I came across the blog of a guy named Greg who is an aspiring writer, and who, as of April 4, was unemployed. His 6-part (so far) narrative of his unemployment makes an interesting entry in the category of storytelling and career. He graduated from college in 2004 and does not want to settle for just any job. He writes reasonably well for a new college grad. I’m eager to know how his job search has progressed since April 2005.

I came across another fascinating piece that relates story to career, in this case the careers of women. Teresa J. Carter conducted a heuristic study in which she was co-researcher with 10 women. She interviewed them and also had them keep journals. Here’s the reference followed by the story-related excerpt:

Carter, T. J. (2002). The importance of talk to midcareer women’s development: A collaborative inquiry. The Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), p. 55+.

Telling their stories to me in narrative format through our conversations and through their journal entries became the means of re-framing identities and gaining self-understanding.

Linde (1990) asserts that narrative encourages development of a private, internal sense of self, as well as the self that is expressed and conveyed to others. She believes that this derives from the sense of reflexivity involved in narrative: the ability to reflect upon the self that occurs when the act of narration creates a split between the narrator and the protagonist of the story. As women observed themselves as protagonists in their own stories, they became critically self-reflective of their learning. These same journaling techniques and e-mail dialogues can be used as learning strategies by managers and women interested in self-development or by adult educators and trainers to help facilitate self-discovery in collaboration with others. Caffarella (1996) describes many such teaching techniques (e.g., reflective journal writing, self-disclosure, use of literature and poetry, storytelling, and reflective group exercises) for staff development that allow participants’ feelings to be a part of the learni ng activity. Women in this study described experiences of this nature that were integral to transformative learning.

Recently I received an e-mail from Marcia Duffy, who is a personal historian. I find that a fascinating way to make a living, and it’s related to my interest in story and career. Here’s her story of telling the stories of others:

By Marcia Passos Duffy

So many people keep meaning to interview their parents or grandparents — and capture all those entertaining and enlightening family stories. But most people never get around to it, and put it off until it is too late and the storyteller has died or is too sick to tell stories anymore.

This was the case with me. My grandmother died two years ago at the age of 94. She was born in Portugal and immigrated twice — to Brazil then to the United States where she lived with my parents for 30 years — and many stories to tell of her adventures. I was very close with my grandmother, who came to live with us when I was 12. She was a skilled, animated storyteller — as are many people of her generation.

Her stories were so vivid I believed that I would always remember them. To this day, I don’t understand why I did not take a tape recorder and just let her talk into it while she spun her yarns. I’m a professional writer, and yet, I never thought to do that. And when she died I realized that while I remember some of her stories to tell to my own children, as time goes on I am forgetting the delightful details, twists and turns she gave her stories.

Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence — everyday a family elder dies, and along with them, his or her stories. In the weeks that followed after my grandmother’s death I realized something important: If, I, as a writer, had never thought to take down my grandmother‚s personal history, how many more families are losing their precious stories — so valuable in keeping families — particularly our children — rooted and grounded? That is why I became a personal historian. I know that by recording these family stories, we allow future generations to discover their ancestors‚ personalities, experiences and wisdom. It is a record that ensures a life — and experiences — will never be forgotten.

More Families are Recording Their Stories
A personal historian is a relatively new profession and the Association of Personal Historians (APH) has existed only since 1994. APH members, like myself and my LifeStories business partner, Jenny Wojenski, are scattered throughout 42 states and four foreign countries to help people, businesses, families, communities and organizations preserve memories and life stories. We conduct this process by audio-taping, videotaping, and spreading the word about how important it is to preserve one’s own or an elder’s history.

While writing down life stories is not a new concept, the tragedies of Sept. 11 have led many Americans to re-evaluate what is important in their lives, and there has been a surge in interest in recording life stories — the lessons learned, moral values and experiences for future generations in a family. Many articles have appeared recently about personal historians and what they do — in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Good Housekeeping, and Money magazine.

But, what exactly is a life story? How is it done?

A life story is more than genealogy, more than the names, dates and places listed on a family tree. A life story — or personal history — tells the fascinating stories behind those facts and brings a family tree to life.

It can include:

Here are a some articles/blog entries that embody some of what my work is about — connecting story to career:

A one-minute story may be key to a storied career by Penelope Trunk, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 7, 2003

Multi-Story Resume, Higher Profile, author unknown

Is your resume telling a compelling story?, FINCAREER, The insiders’ blog on jobs, careers and leadership in the global financial markets, April 12, 2005

The above from FINCAREER is interesting because it’s inspired by a Harvard Business Review article by Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback that asserts a resume can tell a story better than a CV can. But the resume they describe is really no different from today’s standard resume. It may tell a story more than a CV does, but in my view, a resume could do a lot more to tell the job-seeker’s story. That’s a big part of what my work is about and the kind of answers I’m looking for.

My preliminary literature review for my dissertation touches on using story/narrative in career counseling, but while working on an assignment (from which this entry is adapted) for a class I’m taking through Capella University (Strategies for Career and Life Planning), I was quite surprised to discover several articles on that topic that I hadn’t seen before. “How could I have missed these?” I asked myself — and then I realized that it was because this area of career counseling is so emergent that these articles hadn’t even been published when I was first conducting my bibliographic searches.

Using narrative in career counseling probably has not yet reached the status of being called a model, although Cochran (1997) has written an entire book on the subject. In the literature I read, narrative was referred to as an “approach” (Campbell & Ungar (2004a, 2004b). The literature also calls it “emerging” (Campbell & Ungar, 2004a, 2004b). I predict that this approach will grow in stature and popularity and become an accepted model because it is so well suited to today’s changing environment.

The narrative approach is very different from, for example, the trait-and-factor model in that it “focuses on helping clients to articulate their preferred futures rather than answering the question that is traditionally explored in career counseling, ‘Who am I?’ [trait and factor] …that assumes that the self exists as an essential aspect of the individual, which can be revealed through the exploration of interests, skills, aptitudes, values, and personal styles” (Campbell & Ungar, 2004b, p. 28).

The authors also note (2004b, p. 29) that “the self does not have a trait base but rather a narrative base.” Campbell and Ungar consider traits among many components of a client’s story and one’s skillset does not determine one’s future — and future is possible (2004b, p. 32) because “occupational identities are created not discovered (p. 34). In addition, in a critique of the trait and factor approach published before the emergence of postmodern/narrative approaches, Chartrand (1991, p. 519) notes that the literature has criticized trait and factor because of its apparent assumptions include the idea that “occupational choice is a single event, that a single type of person works in each job, that there is a single right goal for every career decision.” For Cochran (1997. p. ix) the narrative approach is not concerned with the “matching” approach of a model like trait and factor, but with “emplotment.”

Here are the stages of Campbell and Ungar’s (2004, p. 30) narrative approach, “A Postmodern Approach to Career Counseling:”

1. Know what you want

2. Know what you have

3. Know what you hear

4. Know what constrains you

5. Map your preferred story

6. Grow into your story

7. Grow out of your story

Campbell and Ungar summarize one of the major differences in these approaches when they write that “traditional approaches gather information, whereas narrative therapy generates a different experience” (2004b, p. 35).

Peavy (1995) summarizes the differences with a series of adjectives for traditional approaches, including “efficiency, effectiveness,accountability, objectivity, neutrality, expertness, behavioral reductionism, quantification, measurement” compared to these for postmodern approaches: “self-construction, self as narrative, life planning.” He places self as narrative in opposition to self as traits.

Chen (1997) believes that the traditional models will continue to be pertinent, but “they may not be sufficient to conceptualise the mission of the self in career making in the post-industrial era.”

Other salient features of the postmodern/narrative approach: