Talking%20with%20a%20shared%20purpose:%20applying%20a%20narrative%20approach%20to%20career%20guidance%20interviews

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Talking with a shared purpose applying a
narrative approach to career guidance interviews

• Hazel Reid
• Centre for Career Personal Development

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Developing narrative thinking

• What is it?
• Why is it worth considering?
• What are the benefits?
• What are the limitations?
• Could it fit within existing models?
• Would it work in a range of contexts?
• How do I do it?

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Constructivist and Narrative approaches

• Post-modern, post-structuralist and all that
  stuff!
• The move from 20th to 21st century thinking a
  focus on meaning
• Established approaches found wanting
• Familiar or a new way of thinking?
• Development within counselling
• And career counselling

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Why is it worth considering?

• Stories are about events, patterns, insights into
  how we construct a view of ourselves in the past,
  present and future
• Deeper understanding, better exploration, action
  that is likely to be more useful for the
  individual
• Resonates with a multicultural approach
  sensitive to the importance of the individuals
  world view / frame of reference
• Guidance is not a neutral activity - helps us to
  consider aspects of power
• Its also interesting, exciting, motivating and
  engaging for both parties.

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Potential benefits

• Collaborative approach
• Can avoid taking a deficit view of the person
• Places meaning in the foreground
• Recognises the importance of context
• Back swing (Amundson) -works towards a better
  story
• Moves from identifying the problem, exploring
  interests and options to agreed action (sound
  familiar?)

• The reality-test of career/life narrative work
  with a client needs to recognise that action
  occurs in an interactive world. It is this
  acknowledgment of the need for negotiating action
  that moves a narrative approach out of the trap
  of a backward looking past.

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Possible limitations

• Abstract and esoteric unconnected to the
  day-to-day realities of practice?
• Too focused on understanding?
• Too dependent on therapeutic counselling?
• Sounds expensive time?
• You say the approach is interesting, exciting,
  motivating and engaging, but how do I do it?

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Fit with existing models

• Egans approach is outdated?
• Dont throw out the baby with the bath water!
• The 3 stage model has a simplicity that has some
  elegance
• A framework recognise its limitations
• Established career theory continues to have
  relevance within an integrated approach

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And a range of contexts?

• Work with young people
• Adults
• Cultural groups
• Challenging clients
• In response to the changing practical and
  political context, constructivist approaches
  offer new perspectives for career interventions,
  including working in holistic settings
• Sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont!

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Narrative thinking applied to careers interviews

• Dangers of the cookbook approach
• Mining counselling approaches
• A different way of thinking about the client
• The practitioner needs the kind of respectful
  curiosity that asks What other voices are
  present in those stories? How does the client
  position themselves through the meaning they
  place on their experiences?
• Externalising conversations naming the problem
• More than one way to tell a story what about an
  audience?

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How?

• Listen to the story and understand what the
  person is saying about their situation, their
  difficulty ask how rather than why
  questions
• Respond in ways that build and maintain rapport
  to encourage continuation of the dialogue
  search for the detail
• Ask the kinds of open questions that draw out
  more information

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And with challenging clients

• Dont look for blame, but externalise the problem
  and separate the person from the problem name
  the problem, start with it until a name is
  found that fits Trouble is an example of
  naming the problem in order to give it an
  identity separate from the person
• Help clients to move on and build alternative
  career stories that will make managing the
  present easier whilst working together to make
  positive changes
• The techniques and skills to achieve this have
  much in common with those used in solution
  focused work.

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Narrative thinking applied to interviews SFBT
strategies

• One step at a time
• Doing something different
• Compliments
• Even when career decisions are not needed
  immediately, the person can play with an idea for
  a dream future.

• Seeking exceptions
• Scaling
• Building on strengths
• Questions about a possible future
• Using the miracle question

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Accessible literature for applying narrative
thinking to practice

• Winslade, J., Monk, G. (1999) Narrative
  counseling in schools powerful and brief,
  Thousand Oaks, California Corwin Press Inc
• McMahon, M., Patton, W. (2006) (eds) Career
  counselling Constructivist approaches. Oxon
  Routledge.

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A way forward from talking to doing?

• An invitation to participate in a collaborative
  project.
• Creating, applying, adapting and evaluating a
  narrative model for career guidance
  interviewing.
• h.l.reid_at_canterbury.ac.uk