisions.

3.     Theories lead to better professional practice

The practitioners used the theories to guide their conversations perhaps to develop a ‘working hypothesis’ about what is going on with a client, which could give them ideas about what to do next: ‘what questions to ask, what direction to take the conversation and some ideas for solving the problems’. Some used theories to reflect on their practice and found that this made them more self-compassionate, making them feel better about ‘the small steps and the small progress’.

Learning about theories

The practitioners were positive about how the theories were taught on their career courses, effusive about the way their course tutors made the theories come alive for them. They had also kept up to date with new ideas and theories in the field, but found this a bit more tricky and generally would welcome more theory-related CPD. Interestingly, although they felt that their career courses taught the theories really well, they reported that there was a gap in teaching how to use the theories in their practice: they left their courses understanding the theories, but not able to integrate them into their practice.

Conclusion

Our jobs are not easy and anything that we can do to make us more efficient, more effective and more credible is always welcome. I said at the start that I am a theory fan, but the practitioners in this study took this to a whole new level. I was left quite convinced that more of a focus on career development theories could make a real difference to our practice, to our clients and to the standing of our profession. So watch this space! I am working on developing some resources - some theory cards, a collection of case studies and perhaps a some further training. And do let me know if you yourself are a theory-enthusiast – I’d love to collect some more stories.