TIPS
and TECHNIQUES…
PROFESSIONAL
to PROFESSIONAL
By
Helen Harkness, PhD
As career advisors and consultants today, our major
responsibility is to teach our adult clients how to deal with change and the
subsequent chaos and complexity that will only increase in the next decade.
We are all quite aware that our traditional, mid-life clients grew up in a world valuing stability, material success – the typical "up the corporate ladder," womb to tomb paradigm which has crashed with the bang and the whimper of massive downsizing, mergers acquisition. Most older adults, reared on stories of the Great Depression, fear real change and would probably remain passively and seemingly trapped in meaningless Sisyphesian jobs that give them no real pleasure except a paycheck.
This does
not include most of the Generation Xers and Generation Y. However, avoiding
change is becoming less an option as organizations increasingly downsize and as
the younger generation enter the workforce. What can we as career consultants
teach our mid-life clients who stand fearful in a Twilight Zone of rapidly
changing career paradigms?
These are three of my tips on techniques used with
clients in career transitions. The career process I help my clients through is
really very simple, yet totally complex.
They must:
1.
Know
what they can and want to do: This is based on looking inward at themselves, and looking outward researching and exploring what is happening outside
their former occupational life.
2.
Ask
for it assertively and effectively.
Develop a working plan and communicate with those who can help them. While they
must do it themselves, they are not by themselves
3.
Know
they deserve what they are asking for.
This is a sense of self-esteem, built on the
knowledge and self-assurance that they can and will succeed in their focused
area.
So, our job is to help our clients know what they
want based on themselves and the reality of the environment and to teach them to
ask for it effectively and know they deserve it!
As I have moved adults through this career change and enhancement process for 25 years, I am always amazed at how assertive and creative they can become. Once they get a real image of what they can become in their future and become passionate about their purpose.
They must
also learn a new way to tell time. When I have mid-life clients, paralyzed and
stuck, one of my most effective techniques is to pose the following simple
question:
"What would you do if you
were 20 years younger?"
I have found that very frequently they can respond
very quickly. Their ready answer provides some very real insight to the options
they may be closing out because of the mindless myths of chronological aging.
There is absolutely no research proving that mental, physical, psychological and
creative decline are automatic functions of the number of days we have breathed.
Let's teach ourselves and our mid-life clients to focus on functional
age: forget chronological years.
