Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Volume 53, Number 4, 2001

Career Counselling as Life Career Integration

CHARLES P. CHEN
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
University of Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT Individuals’ career experiences always happen in a broad and

general life context. In this sense, life is career and vice versa. This reality
calls for an inclusive and comprehensive approach in career counselling.
Following a literature-based rationale, the present article aims at examining
the relevance and magnitude of incorporating personal and social
counselling into career counselling. It proposes several considerations for
career counsellor preparation and discusses implications for career
counselling practice.

Career counselling, as its very labelling suggests, mainly aims at helping a

client cope with issues associated with the vocational aspects of his or
her life. An ‘ideal’ scenario for tackling career issues may be that an
expert counselling professional, such as a career counsellor or a
counselling psychologist, would provide a client with an accurate
diagnosis and/or prognosis as suggested by Williamson (1965). Once a
career problem was spotted and analysed, prescriptions for resolving the
problem (e.g. rational reasoning and matching) would be initiated and
implemented. While this approach sounds efficient and is still being
utilised in various contexts for career counselling and vocational
guidance, it is far from being comprehensive in dealing with career issues
in the current world of work.
In fact, as a part of the complex human psychology, career issues
can hardly be discussed and perceived in a ‘vocational context’ only. A
career problem intertwines with other issues and situations in an
individual’s life; it is impossible to query a career problem without taking
a close look at issues and circumstances in one’s general life context
(Young & Collin, 1992; Cochran, 1994; Peavy, 1996). These social and
personal issues interplay with career development issues, making the
career exploration a rich yet complicated and challenging task. At best,
this situation facilitates an integral view toward the co-existence of

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personal and work life. Career issues can be identified and

comprehended within a larger and more holistic context of inter-related
personal experiences. At worst, this same circumstance can make career
counselling a multi-faceted, sophisticated, and often ambiguous and
uncertain mission to accomplish. Career counsellors are frequently
challenged to work with a career dilemma that encompasses a range of
diverse issues and factors in their clients’ personal lives. A common
predicament seems that there is very often no clear-cut boundary
between career issues and personal issues (Yost & Corbishley, 1987;
Young et al, 1996; Amundson, 1998). Career counselling often proceeds
hand-in-hand with personal counselling. Career counsellors are called
upon to become better prepared for working in such situations.
The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the importance of
addressing and dealing with personal and social life issues that may arise
in career counselling situations. Specifically, the article will (a) provide a
rationale for incorporating personal and social life counselling into career
counselling, (b) propose three major aspects engaged in career
counsellor professional preparation, and (c) discuss the implications for
career counselling practice.

Rationale

Theoretical Support
Several theories of career choice and development, either with the
established status or in the emerging domain (Brown et al, 1996), have
articulated the connection between an individual’s personal/social life
and work life. Super’s (1981, 1990) pioneering proposals of self-concept
and ‘life career rainbow’ has perhaps been the most enduring and
influential conceptual work in this regard for the last several decades.
According to Super, one’s vocational self-concept or identity is a part of
his/her total self-concept. A person assumes a variety of sometimes
overlapping roles through different life stages. Individuals’ life
developmental experiences complement and supplement with their
career developmental experiences, and vice versa. It was further
suggested that people possess in mind a self-concept system:
The self-concept system is the picture the person has of self in
numerous roles and situations. In other words, people have one
self-concept system that is general and inclusive; within this
system, they have more specific and limited concepts of self in
various roles (self as mother, self as teacher, self as partner, and
so on). (Super et al, 1996, p. 141)
With much influence from a sociological paradigm, Gottfredson (1996)
presents a theoretical tenet that is parallel to Super’s notion of self-

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concept. Gottfredson defines self-concept as one’s view of oneself,

comprising many elements, such as appearance, abilities, personality,
gender, values and place in society. While the psychological self is
recognised as a part of the whole spectrum, career development is
viewed as an endeavour to implement primarily a social self. ‘That is,
career choice is an attempt to place oneself in the broader social order’
(p. 181). Miller-Tiedeman & Tiedeman (1990) propose the ‘life career
theory’ that takes into great consideration a person’s internal frame of
reference. Based on individuals’ cognitive development, these authors
conceptualise career planning and decision-making as a learning process
along with the accumulation of life experiences. Several key constructs
from Krumboltz’s (Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1996) social learning theory of
career decision-making contribute to illustrate the close relationship
between one’s life and career. For example, the social learning
experiences that have impact on individuals’ career can be generated
from various learning contexts including personal life and social life
situations. Environmental conditions that affect a person’s capacity to
learn and the outcome of this learning experience may include personal,
social, vocational and other life experiences. Similarly, self-observation
generalisations and world-view generalisations may form with these
diverse experiences as well.
Emerging theoretical models in the field appear to give more focus
on the intermingled nature of individuals’ personal and work life
experiences. Brown (1996) suggests that one’s work values consists of a
subset of life values, and values are developed through the interaction of
inheritance and experience as people’s life unfolds. Social cognitive
career theory (SCCT) emphasises the integral psychological and social
functioning of human agency in people’s life and career (Lent et al, 1996).
Based on the ‘three big building blocks’ of self-efficacy, outcome
expectations and personal goals, SCCT recommends that career planning
and development is a comprehensive process that takes into account
various social and cognitive aspects in individuals’ life. Within the general
framework of social constructivism, the contextual explanation of career
(CEC) (Young et al, 1996) takes a more holistic and interactive stand in
defining and understanding career issues. Focusing on human intentional
action, CEC postulates that manifest behaviour, internal processes and
social meaning co-exist and interact in people’s life narratives that
comprise career development experiences. Action systems in one’s work
life, such as individual action, joint action, project and career are all a
part of one’s meaning-making and meaning-interpretation process in
various life contexts. Human emotion is involved in these complex
processes, and thus deserves serious attention. Emotion needs to be
addressed in explaining life career activities. A philosophical cornerstone
of CEC is that career planning and actions represent an integral part of

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people’s life experiences; career experiences become meaningful when

they are perceived and constructed in people’s life contexts.
These career theories vary in terms of philosophical orientation,
conceptual framework, focus of attention and perspectives on human
psychology. However, they seem to share, to a more or lesser extent, the
common ground of recognising the significant correlation between life
and career. A basic thesis here is that an individual’s career experiences
can never be separated from his or her life experiences. In this sense, life
is career, and vice versa (Chen, 1998a). While looking at the issue of
career development and choice from very different angles, these
theoretical models and perspectives collectively include the reality of life
experience into the comprehension of career development, confirming
the vital meaningfulness of this common sense integration. Within this
general framework, the two essential facets of vocational psychology, i.e.
personal well-being and vocational enhancement, form an organic and
ecological system (Collin & Young, 1986; Chen, 1999a). These two
prospects interweave and interplay, generating a rich, dynamic, exciting,
yet sometimes very complex and challenging operation within the
system.

Practical Support
Practice in the area of career counselling and vocational guidance
appears to echo these theoretical tenets reviewed earlier. Researchers
and practitioners have delineated the relevance and necessity of
incorporating personal issues into the career counselling process. Two
decades ago, Crites (1981) voiced his critical concern over the
misperception within the counselling profession that career counselling
is a straightforward and technical process with little room for creativity
or reflection. In challenging such a simple-minded and narrow view,
Crites argued that:
career counselling can be therapeutic given the fact that career and
personal adjustment are often interrelated;
career counselling follows and combines personal counselling;
career counselling can be more difficult than personal counselling
because a comprehensive career counselling process simultaneously
takes care of personal counselling needs.
Crites’s standpoints eloquently explained the logic of combining career
counselling and personal counselling in practice. In conforming to
Crites’s calling, Zunker (1994) points out that a well-prepared career
counsellor should have knowledge and expertise in personal counselling
as well. This is because ‘comprehensive career-counselling models are
bringing psychotherapists and career counsellors closer in terms of
techniques and goals. A close relationship is welcomed, for counselling

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approaches typically endorse the ‘total-person’ approach. In general,

counselling strategies designed for personal and social adjustment
should also include career adjustment’ (p. 16).
There has been growing emphasis on and popularity toward a
systematic effort to integrate personal life planning and career guidance
in the counselling process. A major component of Gysbers & Henderson’s
(1988) comprehensive school guidance programme is life career planning.
This programme, which has been widely used in several states in the
United States, requires students to develop a life plan that combines a
range of personal, social and vocational planning aspects. A similar
programme that receives national attention and recognition is the
‘Planning for life’ programme (National Consortium of State Career
Guidance Supervisor, 1996). Focusing on career life planning for students
in the K-12 school system and in the post-secondary institutions, this
programme includes career planning in the whole picture of life planning
process. Another helping approach to address the close relationship
between life development and career direction is the life-planning
workshops conducted at Colorado State University (Zunker, 1998).
Exercises such as ‘life line’, ‘identifying and stripping of roles’, and
‘reassume roles’ (p. 95) incorporate personal issues and experiences
naturally into the students’ goal-setting for future career direction.
Parallel efforts can be found in Canada. The recent guidance and
career education programme initiated at the province of Ontario attempts
to help students increase awareness and skills in the integrated three
main domains of educational, social and career success. The programme
‘will help students relate what they learn in school to the community,
understand and value education, recognise the learning opportunities,
and adapt to changing circumstances. It will help them make transitions
throughout their lives – from family to school, from school to school,
from school to work, and from school to lifelong learning’ (Ontario
Ministry of Education and Training, 1999, p. 5). The other two
programmes stressing a comprehensive life-career theme are the Career
and Personal Planning (CAPP) programme (BC Ministry of Education,
Skills, and Training, 1997) and the Career Pathway (CP) programme
(Amundson & Poehnell, 1996).
The CAPP programme treats personal growth and career
exploration as a combined process. While having a very detailed and
applicable frame of career planning and vocational guidance, a variety of
personal and social skill issues are addressed. These personal
development aspects include issues in the domains of healthy living,
mental well-being, family life education, child abuse prevention,
substance abuse prevention, and safety and injury prevention. The CP
programme attends to career exploration with a holistic perspective,
integrating a series of life career constructs, such as educational
background, significant others and social relationships, personal style,

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values, interests, skills, labour market information, individual work and

leisure experiences. Amundson & Poehnell (1996) state that to address
and overcome personal barriers is important for career exploration. Also,
individual potential in personal and social areas can be utilised as
transferable skills in career development. The CP programme was
developed in association with the federal government of Canada (i.e.
Human Resources Development Canada), and has been widely used not
only in the school system, but also in other organisational and
community settings across Canada.
Similarly, there has also been much attention, insight and effort
toward this end in the United Kingdom. In rethinking careers education
and guidance, researchers and practitioners contend that the realm of
careers needs to be perceived and framed in a much broader social
context that covers various aspects of people’s life (Watts et al, 1996). In
defining the notion of work, Bayliss (1998) states that employment is only
a part of one’s work life, inferring the broad scope of work that
encompasses many other complex facets of one’s life. Termed ‘lifelong
career development’, career planning and decision-making is integrated
into the careers education and vocational guidance process that
accompanies individuals’ life course, aiming to facilitate both youth and
adult populations. This is considered a national, as well as a local
strategy for careers education and guidance in the United Kingdom
(Watts, 1994; Watts et al, 1997).
The fast-and-ever-changing world of work poses new challenges to
people’s work life (Hoggart, 1995; Jackson et al, 1996). As employability
becomes more personalised (Germain & Heath, 1994), other aspects of a
person’s life may affect his/her work life in a more direct and intensified
manner. To understand and explain the constructs of work in people’s life
contexts, the task of career counselling and vocational guidance becomes
complex and dynamic (Hirsh et al, 1998). This calls for a stronger
connection between career guidance and guidance on other aspects of a
person’s life in the United Kingdom context and beyond (Collin & Watts,
1996), leading to a more coherent and meaningful life-career integration.
Literature concerning career guidance and counselling programmes
seems to show ample evidence supporting the intermingling nature
between personal and career counselling. Career counselling practice,
thus, is not conceived as pieces of tasks with a single focus. Rather, it is
seen as a complex process in which various aspects of one’s personal,
social and vocational life experiences collide and merge. This dynamic
process provides a relevant foundation upon which a meaningful and
coherent convergence of ideas and methods may be developed with
respect to counsellor preparation and career counselling practice.

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Career Counsellor Preparation

The professional preparation for career counsellor comprises primarily
three general components. First, career counsellors should possess an
awareness concerning the importance and necessity of integrating
personal and career issues in the counselling process. Counsellors need
to examine their own world-view on this prospect, and adopt an open
attitude toward this more holistic approach in practice. Secondly, career
counsellors must build a solid conceptualisation base for personal and
career counselling integration. In gaining more exposure to relevant
theoretical models and research evidence, counsellors can expand their
knowledge scope and improve their understanding on life career
interrelationship. Finally, with a pro-active attitude and a well-
conceptualised knowledge framework, sound helping strategies and
approaches can be formed to enhance a career counselling approach that
reflects the combined nature of life career development and
transformation (Cochran, 1997; Gysbers, 1996; Chen, 1998a).

Forming Awareness
How the career counselling process will unroll and proceed depends very
heavily on the professional practice of the career counsellor. There is no
doubt that the counsellor’s influence can become the major driving force
that guides the career counselling process to one way or another. This is
perhaps the main reason behind the strong advocacy and support for
both professional ethics and professional competency (Canadian
Guidance and Counselling Association, 1989; American Counselling
Association, 1995). Parallel to counselling professionals working in other
personal and social areas, career counsellors need to be professionally
well prepared when they endeavour to adopt a holistic helping approach
that integrates both personal and work life issues. This kind of
professional preparation traces back to the very root of every type of
psychological helping procedure. That is, a solid conceptual framework is
always the prerequisite forming the very basis for a sound
methodological approach. Career counselling is no exception.
The first essential aspect here seems to be the career counsellors’
own awareness in recognising the co-existence of life and career in the
whole equation. The question they may have to ask is whether they
themselves feel it necessary for career counselling to address personal
and social life issues. A misperception among some counselling
professionals is the myth of overlooking personal adjustment issues, even
though such issues are relevant to a client’s work life and need to be
addressed and examined during a career counselling process (Crites,
1981; Amundson, 1998). This situation reflects the counsellor’s
perspectivity and epistemology toward the relationship of life and career.

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Also, it reflects the very definition of career counselling in each

counsellor’s mind. An honest self-dialogue and self-probing may be
advisable as career counsellors clarify how they view the issue. In
accepting the reality that life and career reflect the two sides of the same
coin, career counsellors should possess a holistic world-view regarding
the interrelated, interactive and interdependent links between life and
career. That is, carry a true philosophical conviction that career is an
integral part of one’s life, and vice versa (Cochran, 1990; Gysbers, 1996;
Chen, 1998a). Without such a world-view and comprehension, it can be
extremely difficult for career counsellors to adopt a conceptualisation
treating life career development as a whole entity in the helping process.
On the basis of increased awareness and sensitivity, career
counsellors can become more psychologically prepared to form a
coherent framework of conceptualisation concerning the integration of
personal and career counselling. Consequently, it would lead to a learning
process of skill enhancement that includes not only skill-attainment but
skill-refinement and -integration as well, resulting in a more holistic
professional development for career counsellors in their practice.

Expanding Knowledge
Professional knowledge in general and literature-based information in
particular forms the first layer of career counsellors’ competency. This is
because a sound practice has to go hand-in-hand with a broad-minded,
well-organised, well-refined, comprehensive and developmental database
of professional knowledge. Career counselling, like other types of
counselling in personal and social domains, requires a continuing effort in
gaining the existing and emerging knowledge in the field. This calls for a
life-long learning process for career counsellors, as well as other
counselling professionals who intend to provide quality services to their
clients. The effort for gaining professional knowledge in such a
continuous fashion coincides perfectly with the intent of integrating
personal and career counselling. Career counsellors can utilise this
learning opportunity to renew, enrich and expand their professional
repertoire at a higher conceptual level. With this conceptual refreshness
and attainment, professional growth will become a reality. To cultivate
and expand their own professional knowledge scope in the combined
domain of life career counselling, career counsellors may, among other
things, focus on the following two dimensions.

Constant knowledge renewal. Career counsellors ought to strengthen their

existing knowledge by reviewing theoretical concepts and career
counselling models in the existing literature. Obtaining such theoretical
knowledge is of vital significance because it renders conceptual
guidelines that can provide direction for a general congruence between

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rationale and practice. A reminder always worth keeping in mind is the

critical importance of a constant renewal of such theoretical knowledge.
Of note, the term ‘theoretical knowledge’ here is broadly defined, that is,
it encompasses a variety of professional information covering theories,
research and practice. This information provides rich conceptual
resources for professional refinement and development in the field. Thus,
knowledge renewal is beneficial and necessary for practitioners including
career counsellors.
There are at least, among other things, three main reasons
supporting this endeavour. First, this effort reinforces one’s memory on
one’s existing knowledge such as the key tenets, constructs, and features
of these major career theories. Secondly, it provides the opportunity for
gaining new information concerning the progress and current status of
the existing theoretical models. For example, Super’s (1990) notion of
‘recycling’ of individuals’ life career developmental stages is a more
recent evolution of the original model. Thirdly, it opens access to new
and emerging literature in the field. Being exposed to these new
professional development resources in a timely manner is particularly
important for career counsellors given the drastically changing world of
work and its impact on people’s personal and work life. This resourceful
professional knowledge can provide career counsellors with more vivid
evidence, and dynamic and comprehensive perspectives in integrating
their clients’ personal, social, and vocational lives in the helping process.

Creative knowledge expansion. In utilising professional knowledge, career

counsellors are encouraged to be creative (Amundson, 1998). This is to
suggest that knowledge and information can be used in a constructive
manner in contriving ideas and ways of doing things with originality. Even
in situations of revisiting other people’s work, especially concepts and
tenets from those well-established career theories, creativity can happen.
For example, a theory review does not have to be merely a static repeat
of the ‘already-established’ constructs or assumptions. Career
counsellors, just like other practitioners in psychological helping
professions, can be creative in expanding what has been said or done by
others. The same professional knowledge (e.g. theoretical and application
information from literature) can be re-applied to a current or different
context in a constructive and enlightening manner, yielding thoughts and
ideas for the construction of new theoretical ground and practical
approaches.
There is plenty of evidence backing up this claim. For example, with
a sociological orientation, Gottfredson’s (1996) theory incorporated a
series of useful concepts from both Holland’s (1973) and Super’s (1981)
theories. Similarly, a review of the related literature earlier in the present
discussion seems to have generated some interesting and new insights. It
reports that some key concepts and tenets from major career theories,

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along with a range of existing career guidance and counselling

programmes, appear to support the pertinence of incorporating personal
counselling into career counselling. This kind of creativity can have an
optimal snowball-effect. That is, it effectively uses the existing knowledge,
while adding new content to the expansion of the present knowledge
horizon, making continuous contributions to the further development
and refinement of the knowledge. This approach of constructive and
proactive knowledge enhancement can be especially relevant in
perceiving and discerning a life-career relationship given its complexity
and richness. Thus, career counsellors are reminded of the significance of
creative thinking in absorbing and digesting what they have learned, what
they are learning and what they are going to learn in their professional
life.

Strengthening Skills
The second layer in the professional competency domain concerns
career counsellors’ skills and expertise in practice. With the first layer
(i.e. a strong knowledge base) in place, a range of relevant skills may be
generated and applied to career counselling situations. Several guidelines
may be worth noticing in terms of developing a repertoire that will be of
particular usefulness to incorporating personal counselling into career
counselling.

Career counsellors as personal counsellors. Career counsellors should

possess basic professional competency in personal and social counselling
areas. Counsellors should not only be psychologically well prepared, but
also be technically ready in dealing with a client’s personal and other
social life adjustment issues in the career counselling process. In doing
so, career counsellors need to equip themselves with good micro-
counselling skills that are equally applicable to personal counselling
contexts. Such skills may include capacity to build a rapport, to probe
issues, to assess interpersonal dynamics and most of all, to be an
empathic and active listener. While this process is open to, and requires a
range of diverse counselling skills in the personal and social dimensions,
it is particularly suggestive that career counsellors will at least
incorporate the basic ideology of congruence, empathy and
unconditional positive regard, that is, the ‘big three’ principles
recommended by Carl Rogers (1987). In other words, a career counsellor
must possess the capability of being a very fine personal counsellor.

Career issues as life issues. When assessing and working on career issues,
counsellors need to maintain a consciousness concerning the
interrelationship between life and career. That is, adopt a holistic view in
understanding a client’s career problem in a total life context that may

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encompass a variety of aspects associated with the client’s present

career awareness and vocational identity. Among other things, such
aspects may include a range of interactive dimensions across personal,
familial, sociocultural, physical and spiritual domains in the client’s life
career experiences. In this sense, the career counselling process adopts a
comprehensive helping approach. Rather than dealing with career issues
as piecemeal events that are separated or ‘distilled’ from one’s individual
life context, this approach intentionally takes care of emerging life issues
along with the career counselling process.

Career intervention via professional growth. This technical aspect of career

counselling is a natural continuation based upon an intentional
endeavour rendered from the earlier two points. With a solid guiding
philosophy of life-career co-existence, career counsellors are advised to
be proactive in constructing a series of helping approaches that will
appropriately address the interactive nature of life and career in the
counselling process. Several guidelines may be helpful in generating more
effective career counselling strategies. First, helping methods need to be
process-oriented. Although there are tasks that need to be implemented,
career counselling as a whole is a process for insights and growth.
Completing tasks should serve for the purpose of linking pieces of
attainment and progress with an integral profile of a client’s personal well
being throughout the process. Secondly, career counsellors need to keep
up their professional development in general, and enhance and expand
their skill repertoire in particular. This requires career counsellors to
keep an open mind, a sense of curiosity, an eagerness to learn, an effort
to act and a willingness to grow professionally. Gaining new knowledge
and skills may be realised through more vigorous participation in
professional development activities such as pursuing retraining and
continuing education, self-directed learning, peer-consultation, in-service
and case analysis in organisational settings, and attending professional
conferences.
The third point appears to be a need for career counsellors to
become more integrated or eclectic in their counselling interventions.
Career counselling with a comprehensive view of life career integration
attempts to deal with a variety of personal, sociocultural, familial and
vocational life issues. It will be extremely difficult for a particular
theoretical and/or clinical helping model to address and deal with a
series of intertwined issues as such. From this perspective, no single
method can be recognised as the best approach for helping. A more
pertinent way here is to incorporate useful aspects from a variety of
helping models into the career counselling process, aiming at taking care
of the particular psychological needs of the client in the helping situation.
Career counsellors should remain flexible and contextual, while applying
various helping models and strategies. Particular attention needs to be

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constantly directed to the client’s individual context given that life career
problems are too dynamic to be confined in a certain mode, or defined
with a set of modal characteristics (Peavy, 1992, 1997; Young et al, 1996;
Chen, 1997).

Implications for Career Counselling Practice

As career counsellors enhance their level of awareness, they endeavour
to become more sensitive, knowledgeable and skilful in dealing with life
career integration in their counselling practice. Several implications may
be yielded with respect to enhancing the helping process. These
implications may include considerations of connecting life issues to
career contexts, facilitating personal exploration, and constructive
utilisation of vocational and psychological assessment methods.

Connecting Life to Career

It is important to help the client understand the interactive relationship
between life and career. One way of addressing the issue is to open up a
direct discussion with the client, especially in the beginning period of a
counselling relationship. Background information, such as the client’s
purpose for seeking career counselling, personal history, educational
history and work experiences is shared during the time. This appears to
be a good timing in bringing into the client’s attention that there is a
natural and close link between personal and work life. It may be advisable
that the counsellor clearly address this critical issue, at least briefly, at
this early stage of building a client–counsellor work alliance.
Although the life career interrelationship seems to be a common
sense issue that is easy to understand, it is not unusual for the issue to be
ignored as the client is preoccupied by ‘vocational issues’ at the time. In
my clinical work, I have observed that some clients may not be aware of
the importance of the issue, while they are actually talking about things in
their personal and social life domains in a career context. Thus, two
points are worth noting. First, the counsellor may, from time to time,
deliberately make a connection between such personal life events with
the client’s vocational history and/or work-related experiences,
demonstrating to the client the natural linkage between the two aspects.
Secondly, the client can be guided to revisit the issue at different phases
of exploration and planning. As a result, the theme of life career
integration will naturally flow through the entire counselling process.

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Facilitating Personal Exploration

The counselling process aims at facilitating the client to proceed with an
in-depth personal journey of self-exploration. A variety of past and
present life experiences are brought into light, being shared and reflected
upon. Whenever necessary, some time and attention can be given to the
exploration of events and experiences that might not be considered as
directly related to career or work issues. However, as the exploration
goes further, these life events may become quite relevant in coping with
career issues. For example, a client first came in asking for help on an
issue of career enhancement, i.e. obtaining a more senior position in her
workplace. She then complained that the professional roadblock for her
was her high level of anxiety feelings in interpersonal communication.
Then it turned out that the root of such anxiety feelings could be traced
back to her early family life, school life and other significant social
relationships.
When my clinical experience as such is repeated, I realise how
important it is to allow clients to have time and room in dealing with
personal and social issues in the career counselling context. The core of
the issue is that the counselling process should serve as a vehicle for a
higher level of self-awareness and self-understanding. This requires a set
of counselling strategies and techniques that will facilitate the client to
explore and understand the personal meanings associated with events
and experiences in life. Narrative approaches and qualitative probing
methods with a social constructivist ideology appear to be particularly
pertinent for facilitating this kind of life career exploration (Chen, 1998b;
Peavy, 1996, 1997). For example, the lifeline exercise can be a very
relevant exploring method that naturally intertwines the client’s
significant stories and experiences in personal, sociocultural and
vocational dimensions. It gives a sense of wholeness and continuity as the
client tries to make sense out of these experiences (Amundson, 1998;
Chen, 1998b). A similar technique for a rich personal exploration and
meaning making is the use of biographical method. With the flexibility of
using either a written or a verbal format, the life stories told by the client
can become a source for generating both personal reflection and insights
(Chen, 1998b). The results of such reflection and insights may well be
translated into action in career planning and decision-making.

Transferring Skills
Because of the inseparable relationship between one’s personal and work
life, it is natural that aspects associated with one side of the coin may
reflect, explain and affect facets related to the other side of the very same
coin. This reality provides a great opportunity for a more full use of one’s
potential in life career enhancement. A useful helping strategy in this

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regard is to identify one’s strengths and competency in personal and

social life situations, and transfer these aspects into more effective
coping skills in varied career development contexts.
The pattern identification exercise (Amundson & Penner, 1998) may
serve as the first step in implementing this personal and dynamic learning
experience. A very brief frame of this exercise includes several main
features. It begins with a short conversation on an activity that the client
is in favour of (e.g. sport or other leisure/social activity) in their daily
routine. The client is then asked about his/her personal feelings
concerning the pros and cons of the activity, and this in turn will lead to a
discussion of some of the aspects that reflect the client’s individual style
in coping with situations. Once the client becomes more aware of
personal potential and strength in daily route and other life contexts,
he/she is encouraged to make full use of such transferable skills in a
career development context. For example, it was revealed that two of the
characteristics associated with climbing mountains are preparation and
perseverance. The client might be encouraged to think of how these two
attributes could be incorporated into a career transition process.
In a similar manner, weaknesses found in life situations can also be
transformed into something positive during this process of skill transfer.
For example, a client indicated that her anxiety level increased in her
daily life whenever she was feeling the need to be more assertive and
forthcoming in voicing views that were different from those of her family
members and friends. As the probing continued, the counselling
conversation started to naturally connect this anxiety feeling in personal
life to the topic of stress and coping in her workplace. ‘What do you
usually do when you feel the need to voice your opinions that are
different from those of your colleagues and/or supervisors?’ ‘How do you
feel when you have to do things like that at work?’ ‘What are other
people’s reactions to things you have to say?’ ‘How would others’
reaction affect your feelings?’ ‘What are the things you would do, or
would not do when you feel anxious in communicating your ideas to your
co-workers?’ A series of questions as such could help to provide the
client with helpful guidance and insights, leading to a higher level of self-
awareness and self-understanding based on a personal exploration
connected to both life experiences and career situations. A central point
in this scenario was that a possible weakness in the client’s individual
style, i.e. high levels of social anxiety in interpersonal communication,
may be recognised and dealt with more effectively. As a client in such
situations becomes aware of the less effective or even negative nature of
an attribute in his/her daily routine or personal style, he/she feels the
need and takes action to replace this attribute with a more competent
and optimal coping method in work life situations. Skill transfer, in this
sense, becomes more broadly defined. It reflects a back-and-forth social
learning process as one integrates his/her life and career experiences,

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including a combination of human psychological moments such as

cognitive processing, meaning interpretation, competency attainment,
skill refinement and action execution. Consequently, a lesson learned
from a life experience, either with pros or cons, can be translated into a
new perspective and action that will be constructive to the client’s life
career planning and development. Thus, personal life is incorporated into
vocational pursuit with an optimal fashion.

Constructive Use of Assessment

Using psychological and vocational assessment tools has long been a
popular practice in vocational guidance and career counselling (Zunker,
1990, 1998; Zunker & Norris, 1998). While being used appropriately, these
tools can provide helpful information for expanding and deepening the
exploration process. Nevertheless, as career counsellors continue to
incorporate assessment into their practice, the challenge remains in
terms of how to use these tools and methods in a more comprehensive
and constructive manner. A calling for life career integration seems to
yield some new interest and effort toward the direction of a more holistic
and dynamic assessment methodology. This is because an integral life
career exploration and planning process needs to go along with
assessment methods that can reflect coherently an individual’s
experiences and profile in varied personal and vocational contexts
(Peavy, 1996).
With respect to the utilisation of standardised testing, career
counsellors may want to pay attention to three points for more
comprehensiveness. First, caution should be taken in choosing the
testing option. There seems to be a ‘professional misperception/myth’
held by some practitioners in vocational psychology in general and in
career counselling in particular. It is the belief that standardised
psychological and vocational testing shapes a more, or sometimes, the
only scientific way to understand an individual’s psychology and its
related characteristics. Likewise, some clients have the similar
perception concerning what a test can do. Clarification and consideration
may be advised in this regard. While standardised testing holds merit, it
is not necessarily the only or best way to accurately reflect the current
state of a person. At times, it may be more appropriate to avoid using
testing at all. Secondly, testing results should be treated as one source of
information for reference. This information needs to be used along with
other information, especially the information provided by the client
through the counselling process. Thirdly, understanding and
interpretation of the testing results should occur within each client’s
individual life history. Attention needs to be directed to particular events
and circumstances that have happened or are happening in the client’s
life, as such experiences can yield substantial impact on some testing

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results. This is to say that testing interpretation needs to be conducted in

an open, flexible and, most of all, contextual manner.
An essential point for career counsellors to bear in mind is that
assessing a client’s psychological state and other related situations in
career counselling can be a very complex and challenging process. There
is no simple and clear-cut measurement given the fact that one’s personal
and work life are two sides of the same coin, and they are intertwined and
interact within the large picture of life career integration. This calls for
open, dynamic and interactive approaches in gathering and processing
personal information in career counselling practice. Career counsellors
may need to become more creative in this regard. An apropos endeavour
toward this end may be the further development and utilisation of
qualitative assessment methods in career counselling (Chen, 1999b).
Qualitative assessment techniques have been introduced in the field for
quite some time (Gysbers & Moore, 1987). The methodology has received
increased attention recently because of its dynamic nature in engaging
clients to participate proactively in the assessment process (Amundson,
1998; Gysbers et al, 1998). The qualitative assessment approach seems to
be particularly pertinent in a career counselling process that pays close
attention to, explains, validates, and integrates the client’s other personal
and social experiences. One advantage is that it facilitates an open and
individualised exploration that will provide a larger and more complex
context for understanding individuals’ life career amalgam. Career
counsellors may consider integrating standardised psychometric
measurement tools and qualitative assessment methods in career
counselling. A constructive merge of these two assessment approaches
can generate supplementary and complementary effect to each other,
enhancing the quality of the helping process (Chen, 1999b).

Conclusions
Individuals’ career experiences always occur in a macro-life context. This
general context provides reasons, rationale and personal meanings in
forming career plans, in making career decisions, and in pursuing a
vocation. Career experiences can never be ‘distilled’ or ‘purified’ from
one’s life experiences. From this perspective, life is career and vise versa.
Thus, it appears more accurate and pertinent to grasp the whole picture.
That is, a career problem may be better viewed as a life career issue and
a career development stipulation may be perceived as a life career
development situation.
Conspicuously, career counselling needs to address and take care of
this reality. In promoting the life career integration, career counsellors
need to increase their awareness, and enhance their knowledge and skills
in incorporating personal counselling into career counselling process.
Career counsellors’ professional preparation is critical as it will form the

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very foundation upon which effective helping strategies will be generated

and implemented. Some considerations for helping clients may include
facilitating life career connection, personal exploration, skill transfer and
constructive use of assessment. While these proposals seem to shed
some light on dealing with challenges in this domain, much work remains
to be done in understanding issues involved in the integral process of
one’s life career development. More focus on this issue will improve both
career counsellor preparation and career counselling practice within a
context that reflects a holistic coexistence of people’s social/personal life
and vocational life.

Correspondence
Dr C.P. Chen, Department of Adult Education, Community Development &
Counselling Psychology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto (OISE/UT), 7th Floor, 252 Bloor Street West,
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada (cpchen@oise.utoronto.ca).

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