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Theory and Practice for Career Coaches

Our approach

After carrying out a thorough review of the current career literature, we have incorporated key themes from influential theories into our career management methodology, and they underpin the processes and techniques we use as career coaches and share in this book. For a comprehensive review of career management theories, refer to Patton and McMahon's book
Career Development and Systems Theory. A New Relationship
listed in the listed in the Resources for career coaches section.

Below is a brief overview of some of the most influential career-development theories:

Trait and factor theory

This is the oldest and most widely used of the career-development theories. It is founded on the notion that individuals are different, and that their different capabilities can be measured and related to occupations. Traits are individual characteristics that can be measured through testing, and factors are characteristics required for successful job performance. The term trait and factor implies a matching between individuals and jobs, and career selection is seen to occur as a result of understanding the relationship between knowledge about self and about occupations.

Practitioners of trait and factor theory use a number of assessment instruments to identify an individual's profile: interests, aptitudes, values, personality and achievements. When a person's profile is matched with the profile of an occupation or job role, the degree of fit can be seen.

Holland's theory of vocational choice

Originally proposed in 1959, Holland's theory reflects both trait and factor theory and a person-environment fit approach. Holland categorised people into one of six broad types of personality: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising or conventional. He proposed that these personality types are related to needs and that individuals seek out work environments that are compatible with their attitudes and interests and that allow them to use their skills and abilities. The Self Directed Search (SDS) is a well-known tool based on Holland's theory.

Brown's values-based, holistic model

Brown's contribution to career-development theory drew attention to the important concept of values in career development. As his theory developed, he incorporated into the coaching process a combined focus on trait, values and the concept of interconnected life roles.

Super's life span approach

Super brings together developmental or life-stage psychological theory and social role theory to convey a comprehensive picture of multiple-role careers. He presented a stage model of career development. His significant propositions include:

• Vocational preferences and competencies change with time and experience, although self-concepts are increasingly stable from late adolescence until late maturity, providing some continuity in choice and adjustment.
  
• The process of change is summed up in a series of life stages — a "maxicycle" — characterised as a sequence of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance and decline.
  
• An individual's career pattern is determined by the individual's parental socioeconomic level, mental ability, education, skills, personality characteristics — needs, values, interests, traits and self-concepts — career maturity and by the opportunities to which he or she is exposed.
  
• Career maturity is a hypothetical construct — a constellation of physical, psychological and social characteristics. It includes the degree of success in coping with the demands of earlier stages, sub-stages and recent stages of career development.
  
• Work and life satisfactions depend on the extent to which the individual finds adequate outlets for abilities, needs, values, interests, personality traits and self-concepts. The degree of satisfaction people attain from work is proportional to the degree to which they have been able to implement self-concepts.
  

These theories led to a plethora of self-assessment tools, straight from self-awareness — values, interests, skills, career and life stage — to action planning and goal setting. Viewing the individual as a single actor, this perspective tends not to take into account the context of an individual's life.

Systems theory

McMahon and Patton brought together a review of existing career theories and proposed that psychology had failed to take account of the systems that affect every individual. They applied systems theory to career development.

General systems theory views life as composed of systems. The individual system includes components such as gender, age, skills, values, beliefs, personality, self-concept and aptitudes. An individual lives within a social system — a workplace, peers, family, media, community groups and educational institutions. The individual also lives within a broader system, which is that of the society or the environment, for example, the employment market, geographical location, political decisions, historical trends, globalisation and socioeconomic status.

This theory acknowledges the multitude of influences on career development and how they are affected by change over time — past, present and future. These influences are nonlinear, mutual and multidirectional. A key feature of systems theory is the concept of "story", an individual's explanation of the relevance of events in his or her life. Through stories, individuals make meaning of their lives and actively construct them.

Working identities

Hermina Ibarra (2003) also challenges the view that adults make the transition neatly from their current state to their career objective or goal in a linear fashion. As a result of her Harvard research, conducting and analysing thirty-nine in-depth interviews with tertiary qualified individuals at different stages of transition, she proposed the following identities in transition:

She proposes that individuals move through the identities in practice by crafting experiments — trying out new activities or professional roles; shifting connections — developing networks and contacts that can open doors to new worlds; and making sense of the transition — finding or creating catalysts or triggers for change and using them to rework their story.

Integrated career development theory

Today, there is a move towards attempting an integrated career-development theory that draws on a number of theories and perspectives, including those discussed previously.

In practice, there is increasing focus on coaching principles — one-on-one support that allows a highly personalised approach; providing vocational guidance; coaching clients to establish their own career goals and run a motivated and effective career management strategy themselves. Career coaches assist individuals to put their personal-assessment feedback together in a meaningful way and develop actionable career strategies that match their aspirations and available options. They also assist clients to check the viability of opportunities, taking into account all the factors and stakeholders in the individual's life, with the provision of practical and realistic feedback.

Best-practice career coaches take a person-centred approach that recognises and respects individual differences, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for their own outcomes, while providing a supportive environment. Working under a constructivist framework the coach is an interested, curious inquirer, a respectful listener and a tentative observer — he or she is not the expert. The role of the client is an active participant, rather than a passive responder. There is an expectation of client-driven change.

Coaches should be committed to providing honest, and where necessary, challenging feedback to ensure real behavioural change, backed up with solution-oriented counselling for optimum results. Components of a solution-oriented approach include:

• Collaborative: A working alliance formed between the coach and the client
  
• Constructivist: When clients present a problem, the coach works with them to help them make meaning of it, and if necessary, construct an alternative discourse away from problem-oriented language. Clients are encouraged to imagine what it would be like without that particular problem and to focus on what they would then be doing.
  
• Competency-based: Coaches assume clients have access to their own unique set of strengths and resources, and that they are experts at solving their own problems. A coach's expertise is helping them set goals and to facilitate recognition of their own resources to meet such goals.
  
• Change-oriented: Coaches encourage clients to keep doing what works; conversely, they assist clients to identify strategies that are not working and encourage them to stop and change strategies.
  

Coaches acknowledge the contribution of systems theory to understanding constraints on the ability of clients to apply new knowledge in their "real world". Therefore, their interventions should take into account all systems impacting individuals' behaviour: manager, organisational culture, colleagues and team, family and friends, community, etc.

Client outcomes include providing feedback that can be used to prepare and implement an actionable career or job search plan. For some it may lead to recognition that they are no longer suited to their organisation, that they have other options, and as a result, self-select out by leaving the organisation. Additionally, career interventions should facilitate a culture of career self-management, where the individual takes responsibility — in partnership with the organisation — for their own career management. It delivers actions that individuals can take back into the workplace to implement.

Coaches also acknowledge that it isn't one event or a number of events that impact on clients; it is the story told around the event, the interpretation of what the event meant to them. This has led to recognition of the importance of storytelling and an individual's narrative around their view of the world.

Adopting this view means changing the role of career advisor from "expert" to one of career coach, regarding the individual as the expert in their own lives and the coach's role merely one of facilitating their journey to reaching a better understanding of themselves and the way they conduct their lives and careers.

We offer our SEEFAR methodology as a tool to incorporate contemporary career theories into your coaching practice.

Resources for career coaches

McMahon, M. and Patton. W. (eds.) (2003)
Ideas for Career Practitioners: Celebrating Excellence in Australian Career Practice.
Brisbane: Australian Academic Press Pty Ltd.

Patton, W. and McMahon, M. (1999)
Career Development and Systems Theory: A New Relationship.
Brisbane: QUT.

Skiffington, Suzanne & Zeus, Perry. (2005).
Behavioural Coaching. How to build sustainable personal and organizational strength.
North Ryde, NSW: McGraw Hill.

Whitworth, Laura, Kimsey-House, Henry & Sandahl, Phil. (1998).
Co-active Coaching. New skills for coaching people toward success in work and life
. California: Davies-Black Publishing.

Worklife Career Development Resources Catalogue
www.worklife.com.au

About the Authors

Helen Burton

leads the Queensland division of a global career management practice. She has a Bachelor of Commerce and commenced her career as an accountant before completing an MBA and transitioning to her "dream job" in management consulting, working on large scale organisational and leadership development projects and travelling extensively. An interest in career decision making driven by her need to combine work and family life ultimately lead to a specialisation in career consulting. She has developed and successfully used the SEEFAR model to assist individuals from all walks of life take control of their careers and achieve job satisfaction.