Meaningful Action Plans

Back in the 1990s, many publically funded careers services were required to produce action plans at the end of every guidance interview in order to claim funding. They were written to a standard format in a standard font, and took hours to write.  Action plans were also used to quality assure guidance and it sometimes seemed that no-one cared what actually happened in your guidance interview as long as the action plan met the standards.

Action plans were prodeuced with managers, teachers, parents, auditors and quality teams in mind, and unsurprisingly, most clients chucked them in the bin.

Fortunately, practices move on and many of us are free to think about how clients actually want to be reminded of their careers conversation.

Would they like to create their own action plan? Many people feel more ownership of a document they created themselves. They could photograph the Sticky Notes  or diagrams used with their phone. Perhaps they would like to be texted or emailed with a reminder of their actions and useful resources? Or they might prefer an immediate hand written list so they can start straight away.  A client with literacy difficulties might prefer picture reminders.

The best way to find out is to ask them, of course.

Scaling the Action Plan

One of my favourite uses of a scaling question is to ask the client to rate the likelihood that they will actually carry out an action plan.

“On a scale of 0-10, with ten being extremely likely, and zero being extremely unlikely, how likely is it you will actually do X?”

It’s an easy way to check out the client’s commitment or find out how confident they feel to take the next step, and if it is done with a gentle smile, it shouldn’t feel threatening or judgemental.

If the score is low, then you can discuss how to make the action more achievable (maybe break it down into bite size chunks or teach the skills needed) or invite the client to choose an action that is more meaningful rather than what they think you want to hear.

 

 

Self Efficacy: A Key to Motivation

Have you ever wondered why some clients find it so difficult to take action to change their careers, even though they tell you that the change is really important, or that they are really dissatisfied with the current situation?

Self-efficacy is our belief that we can exert control over our lives, succeed at any given task and achieve our goals.  It’s a critical element in motivation because, if we believe that we can successfully make a change, we are more likely to try.  

If we do not believe we can succeed then there is no point in trying.  It will just be a waste of energy and potentially lead to rejection, frustration and other negative emotions.  When weighing up whether to make a change, we calculate the likelihood of success and the rewards that will bring, versus the likelihood of failure and the pain that will bring.

However, we don’t always make very accurate judgements about our likelihood of success.  Depending on where we sit on the optimist-pessimist spectrum, we may over or under estimate how likely we are to succeed.  If your client has overly-pessimistic beliefs then they are likely to be low in self-efficacy for the change you are working on.

According to Bandura (Self Efficacy in Changing Societies 1995), our clients can build self efficacy through four types of experience:

• mastery; succeeding at tasks such as mock interviews will increase confidence that they can do it for real;
• vicarious; observing or accessing stories of other people (“people like me”) succeeding;
• social persuasion; receiving verbal feedback that they have what it takes to succeed with the chosen task;
• physiological and emotional states; anxiety can be interpreted as a warning of imminent failure but a coach can help to reframe this state  as one which produces the necessary energy to succeed.

Our sense of self-efficacy for any given task can also be lowered by the reverse four experiences: an actual experience of failure at the task or something perceived as similar, watching someone else who we relate to fail, negative feedback or criticism, and negative emotions whilst performing the task (anxiety, or frustration, for example).

We can have low self-efficacy for some tasks (sorting out a digital problem, for example) and high self-efficacy for other tasks (starting a conversation with a stranger).  Our client might have high self-efficacy for the tasks in their current job, but low self-efficacy for promoting themselves outside their current organisation. Low self-efficacy for a particular task  is not the same as a generalised lack of confidence.

If you are working with a client to build self-efficacy for a specific task, whether that is job interviews, networking or getting to grips with digital self-marketing, use these four methods to apply a multi-prong strategy:

• Start with easy tasks that the client can master
• Use stories of other similar people who have succeeded or put them in touch with a good role model
• Give lots of positive feedback
• Make it fun!

CASE STUDY

Varsha is a French teacher in a secondary school, and has progressed to become Head of Department at quite a young age.  She is considered to be a good teacher, who always gets results, and is fairly well liked by her pupils, although considered on the strict side.   She has no qualms about getting up to speak in fronts of large groups of parents and pupils.

Although she enjoys working with her pupils, she has become very fed up with the amount of work that she takes home every weekend, and feels that the paperwork involved in the job is dragging her down and creating too much stress. She tells her career coach that it is really important to her that she leaves teaching and has a new income by the end of the academic year.  Having done her research, she has decided that she would like to become a freelance translator.

However, when she comes to the second session, she has done nothing to progress her action plan.  She has not set up a website or a social media account, or made contact with any of the local businesses who do international trade.  When her coach probes why this is, he discovers that Varsha is assuming firstly that her digital skills are not good enough, and secondly that she does not know how to pitch herself to others.

Together they agree some steps that will help Varsha build her self-efficacy in relation to these tasks:

• They break the tasks down into bite size chunks, so that Varsha will have more chance of success.  The coach shows her how to set up a Twitter account, and then tasks Varsha with setting up a Linkedin account at home.  Having made the task easier, Varsha is likely to experience some mastery.
• The coach helps Varsha think of a person who could serve as a good role model.  Varsha decides to contact an old friend who has recently become self-employed and carry out an informal interview with her, finding out about how she overcame barriers and found her feet.  This will give her a sense of  vicarious mastery.
• The coach gives Varsha a lot of positive feedback, reminding her that she has the demonstrated that she can learn new skills and succeed in challenging situations.  He  also uses immediacy to reassure Varsha that she is very personable and engaging: “If I met you for the first time, I would have the impression that you were a very professional person, a person who would do a good job for me.”  This social persuasion gives Varsha a necessary boost.
• Finally, they hit on a way of making the tasks more enjoyable.  Varsha buys a stack of her favourite bathroom treats and decides to reward herself every time she makes contact with someone who might be able to help her.  She also uses her new social media accounts to follow some comedy feeds, so that she will enjoy going into her accounts.  Now the tasks have become something to look forward to, rather than another chore.  She also decides to practice some mindfulness exercises to help her manage her anxiety about approaching people.  This creates a more positive emotional state around her action plan.

Action Planning Backwards

When your client is feeling stuck and can’t quite see the way forwards, it can help to take them mentally to more positive place, and then action plan backwards from there.

Ask your client to imagine themselves at some point in the future – maybe six months, a year or five years on from where they are now.  Encourage them to imagine things have gone as well as they could reasonably be expected to, and they are happy with the choices they have made and enjoying their current situation.  You can ask questions to help them imagine the details – what they are wearing, what they are surrounded by, what other people are saying about them, what they are doing.  Details make the image more real!

For example, if they are trying to decide which university to apply to, ask them imagine that they are happy at university, enjoying their course, making friends and doing well academically.

Then ask them to stay in this positive place, and think about all the steps they had to take to get there (researching the options, revising for exams, going to open days, getting some work experience).  You might need to prompt them if they overlook something obvious. Write each step on a post it note.

When the client can no longer think of anything else to say, help the client to rearrange the steps in the order that they need to happen in.  You have created an action plan! The client could take a photo of it on their phone, or you could email it to them.

This approach to action planning can be much more powerful and motivational than the traditional action plan. I was first introduced to this technique by Liane Hambly.