The counselor's posture in narrative career counseling: An experimental study

Since the emergence and growing popularity of constructivist theories and the concurrent rise of narrative career counselling techniques (see McIlveen & Patton, 2007), research attention has been focused on how clients proactively create a meaningful story about their careers. However, very scarce attention has been paid to the counsellor’s influence on the narrative process and its benefits. This experimental study tested whether the counsellor’s posture would predict the benefits of a narrative career counselling session. More precisely, following Nils and Rimé (2012), we hypothesized that a socio-affective (empathic) posture versus a cognitive (reframing) posture would yield different levels of career adaptability (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012), career decision self-efficacy (Taylor & Betz, 1983), and career decision-making difficulties (Gati et al., 1996). 88 final-year psychology students were recruited to have a 45-minutes session with a career counsellor (blind to the hypothesis), whose posture was manipulated in a 2x2 design (cognitive/non-cognitive; socio-affective/neutral). The results showed that narrative career counselling was beneficial to career adaptability (as compared to levels measured before the study) only when the counsellor adopted either a socio-affective/non-cognitive posture or a cognitive/neutral posture. Inconsistent findings were found regarding to career decision self-efficacy and career decision-making difficulties. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that narrative career counselling can lead to different benefits depending upon the counsellor’s posture. Implications for both researchers and counsellor’s training and competence development are discussed.