Design Thinking in Career Development and Counseling  Alessandra Farrag

Design Thinking in Career Development and Counseling      Introduction    With almost twenty years of experience in organizational and people development, I have  never knowingly applied design thinking methodologies or tools in order to solve business  problems or people issues. I was not even aware that design thinking exists.  Thus, it struck me by surprise when I discovered the similarities between the design thinking  approach (Malak, 2016) and the career coaching process based upon systems theory,  success strategy and cybernetics (Friedrich, Seiwert and Geffroy, 2003, p.23):

Design Thinking  Career Design

What is?  Looking inside: self assessment, analysis, synthesis

What if?  Looking outside: orientation, options, and evaluation  What wows?  What works?  Looking forward: career action plan design and implementation

Design thinking in general with its procedures and instruments appears to be useful in  dealing with career development issues. It may help finding answers to the question how to  effectively design and propose a unique portfolio of competencies in a world of work that has  become increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (Laurençon, 2014).      1. Challenge    A typical challenge in career counseling is to help the client discover and understand his or  her own work life story and its patterns without providing answers or even advice. Normally,  people are not used to analyzing their own history and development including a reflection of  their values, motivated skills, preferred work settings and satisfiers, barriers and constraints.  However, without a thorough self-assessment a client won’t be able to figure out what might  be suitable and sustainable career options. The ‘what is’ or ‘looking inside’ phase should not  be cut short or skipped – even if the client is itching to apply for a new job immediately.  ‘If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else’ (C. Stengel) – but  if you don’t know where you are coming from, you might get stuck in the middle of nowhere  again and again. As career counselors we are supposed to put our clients back into the  driver’s seat from the very beginning in order not to waste time or talent or both.      2. Selection    In this initial stage of the career coaching process the instrument of choice is storytelling.  Storytelling is not just a design thinking tool (Malak, 2016, Module 2) but also the foundation  of narrative management and communications in a broad variety of contexts (Sammer, 2014,  p.36). Narrative management encompasses personal and corporate storytelling, narrative  knowledge management, leadership communications, and narrative change management  (Erlach & Müller, 2015/2016). ‘Stories or narratives are a unique derivative of systems theory  thinking and are key to constructivist approaches’ (Patton & McMahon, 1999, p.235).  Storytelling is very useful in human resources management in general, e.g. in recruitment  and selection. For instance, if you ask a candidate in a job interview to tell his or her story  rather than to take you through the stages of a polished résumé, the person will most likely  open up (and tell you much more than previously intended).  We all love stories. We love to use our episodic brain. We ‘think’ in stories and tend to forget  unrelated facts (Erlach & Müller, 2015, pp.3-4; Sammer, 2014, p.1). We all have a personal

Design Thinking in Career Development and Counseling  Alessandra Farrag

and professional story to tell with a myriad of twists and turns, touch and pain points. So,  administering standardized and primarily quantitative assessment tools (e.g., surveys or  psychological tests) in career counseling to gather data, to analyze types, and to pigeonhole  someone is definitely not enough and does not do justice to a person’s individuality and  character. These tools should be complemented by qualitative instruments like storytelling  (Patton & McMahon, 1999, p.236).  Consequently, I start the career counseling process with a seemingly simple question:  What’s your story?      3. Application    There are basically two reactions: a smile or a blank face. In our world of ‘hard facts’ many  people have forgotten how to tell stories, especially their own. Others get carried away as  soon as they are taken seriously and obtain ‘permission’ to talk about themselves.  In order to assist the client I ask guiding and probing questions (Guerriero & Allen, 1998,  pp.26-37 and own compilation), for example:

•  Tell me be about your career to date.

•  What were you trained for in school/college/university?

•  What career paths have you been following?

•  What do you regret/resent?

•  Which achievements are important to you and why?

•  What do all of your jobs/assignments have in common?

•  What have been the most rewarding/disappointing components of your jobs?

•  What are the highlights of your job history or career chronology?

•  Have you been repeating some of the same employment patterns that did not feel  right for you?

•  What is your current level of satisfaction at work?

•  Have you ever thought that you would be happier in a different work environment?

•  How do you define success and how will you know it when you have it?

•  When you are ninety-five years old, what will you want to say about your life?

•  What is it for you to have a full, rich life?

Telling one’s life and career story will assist the client with uncovering patterns and themes  and forgotten events, with making meaning of his or her own career, with understanding  experiences, and with re-constructing (Patton & McMahon, 1999, p.148, p.177 and p. 235).  The client will interpret his or her background and uncover the influence of significant others,  i.e. the roles in the career story: protagonist and antagonist (a person or a barrier), objectives  and helpers or mentors (Erlach & Müller, 2015, p.5). S/he will be able to deal with  (suppressed) emotions and focus on the WHY rather than the WHAT of his or her career  development to date (Sammer, 2014, p.56). This includes dealing with change, challenges,  and conflict as the key to and starting-point of any story (Sammer, 2014, p.117; Patton &  McMahon, 1999, p.177). Eventually, the client will find his or her unique strengths, motivated  skills, and a potential compelling offer (Friedrich, Seiwert and Geffroy, 2003, p.23) based  upon what constitutes individual success and failure.  For example, one of my clients, a gifted artist, realized throughout the process how much  pressure her parents had put on her in order to push her into a ‘real’ career. However, she  always wanted to be a painter and photographer. So, after getting a thorough understanding  of her own story, she worked hard to overcome the internalized parental voice, dominance,  and resistance and eventually became a famous artist. Another client, a frustrated bank  clerk, realized in an intensive (and painful) storytelling session, that his dream to go and work  on a farm in Iceland was not a stupid fantasy but his calling. He gathered plenty of  information, designed an action plan, and hopped on a plane.

Design Thinking in Career Development and Counseling  Alessandra Farrag

It does not have to be Iceland, though. One of my clients really loved her sales job, but  figured out whilst telling her story, that the performance-driven corporate world was not the  ideal environment for her to creatively find unconventional solutions for her customers. Today  she works for a medium-sized organization sharing her values.  The prerequisite for and key ingredient of an effective application of storytelling in career  design is listening with unconditional positive regard. The experience of not being assessed  or judged or discriminated against for one’s ideas and dreams, choices and decisions,   ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’ will most likely enable the client to get unstuck, to find answers to  burning career issues, and to move forward or into a completely different direction.      4. Insight    Analyzing client stories helps me to understand work life values and stages, work adjustment  styles, the client’s degree of career maturity, self-concepts and learning strategies,  environmental conditions and events. These insights are the foundation of the career  counseling process and determine the direction the journey will take. By listening to the  client’s story and by observing emotional reactions, I am able to adjust the focus, intensity,  and speed of the entire consulting process and therefore to actively form and enrich the  coaching relationship.  For the customer, there is a ‘dual use effect’ and extra value deriving from storytelling:  knowing and understanding one’s own career story inward and outward will be of great help  to present the (essential parts of the) story combined with a unique selling proposition to a  potential employer or customer at a later stage. It’s always amazing to hear the exact same  career story in a myriad of truthful variations as soon as a positive attitude, self-confidence,  and courage come into play. For example, one of my clients used to constantly point out  negative issues of her career in an interview. As a consequence she gathered a depressingly  high number of rejections to her applications. Once she was able to re-frame her own story,  she came across much more self-confident and convincing and succeeded in obtaining a  position in a suitable work environment.  Career counseling is like working on a puzzle with a dizzying number of pieces. With the help  of storytelling the client will build and eventually see the bigger picture (Malak & Malak,  2011, pos.1028), i.e. his or her unique work life ‘painting’. It may sound contradictory, but  knowing and understanding the value of storytelling as a powerful instrument of design  thinking enables me to combine it more effectively with other selected and individualized  tools (e.g., card sorts, work diaries) in career counseling sessions.      5. Approach    As mentioned previously, I sometimes encounter clients whose approach to any kind of work  issue is driven by facts and figures (e.g., the stereotypical engineer or financial analyst).  Thus, I initially need to find out what kind of career assessment method the person may  prefer. If s/he is more of a straightforward, analytic, numbers, procedures (you name it) type,  other tools quickly providing structure (e.g., mind mapping, questionnaires, bullet point lists),  may be more appropriate to begin with.  However, storytelling should always be the key instrument. It does not have to be called  storytelling explicitly as this may put some people off. Apart from this, some may need more  or different probing questions than others. For example, one client told me right away that he  was not interested in telling stories but in producing results fast and furiously. He was  convinced that it was my job to provide the network, contacts, and leads he needed. With a  few WHY questions he could not escape, we broke the ice and got to the core of his career  issues. All of a sudden he talked about a number of poor work experiences he was ashamed  of and desperately tried to hide from others.

Design Thinking in Career Development and Counseling  Alessandra Farrag

Ultimately, when applying storytelling in a career counseling session I need to avoid jumping  to conclusions too fast or steering the client into a specific direction (in order to confirm my  own ideas or assumptions). As a skilled helper I am supposed to see, hear, and feel what the  client needs and select and apply the methodologies and instruments accordingly.      Conclusion    Discovering that a design thinking attitude has been part of my career counseling practice for  a long time (without my knowing that there’s actually a name to it), was demystifying,  liberating, and enriching. There must be a reason why I initially called my consulting services  ‘career design’.  It’s more or less a confirmation that analytic approaches only have never been effective  enough in this entirely human-centered, complex area of expertise (Malak, 2016, Module 1).  This is even more important when long-term career plans need to be complemented and  sometimes even replaced by constantly re-creating one’s career and re-designing one’s path  and place in our brave new world of work.                        References:    Erlach, C. and Müller, M. (2015) Corporate Storytelling. Narrative Management Course.  Module 1. 13-14 November. Stuttgart: Hochschule der Medien.    Erlach, C. and Müller, M. (2016) Knowledge Management. Narrative Management Course.  Module 3. 29-30 April. Stuttgart: Hochschule der Medien.    Friedrich, K., Seiwert, L.J. and Geffroy, E.K. (2003) Das neue 1x1 der Erfolgsstrategie.  Offenbach: Gabal.    Guerriero, J.M. and Allen, R.G. (1998) Key Questions in Career Counseling.  Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.    Laurençon, A. (2014) Arbeit in der VUCA-Welt. Kindle E-book. Berlin: Ununi Tv.    Malak, J. (2016) Design Thinking for Innovation. MOOC. 4 July – 7 August.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia.    Malak, J. and Ogilvie, T. (2011) Designing for Growth. Kindle E-book.  New York: Columbia University Press.    Patton, W. and McMahon, M. (1999) Career Development and Systems Theory.  California: Brooks / Cole Publishing.    Sammer, P. (2014) Storytelling. 1st edn. Cologne: O’Reilly.

