Storytelling

Career literature, today, continues to discuss life-span career theories and the impact of the “boundaryless career” (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). More commonly in our work as practitioners we are setting the stage for our clients to author, re-author, and re-construct their own career story. Language is the vehicle for telling the story, understanding the story and making meaning.

I recently read an article linking new media’s roots to ancient oral storytelling. In it, the author discusses the flexible and evolving nature of creating a story in the new media space recognizing that “rather than being permanent and immutable, the webs allows people to pick their way through information, change it, respond to it and to create in concert with others.” This made me think about career identity – it too is flexible and changing – impacted by many influencing factors.

This is one of the qualities of online spaces that I really like. When writing out one’s perspective, it becomes “thinking that can be stopped and tinkered with” (Gage, 1986). When recording and sharing a video, the story is captured as a moment in time that can be reviewed, examined and, potentially, re-articulated. These new media offerings provide creative options for clients and practitioners to capture the unfolding life-span career story of individuals.

Check out the Centre for Digital Storytelling http://www.storycenter.org/ or their story sharing site http://storycircles.org/. You can use this site, for free, to store public or private videos. Get creative – think about how you might use this as a counselling and development strategy with your clients. Don’t forget to come back and post a comment if you try this – so we can all learn together!