Here we are well into 2016 already, time flies when you are having fun. For many people moving headlong into the Spring time is the time to reappraise careers and move onto new horizons. Perhaps moving on to a more fulfilling and meaningful career? Perhaps a new business or to re-focus upon your untapped potential or looking for promotion?
I am sure for those dissatisfied with their jobs or careers looking for new opportunities can appear initially daunting. Staying with the devil you know may be the best option. Well for now at least. However, from many studies and utilising experiences supporting people toward new and fulfilling roles, career & coaching narratives can offer a different perspective to career change.
Your Story
Your career narrative is primarily a move away from the fixed snapshot of your capabilities that perhaps psychometric testing can offer. For example, toward exploring the value & purpose of your experience and the narrative of your working life. The goal is to look at the career pathways taken and perhaps abandoned in the past. Indeed the act of writing a career narrative requires a complex dialogue between you and the page. This involves a degree of metacognition that can evoke difficult & honest self-reflective skills. Therefore, may well be a challenging prospect for some to deal with difficult emotions and events of the past.
So how does narrative career coaching work? To start with it is best summed up as a method for evaluating a writing style and its content to look at patterns of word & speech use and instigate the patterns. Research suggests that investigating the shifting phrases and terminology reflects an ability to step in and out of career positions. To gain control and therefore make sense of the career story.
Words
Interestingly the mix of emotionally loaded words can also be significant. Writing that contains more positive than negative words perhaps indicates perhaps a healthier reflection for your career & progression. That stated an absence of negative emotionally laden phrases suggests an unwillingness to engage with the challenges met and overcome (or not as the case may be). By investigating these styles over time, it may be possible to view changes in an individual’s worldview and their view of the future career & work life.
I think you will agree this method is a departure to a systematic and sometimes uninteresting process of career transition management. Such as looking at CV’s, interview skills and covering letters etc. They all have their place and are important and have utilised this tried and tested plan & implement model for those looking for a job. By exploring the individual narrative and career values i.e. what is your purpose in your job, what do you really stand for and believe in, you really start the process of a career path that will satisfy and fulfil you with greater insight? It is only until you understand these key aspects about yourself that can create the sense of urgency to break the career change inertia and become your own career entrepreneur.
Writing Styles
Now then going back to the issue of career narratives you may be interested to have a go at becoming a career ballpoint explorer.
- Creative Style of Writing – One approach is to write a piece that involves a career – perhaps think of someone starting a new and exciting job – and then step back to reflect upon the themes that emerge.
- Reflective Method of Writing – To look experiences from a range of viewpoints. Perhaps respond to a series of prompts such as “Write a sentence about yourself and then write it again saying the opposite. See your career perhaps from a number of views or perceptual lenses i.e. from the organisation, your line manager or perhaps a co-worker. This reflective method may offer you the chance to explore many different vantage points to consider strengths and development areas that may have been in a blind spot to you.
- Expressive Method of Writing – Try writing about your personal topics, doing justice to the emotional context, whilst exploring how events make you feel. Perhaps a technique where a stressful thought is investigated through responding to four questions – e.g. “How do you react when you believe….?” to deepen and tease out the depth of the possible feelings. This method can be helpful to focus upon the feelings of redundancy, the elation of that elusive promotion or starting your own business perhaps? By putting your thoughts on paper they are not necessarily swirling around your head as inhibiting thoughts. Once you know they are there at least they can can be worked on and managed.
Lastly…….
Needless to say, writing expressively about your career successes and failures can be difficult and sometimes an emotionally charged experience, that may not be for everyone. Some people may harbour resentment over redundancy or lack of promotion opportunities etc that may be difficult to manage without support. The positive aspects of this method of coaching is that the writing can be private and personal and can go some way to your own reconciliation. It may be an opportunity to look into a creative writing course to help focus your attention on how to go about writing your career story constructively. Either way, career narrative coaching is a new and novel way of exploring career transition opportunities.
