Unit 4

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Athabasca University, Athabasca *

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300

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Arts Humanities

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Oct 30, 2023

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1 Unit 4 Reflection Assignment Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University PSYC300: Theories of Career Development Tutor: Louis Svenningsen August 28, 2023

2 Part I: Activity Introduction: This reflection will focus on my chance meeting with a friend that led to the founding of a non-profit organization, and how that chance encounter impacted my career and life both in the short-term and long-term. Part I: Option II, Chance Event In and around 2014, I was well into my finance career. I just completed my “Chartered Professional Accountant” professional designation, spent three years at a prestigious consulting firm, and was exploring post-consulting career opportunities. While at the time I was living downtown Toronto, I accepted a role to work for BCE Inc (Bell Canada) in Mississauga. Stepping out with coworkers during lunch one day, I bumped into a classmate from University – Mark - whom I had not seen in approximately four years. That bump-in over lunch led to a coffee a week later where we got to chatting about careers. In passing, Mark told me that one of his friends had some personal issues that resulted in him abruptly closing his after-school sports business – where Mark also worked as an instructor. My curiosity was immediately piqued as in talking to Mark it seemed like this was an open market that was "low-hanging fruit," and as I previously taught children's sports programs myself. From here, I asked to meet again with Mark to explore the idea of starting a business that would service these same schools, leveraging Mark's intimate know-how of the former clients and their needs. We persisted in exploring the business idea, as we encountered various challenges of running a children's sports program – including issues related to insurance, liability, and processing payments. One of our

3 guiding principles was to operate the business as a federally-incorporated not-for-profit organization. Both Mark and I came from immigrant backgrounds, and found sports to be vital in our development – and we wanted this organization to funnel profits back to lower-income communities to fund free or subsidized programs. I found this rather rewarding and was very optimistic that setting up this organization would provide a level of personal fulfillment that I was missing in my "traditional" career. In hindsight, one of the key aspects of how I approached this chance event was having flexibility in seeing what this organization could become, and adjusting my attitude to what my career can look like – and that may not mean traditional employment. This was a rather consequential personal approach, as an immigrant, it was always instilled in me by my family to find solid, traditional, employment and to have a "good" salary. Part II: Critique / Reflection Client Perspective – Benefits & Insights This exercise was incredibly beneficial in that I was able to consider for the first time in a structured manner how chance events have shaped my career. As my career is a common topic in my therapy as a client, it was interesting to consider chance events and how this is also a topic that is not thoroughly discussed by therapists (Mitchell et al, 1999). It was also beneficial to then tie in the personal skills of curiosity, persistence, flexibility, open-mindedness, and risk- taking (Sharf, 2013) – and how my spectrum on these skills contributed to my willingness to consider these chance events led to material impacts to my career.

4 Another benefit I gained was the need to be open-minded, both in the sense of recognizing an opportunity and what it may be; but also open-minded in the sense of actually considering an opportunity that may cause the career path to deviate from what may have been a particular path or plan I set. Practitioner Perspective – Advantages and Disadvantages In considering this exercise, I think a pro and con are the same. This exercise can help a practitioner encourage open-mindedness in the client, but this may come with the downside of having a lack of structure. That is, leveraging can be a useful tool, but can potentially lead to clients feeling a lack of structured career planning. That does not imply this exercise is not useful – quite the opposite. When taken as part of a more robust and structured approach to career planning, this can be a facet of the guidance that is provided to the client. Another potential downside is for the practitioner to be particularly considerate of the worldview of the client, their upbringing, and their values. For example, in many Eastern or Latin cultures, planning is critical (Brandes, 2016) – and a career is something that is not "just" left up to chance. As a result, the practitioner must be mindful of this, and stress that this type of exercise is but a facet of a complete approach to career planning. Practitioner Perspective – Theoretical Interpretation To apply theoretical constructs to my experience in Part I, I will leverage the four Steps of Happenstance Learning Theory in a fictional (but structured) conversation between a therapist and myself. The four Steps, as outlined by Sharf (2013) are: 1. Normalize Happenstance Learning Theory in the Client’s History, 2. Assist Clients to Transform Curiosity

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