Abstract
This chapter describes the process of making career choices utilizing stories. It shows how a coachee finds the tools to navigate in different contexts and situations to approach his personal goals. The chapter starts by introducing the holistic vision for looking at a person. The career plan is part of his whole life. This is best captured by the ikigai principles. In the second and main part, the seven-step process is described and illustrated by two cases. Stories of his past make clear what already works and what needs more attention. On the other hand, future stories help the coachee envision where to find the horizon he wants to approach. By knowing the right words to express his future needs, the coachee can look at the labor market, find the most suitable place, or design the path to get there. In the last part, we look at the impact on organizations and society. The Flemish government now provides funding for individuals’ career coaching to support people in their quest before developing a burnout, losing their job, or becoming unemployed. When individuals, supported by a coa, bring up important topics in the working environment, they make waves in the water, and the coaching can affect whole teams and organizations.
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Notes
- 1.
When writing about a person, I might use “he,” but this can be applied to M/F/X.
- 2.
Graeber, anthropologist, at the School of Economics in London, did his research on useless jobs.
- 3.
The word “progress” is always part of the descriptions. The verb “career” refers to “rush, blast, shift.” The etymology refers to Latin word “carrus,” wheeled vehicle.
- 4.
When using “we,” I refer to Werk met Zin, our cooperative coaching company. We share this vision with 27 coaches. When describing my personal coaching practice, I use “I,” since we all work with our own methods and tools.
- 5.
Ikigai, a Japanese word to find a long and happy life.
- 6.
Swart Chené (in Transformation through deconstructing societal discourses, her chapter in this book) describes this water as “the ocean,” the societal system, and culturally assumed taken-for-granted beliefs and ideas that have been constructed over time that surrounds and influences us. These beliefs and ideas or contexts are often referred to as “the way things are.”
- 7.
We offer “Coffee & Coach,” a free introduction talk in a coffee house, to reduce the threshold for people who doubt if a coach can help them in their search.
- 8.
A career cheque is funded by the state, for the cost of 40 € the individual can get 4 hours of coaching. See Sect. 3.1 empowering the working individual how and why the state is funding career coaching.
- 9.
More on the importance of moments can be found in the chapter in this book by Chené Swart.
- 10.
In the apprentice journey, Chené Swart introduced the flow between living in the presence of stories versus meaning making.
- 11.
This tool has grown in my practice but was originally inspired by an existing exercise (Struik 2008, p. 20).
- 12.
Chené Swart notes from the apprentice journey Re-Authoring the World.
- 13.
The aspects are satisfaction with the service, better self-knowledge, better insight in the labor market, clear career goals, higher self-confidence, lifelong learning, etc.
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Genard, M. (2019). Re-authoring Careers: Changing the Narratives Around Work for Individuals and Its Impact on Organizations and Society. In: Chlopczyk, J., Erlach, C. (eds) Transforming Organizations. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17851-2_16
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