Business Career Counseling: The Basic Frameworks

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Business Career CounselingThe Basic Frameworks
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You will become the counselor that you already
are.
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Three Frameworks

• The Facilitating Environment
• The Developmental Context
• Developing Vision The Cycle of Imagination and
  Analysis

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The Facilitating Environment

• Holding the frame of the session in three phases
• Attention and presence (deep listening)
• Developing a focus to remove the Blocking Issue
• Working the focus to an ending that leads to
  action

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Counseling as Craft

• Work the material of the blocking issue with the
  time given
• Give the student something particular to do, no
  matter how small, so that they can continue the
  work (make certain of this)

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Holding the Frame of the Session

• Each session is a whole with opening, middle and
  end phases
• You are the timekeeper always know where you are
  in the session
• The final ten minutes should be reserved for the
  ending phase

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The Opening Phase

• The first ten to fifteen minutes
• Deep listening is the task

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Attention and Presence(Deep Listening)

• Directness of contact
• Freedom from distraction
• Initial absence of goals and agenda
• Listening to affect
• Listening to tone, gesture and gaze

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The Middle PhaseFinding the Blocking Issue

• The middle fifteen to twenty minutes
• Identify the focus
• Identify the most important blocking issue
• In the time available, work to remove the
  blocking issue

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Developing a Focus

• Where is the pain ? What is blocking this
  persons progressand what can you do about it in
  the next thirty minutes?
• No heroics, short cuts, silver bullets rather,
  lighting the fire

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Blocking Issues

• Uncertainty concerning vision
• Lack of confidence in vision
• Uncertainty about competitiveness
• Ambivalence about competing alternatives

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Blocking Issues, Continued

• Uncertainty concerning strategy
• Uncertainty concerning tactics
• Job search skills issues
• Need for organizing structure
• Blessing and permission

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Working the Focus to an Ending that Leads to
Action

• The final ten minutes
• Identify what can be closed that leads to action
• Identify and name what is left open

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The Ending Phase Brings Both Opening and Closure

• Closure New information, insight, next steps
• Opening An awareness of previously unexamined
  tensions and ambiguities

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Ending Phase Closure

• Knowing and articulating what has enough closure
  for action
• The decision to eliminate certain options
• The decision to focus the majority of time on one
  or two options
• Specific next steps (often information gathering)

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Ending Phase Closure

• Knowing and articulating what has enough closure
  for action
• Getting to a list of exciting companies
• Repeated encouragement to step into the process
  and pay attention to new, non-analytical,
  information

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Ending Phase OpeningKnowing and accepting what
has been left open

• Both client and counselor are more aware of
  ongoing, unresolved dynamic issues (dynamic
  tensions)
• The issues are named and lack of resolution is
  explicitly acknowledged
• Neither client nor counselor experience the lack
  of resolution as failure

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Comfort with Uncertainty, Ambiguity, Anxiety

• If you set as a goal removal of your clients
  anxiety, you will feel (consciously or
  unconsciously) that you have failed
• Do not try to bring to closure or resolution what
  cannot be resolved

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Three Frameworks

• The Facilitating Environment
• The Developmental Context
• Developing Vision The Cycle of Imagination and
  Analysis

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Developmental Context

• Broader life issues
• The early thirties career paradigm shift

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Consider Broader Life Issues

• Is there a dynamic with a spouse or significant
  other to consider?
• Do you need to consider the perspective of other
  stakeholders?
• Is there unusual (and inappropriate) anxiety
  about financial issues?

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Consider Broader Life Issues

• Are there health issues (client or clients
  family)?
• Is work/life or parenthood/career balance a
  conscious issue? (Should it be?)

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The Early Thirties Career Paradigm Shift

• The 20s opening doors, exploring
• The 30s closing doors, developing focus
• Be prepared for resistance to giving up options
  interpret it
• A common focus of resistance selection of
  industry

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The Great DilemmaChoosing an Industry

• The myth There is one industry that is right for
  me, I must find it at all costs
• The reality Function and culture are far more
  important
• The take away There are many industries that
  will work and most MBAs will change industry

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Finding a Handle on a Target Industry

• Enthusiasm for product/service
• Growth
• Geography
• Leveraging the resume
• Forget industry the most exciting companies
  search
• Action step The as if search

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Three Frameworks

• The Facilitating Environment
• The Developmental Context
• Developing Vision The Cycle of Imagination and
  Analysis

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Developing Career VisionThe Cycle of
Imagination and Analysis
The development of a Career Vision, initially
using a five to seven year framework, lies at the
heart of effective career counseling. Vision
becomes even more essential during difficult
economic times.
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What is a Career Vision?

• The ability to reliably access images associated
  with work activities and work environments that
  hold the potential for sustained meaningful
  engagement.

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Why is Vision Essential?

• Places entry positions in context
• Provides a road map
• Provides an antidote for the herd effect (and
  for panic)
• Creates the largest frame possible for career
  assessment

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Aspects of Vision Most in Need of Image-Informed
Awareness

• Culture
• Environment
• People
• The larger canvas (family, the wider world,
  ultimate values, the horizon of time)

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Career Vision The Cycle of Image and Analysis

• Intuitive grasp of the images associated with our
  vision
• Recognizing the deeper structure pattern of our
  images with CareerLeader model

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Why Images?

• Major life decisions require full consciousness,
  not just cognitive analysis
• Images include all aspects of consciousness
  intuition, cognition, feeling and sensing
• Accessing images disrupts dysfunctional mental
  models
• Images are elastic to the reality of opportunity

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Images of What?Using the Five- Seven Year
Learning Model

• What is your imagination for five to seven years
  post-grad?
• What do you need to learn to get there?
• Where will you best learn it?
• Working backwards toward the next job choice

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From Answers to VisionHelping your students
find Images

• Ask for Images (5 to 7 years)
• Loosen things up differentiate images from
  analysis
• Give categories for imagery people,
  surroundings, pace, activity, broader life

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Using CareerLeader to Develop Career Images

• Each Core function has associated imagery
• Reading CultureMatch generates images of culture

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ImageryApplication of Technology

• Expert
• Innovation
• Problem solving
• Planning
• Engineering
• Science
• Gadgets
• Cutting edge Technology

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ImageryQuantitative Analysis

• Finance
• Control
• Math
• Financial Gain
• Expert
• Smart colleagues
• Precision
• Deals (?)

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ImageryTheory Development

• Learning
• Problem solving
• Teaching
• Thought leader
• Research
• Knowledge
• Ideas
• Debate
• Imagination
• Theory

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ImageryCreative Production

• Brainstorming
• Blank page
• New projects
• New products
• Excitement
• Fast pace
• Free thinking
• Early stage
• Ideas
• Energy

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Imagery Counseling Mentoring

• Relationships
• Altruism
• Social enterprise
• Values
• Making a difference
• Teaching
• Counseling
• Psychology
• People

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ImageryManaging People Relationships

• Teams
• Leader
• Manager
• Mentor
• Goals
• Vision
• Motivation
• People

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ImageryEnterprise Control

• Strategy
• Vision
• Leadership
• Control
• Ownership
• Power
• Decision maker
• Player
• Principal

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ImageryInfluence Through Language Ideas

• Ideas
• Knowledge
• Persuasion
• Communication
• Leadership
• Power of Language
• Influence
• Presentation
• Deals

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Facilitating Imagery

• Imagination can only come from the student, but
  you can model it
• Encourage pictures, feelings and intuitions
  rather than analysis
• My sense isuse your intuition, but label it as
  such

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The Learning Model Questions

• What will you need to learn and experience in the
  next four to five years to get there?
• Where will you best get this?

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The Job Students Should Want

• Working with a seasoned manager
• Working with an accessible manager
• Working on a high visibility project

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The Typical MBA Mental Model for Career Decision
Making
Full Cognitive Analysis (to avoid mistakes,
failure, shame) ? ? ? Definitive and Final
Action (there must be one right answer)
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Changing the Abstraction Model
Disciplined imagination ? Deep
analysis of images ? Preliminary action steps
to test analysis (exploration, information
interviews, etc.) ? New information ??revised
model ? Decision
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From Vision to Nitty-Gritty

• Shifting focus from THE JOB to ways to advance
  closer to the vision
• Brain-storming alternative pathways that advance
  towards the vision
• Identifying strategies and tactics for each of
  the pathways