Theories Series: Planned Happenstance

Planned Happenstance (Mitchell et al. 1999)

Introduction

This is one of the most popular and well-used career theories. It is a descriptive theory, meaning that it does just literally describe how people’s careers actually unfold. This differs from many of the theories we cover in this book which are prescriptive theories – those that give advice on what you should be doing – prescribing how you can do it better. Of course, as career practitioners, we want to help our clients do things better – that is the whole point. But the advice we give needs to be relatable – it needs to build on their natural or instinctive approaches rather than try to replace them altogether. And that’s where the magic of Planned Happenstance lies.

The starting point of Planned Happenstance is the understanding that most people’s career paths are a bit haphazard. Traditional advice advocates specific career goals and five year plans, but in reality, very few of us are that clear sighted, and, even those who have identified career goals often find themselves facing unexpected decisions as life doesn’t always go to plan.

The theory of Planned Happenstance acknowledges the messiness of our lives and our careers and the huge impact and potential that can come from chance opportunities. But it also buys into the idea that you can make your own luck – you can make choices about what you look for, what you see and how you respond to what comes your way.

The key message of the theory is that we should make sure that we look out for chance opportunities, identify them and then capitalize on them. This mindset will then allow us to make the most of whatever life throws at us. It can also make us more resilient. It shows that goals will always change, so if you don’t end up exactly where you planned to be, it isn’t necessarily a problem, embracing the principle that when one door closes another one opens.

The authors of this approach have identified five key principles that we need to adopt to embrace a planned happenstance approach to career development.

 

Five Planned Happenstance Principles

Be curious. The more you open your mind the more chances will come your way. Be interested to find out about different careers, different approaches, different ideas and this might lead to more ideas and opportunities.

Be flexible. Goals and plans can be useful – we know that they make us more motivated and resilient, but if we stick to them too rigidly, they can start to limit us. It’s great to have some ideas of goals, and some plans to get there, but it’s important to recognize that there is no single perfect job, and not just one way to get to it. If opportunities come your way, you need to be able to change your mindset and take advantage of them, even if it takes you away from your set course.

Take risks. Things won’t always work out, but that’s fine. Maybe it won’t work out, but maybe it will, and if you don’t try, you will never know.

Be positive. Every opportunity will teach you something. Even the worst job, the most humiliating job interview, the most excruciating networking opportunity can push us forward, allowing us to understand a bit more about ourselves and the world.

Don’t give up. Things don’t usually come easily. Most of us have to work and try and fail and then work and try again. To reap the rewards you want, you need to stick with it and keep going, but if you focus solely on the goal at the end, you may miss out on some interesting and enjoyable life experiences that you encounter on the journey.

 

Using Planned Happenstance in Practice

 

1)    To reassure clients. This can be a good theory to share explicitly with clients whose careers have not gone quite to plan. Knowing that they own experience is reflected in an actual theory can help to normalise and validate the choices they have made. Sharing the theory can get clients to see that a seemingly haphazard or incoherent career path is very natural, and does not indicate that anything has gone wrong or that they have failed in any way.

2)    To help clients to be more flexible The theory can also be useful to share with clients who seem quite rigid in their approach to career planning. Clients who seem either unhelpfully fixed on a particular goal, or anxious about trying to find the ‘right’ career path can learn that some flexibility is helpful and that spontaneity has an important part to play in any good career path.

3)    To increase our empathy as practitioners The theory is a helpful reminder for practitioners that being undecided is not necessarily a problem and that as long as people are open to ideas and making an effort to seek out opportunities, the goals are likely to come.

4)    To structure career education. The five principles needed to spot, identify and capitalise on chance opportunities can be used to help structure career education. You could take the principles in turn and identify some activities aimed at boosting your clients’ awareness of the value of each. Here are some examples:

i)               To pique curiosity, you could find some interesting stories of alumni from their school or course who have gone on to interesting or unexpected positions.

ii)              To encourage flexibility, you could ask your clients to reflect on a time in their lives when one door opened because another one closed.

iii)             To boost risk taking, you could get clients to identify a particular risk they are anxious about and push them to really examine the nature and severity of the risks. Invite them to imagine that they took the risk and then to think about their feared outcome, asking them to articulate what would be the worst that could happen. Encourage them to think about the consequences, and then to consider how they would cope if their worst fears came true. Sometimes this exercise will confirm that the risk is not worth taking. More often than not, it demonstrates that the negative consequences aren’t actually that bad.

iv)             To encourage some positivity, you could use some techniques from positive psychology that have been shown to boost our moods. One nice one is the ‘Three Good Things’ exercise, where people need to identify three good things that happened to them each day for the course of a week.

v)              Finally, to boost resilience, you could try and encourage your clients to make clear distinctions between aspects of their lives that are within their control and those which are not. You could ask your client to reflect on a recent negative experience - perhaps a job they applied for and didn’t get. Encourage them to unpick what exactly happened – what led to their rejection, and to identify the aspects that they were in control of (for example, turning up to the interview on time, doing sufficient preparation) and those they weren’t (such as who the other candidates were).

Further reading:

Mitchell, K. E., Al Levin, S., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1999). Planned happenstance: Constructing unexpected career opportunities. Journal of counseling & Development, 77(2), 115-124.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1999.tb02431.x?casa_token=UQgxNa4ZYUIAAAAA:UWtOy2C6h-E844ZioW3TiP1pp6V0UporfZmnFdOhwHLTXxJtFUJ8aBictrx4pIapm4C38-EsFaNn1TGW

Theories Series: Career Construction Theory

 

I've been doing a lot of thinking about career theories lately, and how we can use them in our career coaching practice. This is one of the most popular theories in the US, and I think is an easy one to incorporate into practice. 

 

Introduction

Career Construction Theory is the brainchild of Mark Savickas, one of the big beasts in career academia over the last generation. Career Construction is all about agency – the idea that people believe that they themselves have some control and power over their own lives and futures. Its critics argue that he goes a bit far down this line, almost ignoring the impact of environmental factors, but we do know that a sense of agency can make a big difference to an individual’s chances of career success. Career Construction Theory holds that people construct their own careers and rather than slotting into any kind of pre-planned, pre-destined, tried and tested career path, people can and should take control and design their own careers.

Savickas aims to combine the best of three different groups of career theories, taking some ideas from matching theories, some from the developmental approaches, and some from narrative theories. Career construction suggests that people should think about what kinds of jobs they are suited to (matching), how people learn to cope with the challenges of careers and work (developmental), and why people make the choices they do – how they tell their stories (narrative). He describes Career Construction as a theory that is fit for the modern world, with all of its complexities and shape-shifting. It’s a theory that can account for the whole career lifespan, and encourages people to keep developing, reflecting, adjusting and striving throughout their whole careers, making choices that allow them to have a lifetime of meaningful career fulfilment.

 

Key Ideas in Career Construction Theory

 Life Themes

At the heart of Career Construction Theory is the idea that careers are all about what matters. What matters to you, and how your choices matter to other people. It’s about the meaning that people put on their experiences – the way they interpret what has happened to them, and the meaning that they want to find in their lives and careers. Career Construction Theory is very linked to narrative approaches to counselling – seeing a person’s career as a story – one that can be told and re-told in different ways at different times. It’s notable that Savickas very much talks about ‘life’ themes, and indeed, one of his other big ideas is called Life Design. In both of these, he is making the point that you can’t really separate career and life.

Vocational Personality

This aspect of Career Construction Theory builds on the more traditional kind of matching approaches. It focuses on what you as an individual might have to offer an employer, and how you might look for a job where those attributes are useful. Your vocational personality includes things like your career interests, strengths, needs and values. This mirrors the traditional matching approaches, such as Holland’s RIASEC model, which we covered in Chapter 8.  But Career Construction Theory conceptualises these attributes and their relationship with work slightly differently. Rather than a set of fixed characteristics that need to fit neatly with a rigid work role, Career Construction Theory sees these characteristics as far more flexible –as social constructs rather than tangible attributes; our interpretations of ourselves, or stories that we tell ourselves, rather than facts. In terms of career construction, these characteristics are a good starting point for thinking about how we want to see ourselves, who we want to become and how we can adapt both our selves and our jobs to mould to each other.

Career Adaptability

Building on that idea of being able to adapt, then Career Adaptability is the third key concept within Career Construction Theory. The assumption is that both individuals and jobs need to adapt - both to each other and to the every shifting environment, re-inventing themselves all the time to keep relevant and to face the future. I’ll go on to talk about this idea in more detail in part three of this Chapter.

 

Using Career Construction Theory in Practice

To apply Career Construction Theory in career counselling, Savickas developed the Career Style Interview. This is a series interesting questions to help your clients to tell, understand and reflect on their own stories. Savickas talks about these questions allowing people to identify their ‘life themes’ and it can definitely be valuable to think about any common threads running through your clients’ answers.

The full Career Style Interview has nine quite meaty questions. Asking all of the questions is time consuming and probably too much for the context in which most of us practice, but these are the ones that I find lead to the most insightful conversations, and asking even one or two can lead to some fruitful discussions. If you like these and want to know more, you can find the full list here: http://vocopher.com/CSI/CSI.pdf

Career Style Interview (adapted from Savickas)

1.     Who do you admire? OR Who did you admire when you were growing up?

a.     In what ways are you similar or different from them?

b.     What advice would they give you?

c.     How would your life / career be different if you were to live your life more like them?

2.     What are you favourite TV shows / podcasts / social media influencers

a.     What do you like about them?

3.     What is your all time favourite story?

a.     Who is your favourite character – why do you like them and in what ways are you similar to or different from them?

4.     What do you do with your free time?

a.     What do you get from it?

5.     What is your favourite motto or saying OR what saying would you have printed on a t-shirt?

a.     Why do you like that motto?

b.     What would be different if you lived your life more according to that saying?

 

As with so many career exercises, the value is not in the question or the answers, but in the analysis and reflection you get your client to do afterwards. Most of these questions can reveal something about what really matters to them, and what kind of life they want to lead but you do need to spend time with them getting them to unpick what they think their answers say about them. Make sure you ask your client what they feel their answers say about their values, and use them as a starting point for a conversation about their identity and what a well-lived life would look like for them.