I can't help thinking that Carl Rogers approach is absolutely essential and fundamental but, and its a big but, not sufficient for careers advisers.
I can't see that we can get very far at all without being congruent, having positive regard, and empathic understanding. Clients will never open up, trust us, and be in a place that we can truly help them without these being in place. I can see that the approach demands flexibility in what we do as well, in that it is person centred and doesn't allow us to impose our own structure and expectations on what takes place in an interview which to an extent has to be a good thing.
The problem though is that if the approach Carl Rogers advocates is sufficient then there is no need for professional career advisers. Anyone with these attitudes could act as a career adviser. Most people's mums would qualify in this category but I don't think they would necessarily offer good careers advice.
A session with Carl Roger may offer a warm happy feeling immediately after, but on reflection, other than perhaps deepening their own understanding of self, I don't think clients would necessarily believe that they had received the careers advice they hoped for, and if we were honest we would often know we hadn't done a good job either afterwards. Surely as professionals we actually have a duty to impart information and advice that the client isn't necessarily asking for, and this advice may not leave a warm happy feeling. Some of our advice may give clients food for thought, challenge their assumptions, and potentially put them back to the drawing board with their plans for the future. This might be unpleasant for them at the time, but ultimately in their best interests. Grant gave a brilliant quote about a friend having to be as soft as a dove and as wise as a serpent. I think our wisdom in this respect has to come very much from our professional expertise.
Carl Rogers approach seems to be very much about drawing people out of themselves and getting them to come up with the solutions. This maybe is the right approach to take when someone has suffered some kind of personal trauma, (which I think Carl Rogers' clients often had) but I just don't think its the best approach for careers advice - we have to pull our tool box out to help as appropriate, be that careers information, matching approach, or good old common sense.
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17 years ago
Having read your thoughts about how effective Carl Rogers' ideas are for Careers Counselling I have to agree with you. In fact it reminds me of a scene in an Indiana Jones film where our hero is surrounded by men swinging swords at him and in return he pulls out his gun and shoots them: Rogers' theory just does not hit the spot,despite its intentions.Is it possible that his approach is only suitable for people who have psychological problems? The client is encouraged to find the root of their problems but the counsellor does not offer solutions or information. I do agree however that as Careers Advisers we need to put our own egos to bed when helping other people.
ReplyDeleteInteresting points, especially that anyone can adopt these attributes to give careers advice, but I guess not all advice givers are impartial like we are! But I disagree that we can only use Rgoers approach with people with psychological problems. Surely all clients deserve to be shown true empathy and "unconditional positive regard"? For me, these underpinning values are at the heart of person centred guidance, but his approach lacks the obvious structure useful to giving information, advice and guidance of later models such as Kidd etc.
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