Creative Career Coaching

Theory into Practice

Liane Hambly, Ciara Bomford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351006408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología industrial y organizacional

Creative Career Coaching: Theory into Practice is an innovative book for career development students and professionals aiming to creatively progress their coaching practice. Without losing sight of fundamental coaching values and practices, it encourages career development professionals to adapt their practice by harnessing imagination, intuition and critical reflection to engage clients.

Hambly and Bomford consider the usefulness of creativity alongside traditional coaching models to reach "harder to help" groups. They consider a whole-brain approach to creativity, emphasising the need for coaches to adapt their client-facing skills for individual cases. They work through how clients make career decisions, how to use labour market information to motivate clients, how to frame a creative coaching session using techniques such as metaphor, visualisation and role play, how to use practical tools and techniques to resolve a client's individual needs, and how to deliver on digital platforms. Combining the latest neuroscientific research with activities, summaries and case studies, this bookprovides a practical, skills-based approach to coaching.

Creative Career Coaching: Theory into Practice is the first book to summarise the Creative Career Coaching Model. It will be an indispensable resource for students of career development, career coaching, coaching psychology and advice and guidance courses. It will also be of interest to career coaches in practice seeking to enhance their skills.

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Part I
Setting the scene

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Chapter 1
The bigger picture

Global trends

The world of work is changing dramatically; globalisation and rapid advancements in technology have led to a radical restructuring of the labour market. We are in the grip of a digital revolution where robots and artificial intelligence are replacing workers. Employment opportunities are decreasing and, more than ever, those who are in work find themselves in precarious employment.

Alongside these technological developments, the labour force is also changing due to greater migration and an ageing population. All these factors lead to an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous economic landscape (VUCA). In this world, some people will gain great rewards whilst others are at risk of poor conditions or even exclusion from paid work.

Career coaches have a vital part to play in supporting those who are less equipped for this climate, enabling them to build resilience, upskill, face uncertainty, market their skills and find a network in which to belong. A more radical approach is to engage in the advocacy for workers’ rights and conditions.

With this in mind, we explore the changing nature of career, how it is constructed and how we can communicate these concepts to others so that hopefully people “out there” will finally understand what career coaching is all about.

Technological developments

We are living in an age often described as the fourth industrial revolution, a period of rapid digitalisation in which robots and artificial intelligence are increasingly able to perform complex tasks that were previously carried out by humans. Technologies such as 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, robotics and artificial intelligence may make it far easier for entrepreneurs to set up a company, for example, using 3-D printing to create prototypes at minimal cost (Schwab 2016). Robotics and artificial intelligence will lead to greater efficiency and lower staffing costs, but with a reduction in certain types of work, not only in jobs such as driving, but also those that require analysis of data. Growing inequality, perpetuated by the access and capacity to use such technology, will become a challenge to the economy, as widespread poverty could leave many without the means to buy products (ibid.).

Thankfully, there is work that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence: the “people jobs” (Handy 2015) and the creative sector. These jobs require creativity and emotional and interpersonal intelligence. For example, robots may be able to provide physical care for the incapacitated, but they cannot deal with the emotional challenges of caring for someone with dementia. A hologram may deliver knowledge to classrooms of students, but a teacher’s response to a stressed and unconfident student requires insight and genuine care. Artificial intelligence can mimic great artists and write formulaic pop ballads through the use of algorithms, but cannot sing with soul. It can be used in the mundane tasks of film making (such as sifting through hours of material to create a trailer), but can it write a play that truly inspires? It certainly can’t act in it!

Unfortunately, creativity and emotional intelligence are usually undervalued in terms of financial rewards. It remains to be seen whether, in the fourth industrial revolution, we will finally be willing to pay for such talents. It has even been suggested that companies who benefit financially from a lower wage bill be asked to pay a robotics tax that can be used to fund other types of employment (Bill Gates, in Delaney 2017). There is plenty of work that needs doing: for example, environmental clean-ups, caring for the lonely and vulnerable, or working with young gang members to find purpose through music. At the moment, we largely rely on volunteers, but a tax on robotics could radically change our notions of what is unpaid and paid work.

Technology has also contributed to the “gig economy”, where people work independently of an employer. People have always worked freelance and on temporary contracts, but the development of digital platforms has enabled more people than ever to market themselves as brands and enter into a variety of income-generating transactions. It can be as small scale as renting out a spare room or a driveway for daytime parking. Other people have become fully self-employed by creating online businesses with low start-up costs. In this new world order, secure contracts of employment are being replaced by a digital marketplace in which workers exchange their labour for whatever they can negotiate for a particular task.

Globalisation

Globalisation refers to the internationalisation of trade and the free movement of capital, goods and services. Countries with higher wage costs have responded to increased competition from other countries by outsourcing, restructuring and downsizing. Capital has been relocated to lower-cost countries. Although this has helped productivity, the individual and social costs are harsh. This is particularly the case for young people, as, in times of high unemployment, employers often discriminate against the inexperienced younger worker (Ashton et al. 2016).

Increasing social inequality

Globalisation and technological developments may enhance the economy and improve the nature of work for some people by removing mundane tasks. However, these benefits will only apply to the highly skilled. We now have what is called an “hourglass” economy. The innovators, shareholders and investors reap the rewards at the top. At the bottom is demand for low-paid workers with precarious working conditions (such as zerohour contracts) and limited rights. In the UK, 10 per cent of UK workers were identified as being in precarious work in 2016, a figure that has doubled in ten years (TUC 2016). The McKinsey report (Manyika et al. 2016) discovered that between 20 and 30 per cent of the working population in Europe and the US engage in some sort of independent work (162 million workers). Of these, 70 per cent chose to have this level of independence, whereas 30 per cent had to out of necessity. In the middle of the hourglass economy, there is a hollowing out, a decrease of work in the mid-skill areas and little progression from the bottom to the top.

This trend seems set to continue, dividing workers into what Standing (2014) calls the precariat and the salariat, those with precarious labour compared with those with a salaried position. The salariat not only have a stable income but all the rights and benefits that go with permanent employment – for example, holiday pay and pensions. There is a growing population of workers who have no secure occupational identity, receive no remuneration for much of the work they do, and have to constantly retrain, apply for jobs and be supplicants for benefits of which they are often seen as undeserving.

Precarious employment, when characterised by high levels of uncertainty, low pay and reduced rights, is associated with a deterioration in occupational health and safety (Quinlan et al. 2001) and mental health (Moscone et al. 2016; Kim and von dem Knesebeck 2015) and an increased likelihood of being in debt (Standing 2014). A job market in which the divide grows between the highly paid and low paid or unpaid is likely to result in social tensions and unrest.

The implications for career coaching

Career coaches, in their work with individuals and groups, can enable their clients to navigate this uncertain terrain. Clients need to become more aware of the career management competencies they need and to review those they already have and those they need to develop. Action plans need to focus not only on information about how to upskill, find limited opportunities and market oneself, but also how to travel optimistically, hold on to hope and recover from setbacks. The coach will draw on their toolkit to work on these competencies within the coaching process and identify learning experiences and external sources of support that will support the journey.

However, if this is all we do, then we are in danger of just helping our own clients, reshuffling the deck of cards so that our clients rise above others.

Career practitioners, who would see their task from a merely technocratic or even “humanistic” point of view, thus ignoring the political implications of their work, can inadvertently reinforce and reproduce inequalities.

(Sultana 2014: 18)

Emancipatory career work includes advocacy for the marginalised and exploited, lobbying for measures that will protect the most vulnerable (such as the living wage and regulations for employers who use precarious contracts), and collaborating with employers to develop apprenticeships that facilitate social mobility. We also need to enter a discourse to redefine the nature of work, particularly with respect to the vast amount of unpaid work that currently contributes to the economy and society.

It is important that we acknowledge the limitations of this book. Although we strive to include case studies of clients who are marginalised or vulnerable, we do not have the space to encompass the more radical emancipatory work that career practitioners may engage in. Where we start is by looking at how these changes are reflected in how we define and conceptualise “career”, how we communicate these shifts to our clients and others (including policymakers), and how we challenge constructs that are no longer helpful.

Defining “career”

The purpose and focus of our professions are frequently misunderstood, often owing to different perspectives on what we mean by “career” and, therefore, career coaching. Our clients may think that a career is a skilled occupation with progression, compared with “just a job” and, therefore, may think career coaching is not relevant for them.

From ladder to scaffolding

For a large part of the twentieth century, white, male, middle-class careers tended to have clear progression paths, usually with one employer and a clear job role and identity. We might start on the shop floor and progress to foreman or shift manager, or we might move through the ranks from junior doctor to consultant. In either case, the way ahead is clear and predictable, the only question being how far we can progress with our skills, abilities and qualifications. At some point, there is likely to be a plateau when our progression is over. This stage may be accompanied by some vague disappointment or even the prove...