Over the past two decades, there is one thing that I have come to understand over and over: people’s careers are truly stories. Every time I sit down and listen to someone share their concerns and aspirations for their career, they engage in a story telling process.
There are characters, challenges, opportunities, failure, scenes and most of all, there are patterns. Out of the chaos of their lives emerge clear patterns of who they are and what they really want in life. There are patterns that show how they succeed and patterns that show how they fail.
What is very encouraging to witness is the increasing dialogue about this within the career development profession. For example, I encourage you to have a read of Kathy Hansen's Blog to explore traditional and post modern uses of storytelling in careers. You can check it out here:
http://www.astoriedcareer.com/archives/2007/03/plotting_the_st.html
She also provides a number of excellent examples to help get started on this.
Enjoy! Rob
2 comments:
Rob, I'm extremely grateful to you for this reference to Hansen's blog item. Some interesting reading is coming up! - Bill
My pleasure Bill, in my experience this is THE MOST IMPORTANT area in the field of career development. I would also argue that in order to be helpful to clients, the ability to help them make sense of their stories is an essential competency!
All the best, Rob
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