Traditional career development theory emphasises logical rational decision-making, the matching up of skills against occupations to the find the best fit. To this day, that is what most people expect a career development professional to do. And yet, our modern understanding of how the brain works demonstrates that if we rely solely on logic, we are likely to make sub-optimal choices.
Our logical brains are not great at working with complex, impartial information, especially when part of the work will be to weigh up how important all the available information is to us. This is where our limbic systems, or intuitive brains, have a key role to play. This part of the brain can sift through huge amounts of information, linking it to all our previous experiences and memories, to produce a “gut feeling” response to a decision. Our best decisions will often be made using a combination of both intuition and logic.
The easiest way to engage intuition is simply to ask, “Which option feels right?”
Another way of helping a client to get in touch with their intuition is to encourage them to visualise options. Some clients are happy to try this, but others don’t feel so comfortable, so do ask the client if they want to try visualising before you launch into it.
You could say “Some people find it interesting to use their imagination and visualise themselves doing different jobs, to see how it feels. Is that something you would be interested in trying?”
You can then ask the client to visualise themselves in a job that they are considering. Ask them to close their eyes, and really try to imagine that they are at work doing the job. Ask them questions to help them add details:
- What are you wearing?
- What are you doing?
- What other people are around you?
- What are they doing?
- What can you hear?
- What can you smell?
- How does it feel?
- What are you looking forward to?
- What are you good at?
- What is your lifestyle like – house, car, holiday, shopping?
If this approach doesn’t work so well for the client, another approach is to do a mind-map. Ask similar questions, but map out the answers on a piece of paper.
You can try this approach for several options, so the client can compare the options.
If you client has limited knowledge of the options they are considering, you could describe some tasks or scenarios to see how they respond. The client may realise that they don’t know enough about the option to be able to visualise it, and this may help them realise that they need to do further research.
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