I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO
(March/April 2004 Issue)

When we ask clients, "What do you want your career to be?" they often do not know what to say. They think we want them to offer up a fully-formed occupational title. But, in fact, clients’ career rumblings do not come forth in neatly stated labels. And why should they? Clients have little knowledge of what people do in the world of work. Furthermore, an occupational title is often only a loose or inaccurate representation of what’s really happening.

Clients envision career possibilities in other ways. For example, many clients "see" career futures as "pictures" of themselves in the working world. Career counselors should ask some clients to "draw a picture of how you would like to be in the world of work". Or, more than one picture. Counselor and client could examine these pictures for meaning, feelings, and symbols. This could also be conducted as a group exercise. A picture frees the client from having to name anything specific. She does not have to "know" anything about the world of careers. All she has to do is use her imagination.

"Most failures of careers are failures of imagination" - Leona Tyler, author of "The Work Of The Counselor"

Counselors can also work with clients’ drawings as a takeoff point for asking other questions:

"What feelings do you have about what you have drawn?"

"Where would you like your career to be in this drawing?"

"What does this drawing say about you?"

By using an erasable medium, the client could be encouraged to change, reshape, and revise his drawing during your conversation. The drawing would thus become like a piece of moldable clay. Of course, this same activity could be done by asking the client to work with a big portion of actual clay. I have long believed that continually reshaping a mound of clay is an apt metaphor for career development.

Words are fine in some ways, but in helping clients to plumb the depths of their career motivations, words can be limiting or even misleading. Visual media such as drawings and clay encourage the client to project her whole self into whatever "world" she sees or would like to see. In a way, the clay or drawings are projective techniques where the visual represents what is going on under the surface for the client.

The answer to "What do you want to do?" is not a single exchange. It is an ongoing dialogue, complete with changes of direction and new interpretations from week to week. This will frustrate some clients (and counselors too) whose friends are working in fields with simple, straightforward titles, such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, and others. But the extra incubation time may lead to a more creative result. When people ask your client "Why have you not decided yet?", tell her to say: "Go away, I’m incubating!"

"I don’t know" is not a blank wall. It is an invitation for imagination and exploration. The best careers are the ones that have not been invented yet. I know a person who created (and was hired for) a theater arts program for dropouts in public schools where no such program existed, because the traditional dropout prevention approaches were not working in her district.

When you ask, "What do you want to do?" do not be satisfied with a brief answer of what sounds like a career label. Your question is a gentle request to be invited to the client’s inner life, and your desire to help the client discover her innermost drives to do something of value and find meaning in her work. Together you are looking for the fire within.

In the most general sense, urge the client to be creative in looking for "what I want to do". Look for images, visions, sounds and tastes. Beyond the senses, tap into intuitive feelings and inklings of the mysterious within you. Ask questions such as: "What are you curious about? Toward what or whom do you feel drawn? What do you see in your dreams? If you were to have a calling, what might it be?"

You can ask other questions such as: "If I were to follow you around for a week, what would I notice about you? What do you know about yourself that few others know? If you were a piece of music, what kind would it be?" Your questions should encourage the client to reveal various aspects of herself, rather than ask her to guess about career directions.

Clients who say "I don’t know" are often saying: "Help me on this trip. I want a companion to talk with, a person who cares to listen to my collection of thoughts and feelings. Someone who will help me notice where my energy is and see where it leads me."

Eventually the client’s drawings, clay models, and verbal thoughts will lead to some exciting career ideas. About this time the client’s friends, family, and neighbors put in their two cents about what the client "should" be doing. These messages are to be ignored if they are experienced as "judgments." In the words of the poet, Rumi:

"Start a huge, foolish project . . . It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you."-- Jelaluddin Rumi

Howard Figler, Ph.D., is the author of The Complete Job Search Handbook and The Career Counsleor's Handbook. He can be reached at: hefigler@pacbell.net