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Helping Clients Understand and Respond to Changes in the Workplace and Family Life

The worlds of work and family are changing at a rapid pace, and the changes are likely to accelerate in the 21st century.

Globalization, declines in manufacturing and rising service sector employment, growth of nonstandard schedules, and technological developments (such as cell phones, wireless internet, and laptops) have made it easier for work to intrude on family and home life. . . . As such, work can become increasingly blurred with the non-work domains of family and personal life. (Ammons, 2013, p. 49)

Changing workplaces, increasing diversity in society and in the workplace, extended life expectancy, life-long learning, and changing family structures with the challenges, tensions, stress, and anxiety they bring about in individuals and society are not abstractions. They are real. They are challenging and changing the traditional rules that have governed life in the workplace and in the family. As a result, they impact substantially the life roles of individuals, the settings where they live and work, and the events that occur in their lives. Many of the problems clients bring to career counseling are manifested in their life roles, settings, and events and are caused directly or indirectly by one or more of these changes (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). They are also manifested in clients trying to maintain balance between work and family in their lives. Hernandez and Mahoney (2012) made this statement about the work–family balance issue.

The career–family balance represents a common area of struggle for many families, and is as much of an issue for men who are husbands and fathers as it is for women who are wives and mothers. (p. 152)

This chapter focuses on how to help your clients respond to the challenges and consequences of these changes through career counseling. First, we focus on changes that are occurring in the workplace and in family life, followed by a discussion of the problems your clients may be facing as a result of the challenges and consequences of these changes. Next, specific attention is given to helping your clients respond to workplace and family life problems through career counseling. Five major areas of required knowledge are presented that will prepare you to work with clients who are dealing with these problems. Finally, the chapter closes with a checklist of roles that are critical to the success of career counseling as we help our clients understand and respond to changes in the workplace and in family life.

Changes in the Workplace and in Family Life

Changes in the workplace and in family life have been under way for some time. Some commentators have used the term revolutionary to describe them, whereas others have used the term evolutionary. Whichever term you prefer, the changes taking place now in these two worlds will continue into the foreseeable future. What are some of these changes?

The Workplace

The workplace of today continues to undergo significant restructuring. It is being reinvented and reengineered so that it can compete successfully both nationally and internationally. Terms such as globalization, downsizing (rightsizing), upsizing, outsourcing, deregulation, and technology describe various forces at work that are causing this ongoing restructuring (Shapiro, Ingols, & Blake-Beard, 2008). Lent (2013) stated that the ongoing restructuring of the workplace is increasing at a rapid pace.

Wrought by sweeping change in such areas as technology, the global economic environment, and demographic and immigration patterns, the work world has become faster paced, more diverse, and less and less predictable for more and more workers. (p. 2)

In addition to these forces reshaping the workplace, another powerful force is at work. This force is the dramatic demographic changes occurring in our society that are producing an increasingly diverse labor force. So not only are forces at work changing the very nature and structure of the workplace, but the people who do the work are changing as well, mirroring the diverse demographics of our society. Here are some examples noted by Sommers and Franklin (2012, pp. 3–4):

  • The labor force will grow slowly and become much older as the baby-boom generation moves entirely into the 55-years-and-older age group, whose labor force participation rates are significantly lower.
  • The labor force will continue to become more diverse, with Hispanics making up 18.6% of the total by 2020.
  • Consistent with slow labor force growth and assumptions concerning a full-employment economy in 2020, the gross domestic product is projected to grow by 3.0% annually. Productivity growth is projected at an annual rate of 2.0%, similar to its long-term trend.
  • Nonfarm payroll employment is projected to increase by 1.4% annually, regaining the jobs lost during the 2007–2009 recession and expanding further, to reach 149.5 million by 2020. Total employment, including agriculture and self-employed and unpaid family workers, is projected to increase by 20.5 million over the decade.
  • The health care and social assistance industry is expected to be the most rapidly growing sector in terms of employment, followed by the construction sector. Despite rapid growth, the construction sector is not projected to return to its prerecession peak employment level.
  • Occupation groups related to health care, personal care services, social services, and construction are expected to be the most rapidly growing; however, office and administrative support occupations are projected to add the largest number of new jobs.
  • Employment in the construction and extraction, production, and transportation and material moving occupation groups fell by 10% or more from 2006 to 2010. Although all three groups are expected to grow between 2010 and 2020, none is projected to regain its 2006 employment level.
  • Occupations in which a master’s degree is typically needed for entry are expected to grow by 21.7%, faster than the growth rate for any other education category. Among occupations in which a high school diploma or the equivalent is typically needed for entry, occupations that have apprenticeships as the typical kind of on-the-job training are projected to be the fastest growing and to have higher pay. These two results are based on the new education and training system introduced with the 2010–2020 projections.

Family Life

As changes continue to take place in the work world, so, too, do they continue to occur in family life. Work life and family life are intertwined, and families are becoming increasingly less stable and more diverse (Appelbaum, 2012).

Families have become less stable (e.g., higher divorce and non-marital birth rates) and more diverse (e.g., more “nontraditional” family structures, dual-incomes). Many families have also come to experience decreased job security and less income after adjusting for inflation. In addition, couples are more diverse in their spirituality (e.g., more inter-faith marriages, less traditionally religious). (Hernandez & Mahoney, 2012, p. 135)

Whether one agrees or disagrees that there is increasing family diversity, most commentators on families in America do agree that family structures are changing. The traditional family structure of two parents and two or more children with only the father working is no longer the majority. It has been displaced by a wide variety of family combinations, including dual-career families, dual-income earners, and single-parent families:

A defining trend of the 2000–2010 decade was the increased diversity of families and workplaces. Families increasingly diverged from the two-parent, two-child family with a male breadwinner and female homemaker, as other types of families (e.g., gay and lesbian families, divorced parents with joint custody) increased. Single-parent families and stepfamilies remained a large share of households with children in the decade, and many scholars examined their work–life conditions and consequences. (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010, p. 706)

Another trend in family life is the emergence of what a number of writers have called the sandwich generation. The sandwich generation is defined as families “providing care to both children and parents or in-laws” (Chassin, Macy, Seo, Presson, & Sherman, 2010, p. 38). This phrase describes families that must pay for the education of their children while needing to pay for the nursing home care of an aged parent.

Challenges and Consequences of Changing Workplace and Family Life

What are some of the challenges and consequences individuals face as a result of the changes that are occurring in the workplace and in family life? What impact do these changes have on their worker and family roles? This section focuses on some of these issues.

Worker Role Loss

A major consequence for some individuals as the workplace undergoes changes is job loss. When workers lose their jobs because of downsizing, for example, they lose a major anchor in their lives; they lose part of their identity. They feel devalued as individuals, and often the feelings that result affect every aspect of their lives and all of their life roles.

Job loss has economic meanings as well as social and psychological meanings. The loss of steady income; daily social contacts, friendships, and support; and identity and self-worth accompany job loss. Correspondingly, increased stress often creates strains in individuals (anger, frustration, anxiety) and in their family lives and family relationships.

Little consideration has been given to the complex emotional dynamics of grief associated with job loss. Understanding grief in the context of job loss and lifestyle adjustment is particularly important when clients are confronting a major life change. Oftentimes, an overwhelming sense of loss distracts or impedes a person’s readiness to conduct a job search or effectively move forward with a positive career-life change. (Simmelink, 2006, p. 1)

A number of writers (Bridges, 2004; Simmelink, 2006) have adapted Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s (1969) five stages of grieving to describe what happens to individuals who experience job loss. First there is denial: “They made a mistake,” “They must mean somebody else.” Then comes anger: “It was that free trade agreement,” “It’s Washington’s fault.” This is followed by bargaining: “Things don’t have to be like this,” “Let’s all get together and maybe we can lick this situation.” Then comes despair: “All hope is gone,” “There is nothing out there for me.” Finally, after these progressively deeper stages of grieving, individuals reach Kubler-Ross’s final stage of acceptance: “I am ready to get on with it,” “I miss what I did, but I can’t sit around waiting.” Not all workers who go through job loss go through these stages. But when they do, written descriptions of the stages cannot begin to touch their thoughts, emotions, and feelings.

Helping clients deal with job loss grief begins by listening, by asking clients to tell their story. It is important to listen for feelings, any work-related issues, and possible family-related concerns. Providing clients with the opportunity to tell their story about job loss is a key first step in the career counseling process (Simmelink, 2006).

Anger in the Workplace

Although all of the stages of grieving are connected and are important, the anger stage merits special attention because of the possible consequences of behavior that individuals may exhibit in the workplace or at home. The anger stage needs special attention because anger may be expressed in the workplace or at home as a result of incidents other than job loss. It also needs attention because “workplace aggression costs companies millions of dollars every year” (Novick, 2007).

Confrontation and dialogue usually form part of the normal working environment. Workers and managers are confronted on a daily basis with their personal and work-related problems. They have to face the anxieties and frustration of coworkers, organizational difficulties, personality clashes, aggressive intruders from the outside, and problematic relations with clients and the public. Despite this, dialogue usually prevails over confrontation, and people manage to organize efficient and productive activities within the workplace. There are cases, however, when dialogue fails to develop in a positive way—when relationships between workers, managers, clients, or the public deteriorate—and the objectives of working efficiently and achieving productive results are affected. When this happens, workplace violence may occur. Workplace violence “can take various forms, ranging from abusive language, threats, and bullying to physical assault and homicide” (Wassell, 2009, p. 1049).

Sometimes workers bring anger to work. At other times they become angry because of work and then take this anger home. Although job loss may be the precipitating event, there may be any number of other reasons, some rooted in an individual’s past and others in the present.

What are the thoughts and feelings that may lead clients to become angry and act on that anger? Suppose you are working with clients who are expressing anger because they did not get promoted to their next job level. What sequence of thoughts and feelings might you anticipate? Allcorn (1994, pp. 29–30), citing the work of Hauck, suggested that you can anticipate the following: First, the clients might express feelings of frustration because they expected to be promoted but were not. This could be followed by thoughts that not being promoted is terrible and that they should have been treated more fairly. Now, as anger builds, they may begin to think that they should not be treated this way. Finally, they may think that the bosses who denied them their promotions should be punished severely, because people in management deserve severe punishment.

Given this example, how should you respond? Allcorn (1994, p. 56) recommended the following responses: Address anger directly by listening. Try to determine the source of the anger. Try to determine if the anger being expressed is covering up something, such as feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. As you listen, begin to focus on solutions. Help clients shift and sort, separating facts from fantasies.

Bullying in the Workplace

As noted by Wassell (2009), workplace violence can take the form of bullying. What is workplace bullying? It is “repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators that take one or more of the following forms: verbal abuse; offensive conduct/behaviors (including nonverbal) which are threatening, humiliating, or intimidating; and work interference—sabotage—which prevents work from getting done” (Workplace Bullying Institute, 2013).

According to Ramsay, Troth, and Brauch (2011), bullying has serious implications for the workplace. It can result in absenteeism, illness, lack of commitment, and a decrease in job satisfaction. They also pointed out that more than one person may be involved; it can involve groups.

While not often considered a workplace, schools are workplaces, and bullying in schools is serious. “This year alone, 13 million kids in the United States will be bullied. Three million will be absent from school at some point each month because they feel unsafe there” (Shallcross, 2013, p. 31). Bullying in schools takes various forms, including physical bullying, verbal bullying, cyberbullying, social aggression, and relational aggression. In cyberbullying the target may or may not know who is doing the bullying.

Work–Family Relationships

Given the changes in work life and family life described previously, how can the challenges and consequences individuals face in family life roles be understood? After an extensive review of the literature, Zedeck and Mosier (1990) described five approaches for understanding and explaining the complexities and dynamics of work–family relationships, focusing more on individuals in families than on families as units.

The first approach to explaining the complexities and dynamics of work–family relationships is called spillover theory. According to spillover theory, there are no boundaries between work and family; what happens at work spills over into the family sphere and vice versa. Modern technology that allows employees and family members to communicate freely and flexible work arrangements that allow employees to complete work at home have increased the likelihood of work–family spillover (Ilies et al., 2009).

The second approach is compensation theory, which hypothesizes that work and family roles are inversely related. Because individuals invest differently in their work roles and family roles, they may compensate in one for what is missing in the other. Zedeck and Mosier (1990), building on the work of Crosby, pointed out that “events at home provide ‘shock absorbers’ for disappointments at work, and vice versa” (p. 241).

The third approach is segmentation theory, which suggests that work and family roles can exist side by side without influencing one another. In other words, people can compartmentalize their lives. Zedeck and Mosier (1990) stated that “the family is seen as the realm of effectivity, intimacy, and significant ascribed relations, whereas the work world is viewed as impersonal, competitive, and instrumental rather than expressive” (p. 241).

The fourth approach is instrumental theory, wherein one role is used as a means of obtaining the necessities and luxuries that are deemed important for another role. Individuals work to obtain goods for family life. They also work to finance the purchase of goods and services for leisure activities, such as a boat, sports equipment, or a media center for the home.

Finally, Zedeck and Mosier (1990) described conflict theory. This theory postulates that achieving success in one role may mean making sacrifices in another role. Or, even more directly, responding to family obligations may require individuals to be absent from their job, to sometimes arrive late, or to not work efficiently on the job. Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, and Hammer (2011) defined work–family conflict as “a form of interrole conflict that occurs when engaging in one role makes it more difficult to engage in another role” (p. 290). It is interesting to note that according to Williams and Bousbey (2010), work–family conflict is higher in the United States because Americans work longer hours than workers in most other developed countries. Apparently working longer hours creates the possibility of such conflicts occurring more frequently.

Another way of understanding and explaining the complexities and dynamics of work–family relationships was suggested by Voydanoff (2007). She pointed out that there are two types of relationships: time based and strain based. “Time-based family demands . . . include time spent addressing family responsibilities” (p. 55). In contrast, “Strain-based family demands . . . are associated with family structure and social organization and include psychological demands from spouses (e.g., marital conflict), children (e.g., children’s problems), kin (e.g., caregiver strain), and household work (e.g., perceived unfairness)” (p. 55). Both types of relationships can have a substantial impact on work–family relationships.

Responding to Workplace and Family Life Issues Through Career Counseling

A Life Career Development Perspective

As we stated earlier, many of the issues clients bring to career counseling are caused directly or indirectly by one or more changes that occur in the workplace and in family life. They are often complex issues interwoven with personal, emotional, family, and work issues. Because they are often complex, having a holistic perspective of your clients is beneficial so that these issues can be seen collectively as well as individually. The holistic perspective we advocate is the concept of life career development as described in Chapter 1.

The concept of life career development provides you and your clients with the language of life roles, life settings, and life events. It becomes a shared language because you can use it with your clients to identify, analyze, and understand their work and family issues, and clients can do the same. Although you provide clients with these constructs, they are easily understood and personalized by clients because they can link them to their real-life work and family situations.

In responding to clients’ work and family problems, use of the shared language of life roles, settings, and events provides ways to place and understand work and family problems in context. The use of shared language opens the door to joint (you and your clients together) learning about and understanding of clients’ problems so that interventions can be chosen and used to help clients solve their problems. Thus, career counseling is a shared experience, with clients and counselors working together.

Major Areas of Required Knowledge

Helping clients respond to workplace and family life problems requires selecting and using appropriate interventions. Although the specific interventions you choose to use with your clients will depend upon your hypotheses about them and the issues with which they are dealing, major areas of knowledge are presented here to remind you of important problems that often require your attention when dealing with clients’ workplace and family concerns. Hotchkiss and Borow (1996) listed several action areas, including learning about labor markets, combating gender stereotyping, and reducing racial and ethnic barriers. To their list we add combating barriers for people with disabilities and dealing with work–family problems.

Learning About Labor Markets

Because the work world is dynamic and ever changing, individuals often have a difficult time understanding it. To many clients who come for career counseling, the work world has few boundaries. It is difficult to grasp. It is overwhelming. This can be true for clients who are first-time job seekers as well as for clients who have been employed in the workplace but have lost their jobs. When we add to this other possible client problems in career counseling that are connected to work but are related to race, culture, religion, gender, age, and family, the complexity and interrelatedness of the issues involved in career counseling increase substantially.

Many client problems addressed in career counseling originate in the work world and then spill over into other arenas of life. For example, some clients have presenting problems of finding and getting jobs for the first time or finding and getting other jobs after industry downsizing. This problem is often directly related to their worker roles but then can spill over into other life roles, such as spouse, family, parent, and learner. Client gender, ethnic and racial identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, and social class may also be involved. If clients have experienced any form of discrimination previously in the workplace or in other situations, these experiences may affect their job search. Even if clients have not experienced direct discrimination, the anticipation that discrimination may occur based on clients’ identity group history may also affect their job search.

Given all of these possible dynamics and connections in clients’ presenting problems of finding and getting jobs, a starting point is needed. Because these problems are connected to the work world, starting there makes sense. Helping clients learn a way to negotiate the work world can be a first step. By providing clients with the concept of labor markets, you give them a way to describe, label, and negotiate the work world. They will have a starting point to connect themselves directly to the workplace, one that plants the seed of hope that there is a way to begin to solve their problems.

So what are labor markets? Labor markets are geographic areas in which workers compete for jobs and find paying work, and employers compete for workers and find willing workers. Labor markets may be local, state/regional, national, or international.

A local labor market encompasses a geographic area in which workers are willing to change jobs without changing their residences. It contains workers who compose the labor force of the local labor market, or the number of individuals aged 16 or older (not including active-duty military personnel or institutionalized people, such as prison inmates) who are either working or looking for work. The local labor market also contains an array of occupations, defined as sets of activities or tasks that employees are paid to perform. Employees who perform essentially the same tasks are in the same occupation. Finally, local labor markets contain industries (employers) that employ workers. Industries are broadly grouped into two categories: goods producing and service.

Some clients may not be looking for work in their local area. They may be interested in exploring job opportunities in a broader geographic area such as a state or a region (e.g., the southwest), or nationally or internationally. No matter the size of the geographic area, all labor markets consist of the same elements found in the local labor market: workers (labor force), occupations (the activities or tasks workers perform), and employers (industries).

The job opportunity structure available to clients depends in part upon where they live, how far they are willing or able to travel to work, and if they are willing to move to a new location. An exception to this is internal labor markets. Instead of being described in geographic terms, internal labor markets exist within employing firms. Internal labor markets are characterized by organizational rules that define how employees are hired and promoted and how jobs are structured. In internal labor markets, “workers are hired into entry level jobs and higher levels are filled from within” (Lazear & Oyer, 2004, p. 527).

Client knowledge about internal labor markets is important because of the rules that govern employment. New employees are hired for only certain lower level jobs. Once an employee is inside, movement is mostly vertical, and on-the-job training is featured. In organizations in which internal labor markets operate, clients need to be aware that even though they may have skills for higher level positions, they must begin at the entry point. Then the rules presented here apply.

Combating Gender Stereotypes

“Deeply rooted socialization processes perpetuate rigid sex role perceptions that limit career options” (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996, p. 318). Because of such socialization, it is imperative that female and male clients so affected be helped to overcome gender stereotype limitations, including those concerning initial occupational selection, earnings, rank, and job responsibilities. Chapters 4 and 5 cover this topic in detail, so we only include a reminder here to highlight the importance of the topic.

Reducing Racial and Ethnic Barriers

Because of the increasingly diverse population of the United States and the reflection of this diversity in the labor force, paying attention to racial and ethnic barriers is critical. We must appreciate and respond to the variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds that clients bring to career counseling as well as to their experiences with discrimination. Understanding their personal and group histories, their worldviews, their identity statuses, and their levels of acculturation will lay the foundation for the working alliance and the effective selection of appropriate action intervention strategies. Chapter 3 provides extensive background and practical action intervention strategies; we simply want to remind you of its importance here.

Combating Barriers for People With Disabilities

Because of greater awareness of the needs of people with disabilities, as well as federal mandates, more and more individuals with disabilities are seeking employment. It is critical that counselors understand the unique issues facing people with disabilities and work toward the inclusion, independence, and empowerment of these people. Counselors can be critical links in helping foster greater skill development and exploration for clients with disabilities. Counselors can also serve as change agents with employers, helping to open more doors for employment in a wider variety of occupations. Chapter 6 provides specific information on the current employment status of people with disabilities, describes an empowerment framework, and discusses specific issues relevant to the career counseling process when working with this client group.

Dealing With Work–Family Problems

As individuals become adults, many must deal with work–family problems:

What happens at work often affects other aspects of their life, just as other commitments often affect employment attitudes and behaviors. One of the common refrains is the desire to balance work and other commitments more successfully. The most familiar version of this challenge occurs with parents of young children. However, the challenges do not cease when parents move into the middle years. In fact, family involvement often becomes more complex, with marital, parental, grandparental, and filial roles competing with work for energy. (Sterns & Huyck, 2001, p. 469)

The life career development perspective presented in Chapter 1 and discussed earlier in this chapter, with its concepts of life roles, life settings, and life events all interacting over the life span, is a useful way of understanding and dealing with work–family problems. As suggested earlier, the concepts of life roles, settings, and events provide you and your clients with a shared language to break apart, identify, and label the issues and contexts surrounding work and family problems. As this is accomplished, concepts derived from the work of Zedeck and Mosier (1990) and Voydanoff (2007) can be applied to help explain the dynamics of work–family relationships and the possible consequences of family–work problems.

A beginning point in this process is to translate clients’ work and family problems into life roles, life settings, and life events terminology. Worker roles, family roles (parent, spouse, partner), the workplace, home, work-related events, and family-related events become the vocabulary used to analyze, specify, and understand client work–family problems. Clients’ presenting problems and possible underlying problems, originally global and fuzzy, now can take on specificity. A vocabulary is available to clarify issues and pinpoint concerns—the vocabulary of life roles, settings, and events.

This specifying and labeling process helps you and your clients to begin to sort out, explain, and understand the complexities and dynamics of work–family relationships. Listen to clients describe their presenting problems, and listen as underlying dynamics emerge in the gathering information phase of career counseling. Does what happens (event) at work (work setting, worker role) spill over into family life (family setting, parent role, spouse role)? Does what happens (event) at work (work setting, worker role) as a result of spillover cause conflict in family life (family setting, parent role, spouse role)? Does compartmentalization occur where clients try to separate these two worlds (Zedeck & Mosier, 1990)?

A Checklist of Counselor Roles

The opening phase of the career counseling process, with its beginning development of the working alliance, is crucial. Although you focus your attention on presenting goals or problems, there is awareness that these may expand into other goals or problems as the process of career counseling continues. Then, with the establishment of the boundaries of the career counseling process, the gathering information phase is under way. This involves learning more about your clients and their problems by using quantitative and qualitative procedures and instruments so that hypotheses can be generated. Using interventions based on your hypotheses to help your clients achieve their goals or resolve their problems follows. Then, when clients’ goals are achieved or their problems are resolved, closure ends the career counseling process and relationship.

As these phases of the career counseling process are unfolding, the working alliance between you and your clients is being further developed and strengthened. The use of shared language facilitates statements of clear goals to be achieved and specifies the tasks to be carried out to achieve these goals. This, in turn, creates a joining together of you and your clients, creating the foundation for developing bonds of mutual trust and respect.

Given the phases of the career counseling process that you and your clients will go through together and the importance of the working alliance, what are some important roles for you to consider when helping your clients understand and respond to changes in the workplace and in family life? Here is a beginning list:

  1. Help clients view themselves and their situations and problems holistically so that they can see connections and relationships in their lives, their families, and their work.
  2. Help clients understand and deal with the intertwined issues of psychological health, work, and career development (Blustein, 2008).
  3. Help clients appreciate diversity of all kinds, including that of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation in the workplace.
  4. Help clients appreciate changing gender roles in the workplace.
  5. Empower clients with disabilities.
  6. Help clients understand and work through the stages of life transitions.
  7. Help clients separate their successes and failures at work and at home from who they are as people.
  8. Help clients develop support systems to buffer workplace and family stresses and strains (Kinnunen & Mauno, 2008).
  9. Help clients recognize that grief and loss are natural reactions to change.
  10. Help clients deal with resistance to change.
  11. Help clients turn workplace and family frustration and anger energy toward positive solutions.

Closing Thoughts

Helping clients understand and respond to changes in the workplace and in family life through career counseling requires knowledge, understanding, and skill. This chapter was designed to provide you with an overview of workplace and family life changes and to highlight needed foundation knowledge required to understand and respond to client problems that occur as a consequence of these changes. To understand and respond appropriately, we recommend you view client problems from the holistic perspective of human development called life career development.

The life career development perspective, as well as our understanding of the career counseling process, is described in Chapter 1. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 highlight foundation knowledge and application skills counselors need when dealing with gender, racial, ethnic, and disability issues. The rest of the book focuses on the career counseling process, demonstrating how all of these issues and concerns are interwoven from the opening phase through closure. Throughout the entire book you see the concept of the active, involved counselor at work. We firmly believe in the necessity of a counselor’s active involvement in the career counseling process. “Counselors should . . . be encouraged to consider constructive intervention when barriers loom that clients cannot surmount unaided” (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996, p. 318).

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