9 Career Development and Development as a Professional

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Career Development and Development as a Professional

THE CHANGING CONTEXT In the 1980s career planning was apparently straightforward. Organizations recruited those with potential and, through careful selection, ensured they had commitment. They provided training and management development schemes as a result of which the talented and loyal were promoted and prepared to train others, because there was no fear of redundancy. It was possible for employees to plan family lives, to anticipate changes of location and the timing of progress up the hierarchy. All apparently benefited from this long, stable career ladder.

In contrast, now jobs are scarcer and more precarious, with the world changing at an unprecedented rate, all employees need to be resilient, flexible and capable of adjusting their sights at short notice. This does not yet apply to teaching but developments discussed below may have an impact on this. Career ladders are now sustained for as little as three to five years in many organizations, though the more traditional professions in particular have not yet responded to this new career model in the wider world.

Careers have to be planned using new life planning skills with sharper goal-setting feeding into the process. Kanter (1989) encouraged workers to improve their marketability through keeping their professional knowledge and technical skills up to date so they could be applied in many different contexts. However, now even those on fast-track schemes can find themselves plateaued unless they are adept at coping with change because of the very fast track which has kick-started their careers. Employers know they need a committed talented flexible workforce to survive, even when the employment they offer is not permanent and long-term, so they have to explore what they can offer to achieve this. This involves identifying career strategies for all individuals and trying to align these with current corporate needs, whilst conscientiously maintaining and developing individual skills.

MANAGING YOUR CAREER Yvonne Sarch was asked by the Observer in a short series, The Science of Success (copy undated) in an article ‘Future perfect’ to explain how truly brilliant careers were achieved. The checklist derived from her book, How to be Headhunted, was:

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1)Be autonomous – take responsibility. Integrity is about loyalty to personal values. You should look for rewards for performance rather than loyalty payments for long service. 2)Keep your options open – those who change jobs are seen as advancing their careers, though headhunters and others making judgements will check that these moves were progressive. In the career-building years, ages 25–35, career zigzags every three years are considered healthy. 3)Top up your skills – employers will pay handsomely for skills, financially, or in quality of life or with personal development opportunities. Transferable skills include managerial and professional skills, language skills, supervisory skills and an understanding of the application of information technology. 4)Top up your knowledge – use management development or other courses.

Specialized knowledge maintains your marketability in the short term but can limit flexibility if it is too narrowly focused. 5)Keep your head over the parapet – you have to tell people about yourself, your capabilities and your work. Your employability will be strengthened by being significant and noticed. 6)Think ahead – you should be thinking about the job after next. Early career choices can be decisive. 7)Service your CV – update this every three months. This forces you to consider what you have done and to consider progress, and to look for gaps. It should be two to three pages long, highlighting achievements which were attributable to you and had a work-wide effect. This might be broader than the school. 8)Network – keep an active network based on work and your interests. This will help you understand what is going on in other organizations you might want to target. Networking helps provide a wider balanced life. It is not about cultivating useful people but learning from mixing with people with similar interests, abilities and preoccupations. 9)Choose the right employers – some corporate or school cultures will suit you better than others. Flatter structures have shorter career ladders. More hierarchical organizations may be less flexible and have more precarious corporate cultures. 10)Enjoy what you do – when you know what you enjoy find it in job satisfaction, challenge and self-fulfilment. You should know what you want then you can attempt to achieve it.

How seriously do you take your career planning?

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT The new psychological contract requires the employer to agree to provide a breadth and depth of experience through planned career moves, with a clear view of the wider field of activity, and to assist in supporting a network of contacts to identify new opportunities. Robertson and Rousseau (1994, pp. 249–59) defined a psychological contract as ‘An individual’s belief regarding the terms and condi-

tions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between that focal person and another party ... a belief that some form of promise has been made and that the terms and conditions of the contract have been accepted by both parties’.

Recruitment, retention and reward strategies will need to be more imaginative and open to negotiation. This is developing in schools. You may wish to consider seeking professional advice on career reframing using a professional occupational psychologist. Even if you remain a full-time teacher, the skills of portfolio careerists – scenario planning for career development, rehearsing pathways into the future, expanding your individual vision and developing mental constructs to respond to uncertainty – will be part of the networking world you should learn to access. New tools and technologies will provide you with self-organized learning for transferable skills.

The search for job satisfaction should be central in your career planning. Job satisfaction used to require job security but the changed psychological contract means this is not as certain as it used to be. Even in teaching there can be no long-term guarantee unless the teacher meets the new learning needs of pupils. The wider work culture involves risk-taking, with a requirement for an entrepreneurial commitment, the need for strong professional peer and team loyalties, performancebased awards, the acceptance of the judgements of fair appraisers, parallel career ladders and trial management roles for specialists. For those who develop high-level skills there will be security of employment but not necessarily in the same school, company or role. The associated job satisfaction provides self-respect and personal status and pride in yourself because there is the opportunity for independent thought and action, and personal growth and development. More widely, and more recently in teaching, it is important to have the skills to respond positively to effective assessment and appraisal, which should help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses with confidence, identify areas for improvement and development, and select appropriate learning experiences for the future.

Do you have job satisfaction? Do you recognize this context for your career?

STRATEGIES FOR CAREER DEVELOPMENT FOR PROFESSIONALS Watkins and Drury (1994) used a focus group to explore this at a time when companies, which had expected people to develop their own careers, were moving back towards providing support for career development. The four strategies were derived from a focus group with their judgements about them: 1) Developing a new mindset – learning to live with doubt and uncertainty; maintaining a positive outlook; aiming for a balanced life. They did not regard work or a high profile career as the sole measure of success, and were more concerned with achieving a balance between work, self-development, career, family and community relationships. They defined success as being able to realize their potential by making contributions in all aspects of their lives and being able to manage the interactions with others effectively to make this happen. 2) Learning to promote and market one’s skills, networking and cultivating relationships. The idea of self-promotion and marketing one’s skills was viewed

with some distaste by many, as it might be by many educational leaders. The mid- and late-career professionals regarded it as vulgar and ‘very unBritish’ though the more traditional networking was accepted as appropriate. This appears to be important within an ethical framework. 3) Developing self-insight and taking personal charge. Very few of the focus group were aware of the availability of a wide range of personality and career tests designed to help individuals work out their strengths and weaknesses and career direction, though they did acknowledge the value of career planning.

Though some companies were over-rigid in focusing career planning, most participants judged that the difficulties in developing a career plan were because of the levels of uncertainty in the company and the environment. 4) Developing a Range of Competencies. The erosion of professional status in the early 1990s had been a shock, though the realization that the maintenance of technical proficiency was no longer sufficient was slow to dawn after this had occurred. They agreed on the growing importance of skills including marketing, negotiation, client care, project management and cross-functional skills, but they had rarely translated this awareness into action. Learning to trust the judgement of others in a team-based situation after years of working with total individual control was problematic. How do you characterize your professionalism? Planning a career in education now has greater importance since the teacher’s career may not continue to follow the historical trajectory. Though schools are still hierarchical with a focus on upward career progression, here as elsewhere there may need to be greater focus on role adaptation, project teamworking and lateral job movement. Schools need to learn how to retain, motivate and develop the potential of those who have traditionally been expected to look after themselves. Schools and teachers need a shared career development agenda. Moving between schools has traditionally been a way of teachers accessing career progression. Fasttracking is part of this process now at system level. In business there might arguably be less emphasis on those selected at an early stage and more on the shifting population of high-potential managers to be developed when they show unusual ability. In schools, perhaps there has been insufficient emphasis on both.

DEVELOPING YOUR CAREER IN EDUCATION MANAGEMENT Thody (1993) focuses on developing skills by preparing to meets the needs of the market. She recommends career awareness, your determination of a career policy, locating the career markets and ensuring that you achieve career development in your current post. There is further guidance on applying for career opportunities, being aware of what Thody calls non-standard products, being interviewed and negotiating the contract. Teachers and school leaders are learning how to negotiate salary and conditions at appointment. The shifts in ownership of careers in business – the belief that the individual was in the 1980s and early 1990s totally responsible for his/her own development, back to this being a shared commitment, were about who takes responsibility for making development happen.

The school will ideally have systems in place for career counselling and, given the uncertainty about budgets, it is useful for the school to have taken at least some preliminary steps towards preparing for crisis counselling. The implication is that a school needs to determine exactly what its role is and to plan for: ● Career counselling – establishing the future direction of a career in the light of the individual’s ambitions, interests and aptitudes. ● Coaching – practical help with CV writing, answering job advertisements, interview techniques and methods of handling job offers, networking and use of contacts ● Advice on the job search – from opening up the search from the advertised to the unadvertised job market, to providing objective information and research on companies or schools to whom applications or ‘on spec’ letters might be addressed. This is becoming possible in education. ● Crisis counselling – deals with the immediate aftermath of a redundancy announcement, with guidance on how to handle the shock, and how family and friends should be informed. This can be a particular problem with suspensions for teachers. Does your school assist you in career development?

TEACHING AS A PROFESSION AND TEACHERS AS PROFESSIONALS The General Teaching Council (GTC) is intended to raise the status of teaching as a profession. This will have profound implications for the newly emerging teaching career and the careers of those who are currently teachers. Teachers are professionals, though the precise meaning and implications of this concept are problematic. Until recently the UK Inter-Professional Group to which representatives of most professions belong would not accept teaching as a profession. This organization defined the principles of a profession (UK Inter-Professional Group, 1995) as:

1.A profession must be controlled by a governing body. 2.The governing body must set adequate standards of education as a condition of entry or achievement of professional status. 3.The governing body must set ethical rules and professional standards which are to be observed by its members. 4.The rules and standards enforced by the governing body must be designed for the benefit of the public, and not for the private advantage of the members. 5.The governing body must take disciplinary action if the rules and standards it lays down are not observed or a member is guilty of bad professional work. 6.Some types of work should be preserved to the profession by statute, not because it is for the advantage of the members, but because for the protection of the public, it should be carried out only by persons with the requisite training, standards and disciplines. 7.The governing body must satisfy itself that there is fair and open competition in the practice of the profession. 8.The members of the profession must be independent in thought and outlook. 9.In its particular field of learning the profession must give leadership to the public it serves.

There is no reason why, according to this definition, teaching should not become a profession though currently the precise definition and limits of teaching are more insecure. Another issue of current concern is the development of para-professionals, support staff and what teaching work does require the ‘requisite training, standards and discipline’. It could be argued that teachers’ associations are acting to protect their members rather than the public in attempting to control and limit the work of such para-professionals. This may require a clearer definition of precisely what the unique skills of a teacher are, defined not to protect teachers but to protect their clients. There have been significant changes for architects and doctors in redefining these boundaries. Nurses and doctors are equally professional.

INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS Members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers might be perceived as a profession as distinct from teaching as any career and profession could be. That is why it is worth considering how you relate to their model of professional development and its relationship to careers. There is a recognition embedded in the statements below, taken from their professional documents (Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 1998) that employment security is no longer guaranteed, and that this is precisely a reason to develop professionally for career development.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT A process of planned personal growth which will enable all professional engineers to reach their full potential. It is the acquisition of knowledge, experience, skills and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout an engineer’s working life by which the individual will retain marketability. WHY CPD? Your first degree was one stage in a lifetime of learning experience in both your business and non-business life. Before you could practise as an engineer you had to complement your degree with industrial training and experience. That process will continue throughout your career: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN CAREER DEVELOPMENT AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT.

A PLANNED APPROACH ● proper career planning and personal development is the key to success ● you should identify aims and set objectives at every stage of your career development, continually reviewing and adapting to any changes whether they are foreseen or not ● the guide and professional development record are vital tools for successful career development

DEVELOPMENT NEEDS ● each stage of your career should be evaluated against specific, measurable, attainable, acceptable, and time-bounded objectives ● a necessary step in CPD is to identify realistic career aims and to review them regularly

● in planning your career you should take into account the interface with your employer, profession, your family and society as a whole.

Educational leaders and teachers in the emerging environment may increasingly seek professional advice from an occupational psychologist. Indeed LEAs and schools may wish to move into professionalizing in this area. This might include scenario planning in career development, rehearsing pathways into the future which expand the individual’s vision and providing mental constructs to support new ways of responding to uncertainty.

MANAGING CAREERS INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Careers are defined in personal terms (Arnold, 1997), have a subjective element, concern sequences of employment-related experiences, are not confined to employment only, can include employment in different occupations, do not necessarily involve high-status occupations and do not necessarily involve promotion.

The changing career model within the education system is emerging because of the need to recruit, manage and develop human resources much more effectively. For the individual teacher this means more than creating situations which provide security, challenges and opportunities for self-development. Core employees, as teachers largely are currently, require broad skills. Supplemental teachers, most obviously supply teachers are just-in-time employees, but the technical and managerial roles, even heads and teachers who are not required full time may increasingly be outsourced. The posts which are outsourced in business are frequently more strategic, though in schools this mainly involves non-teaching staff at present.

How do you understand any possible changes in the teacher’s career model in the next ten years?

ONLINE LEARNING The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) initially with the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) has been developing leadership skills using online training and development. This is extending to middle management and bursars, and recognizes the change from hierarchy to network and the more team-based models which are emerging. In 2002 the NCSL was piloting a DVD-based team-focused working programme for schools based on research in the health service.

Arnold (1997) argues that competency based training and qualifications may risk the loss of the innovation, risk-taking and excellence which are now recognized as important. Employers supporting self-development need to be supportive rather than deterministic. The offering of development centres which present work simulations, role-playing, group discussions and presentations to establish competencies and development needs are increasing. Associated performance appraisals need to distinguish the evaluation of past performance from developmental needs to be expressed through personal development plans, career exploration and with a sound conceptual structure for thinking about people and work environments.

ADULT LIFETIME DEVELOPMENT Four authors, Erikson, Super, Levinson and Schein, presented by Arnold, explore adult lifetime development. Here we will briefly consider Erikson and Super.

Erikson (1980) built on Freud’s psychoanalytical psychology but argued that the conscious rational self was more dominant. More importantly for careers he argued that there are four phases of psycho–social development during adulthood which are, like those in childhood, about resolving tensions between opposing forces. 1) Identity v. role confusion is the adolescent identity crisis. There is a strong need to identify who one is to resolve this tension. Success in establishing a secure identity leads to greater control of the future and the development of self-esteem and self-confidence. There is the danger of being unable to establish a secure identity but equally important of ending with a rigid and inflexible self-identity which cannot be sustained. Young teachers may not yet have resolved this tension. 2) Intimacy v. isolation is an issue during the 20s and early 30s. If a person has successfully established an authentic identity, she/he should next learn to reach out to others and value them through establishing relationships not only with people, but also organizations or causes, without losing a sense of self. The two opposing dangers are of immersing oneself in a relationship so deeply that the sense of self is lost, or of self-absorption and isolation through the fear of loss of identity. 3) Generativity v. stagnation occupies much of adulthood. It is about bringing on the next generation, and handing on one’s knowledge, experience and accomplishments to young people. Erikson emphasized that this can be about altruism through parenthood for example, but it is also about teaching. Failure to achieve generativity means stagnation and a self-centredness. 4) Ego integrity v. despair is about the acceptance of life and one’s place in the universe, though this will normally be after retirement. Failure to achieve ego integrity can lead to despair which may show itself as disgust and a turning outward of the hostility one feels inside. This may apply to older staff.

The implications for career management may involve seeking new opportunities in the early stages of teaching and exploring different activities, interests and experiences. These should be connected and focused whilst allowing an opportunity to develop important aspects of potential. Arnold suggests that Erikson underplays the importance of achievement in the focus on identity/role confusion and intimacy/isolation but asserts that these life stages recognize the sometimes underestimated importance of identity and relationships at work. The generativity/stagnation phase for people in mid-career is for those who have a deep understanding of the world of work to act as mentors or coaches and to offer opportunities for individuals to express the achievements, characteristics or creations that represent their achievement.

Super (1990) applied ideas from developmental and humanistic psychology to careers for 50 years. A model of the adult career concerns emerges from this work, which has similarities with the Erikson model.

Exploration (15–24) Crystallization Developing ideas about the general field of work you would like to be in. Specification Turning the general preference into a specific choice of occupation. Implementation Making plans to enter the occupation and carrying them out.

Establishing (25–44) Stabilizing Setting into an occupation, including supporting and developing the self, and adopting a lifestyle consistent with it. Consolidating Making the self secure in the occupation, and demonstrating one’s value in it. Advancing Increasing earning and level of responsibility. Maintenance (45–64) Holding Retaining one’s position in the face of changing technology, competition from younger employees, and other pressures. Updating A more proactive version of holding – keeping abreast of changes in one’s work demands and personal goals. Innovation Finding new perspectives on familiar tasks, and new ways of doing them.

Disengagement (65+) Decelerating Reducing load and pace of work, perhaps by delegation if work circumstances permit. Retirement planning In terms of finance and lifestyle. Retirement living Learning to live without work.

How do you evaluate these models of adult development as they relate to you and to friends and colleagues?

THE CAREER STRATEGIST In conclusion we will look at an approach to the future of careers from the USA published in the journal, The Futurist. This model has useful checklists for teachers and school leaders planning for the future. The title is significant – ‘The new career strategist: career management for the year 2000 and beyond’.

Barner (1994) suggested that the career strategist needs to:

1)Carefully track the broader trends – seeking growth opportunities or potential career roadblocks. 2)Develop a clear picture – of your career and lifestyle needs, to track the internal changes that reflect fundamental shifts in personal needs and values. 3)Accurately benchmark your skills – against the best. Use professional networks, attend professional meetings. 4)Form contingency plans – to cover the widest range of potential career

changes, best case and worst case, maintaining professional networks, tracking emerging job opportunities and keeping résumé updated. 5)Develop your portable skills – rather than solely the contextual knowledge of the workings of your own organization.

There are four associated key survival skills

1)Environmental scanning – tap into computer and personal networks, to continually benchmark your skills, prevent their technological obsolescence, gauge the current market value of your skills, identify potential employers and fast-breaking employment opportunities. 2)Portable skills – be able to use standard financial software, project management, total quality improvement tools. These may be particularly important in teacher development. 3)Self-management – manage your own work alone, or be management-coached or work in a self-directed work team. 4)Communication skills – face-to-face and written communication tools, increasingly essential in geographically dispersed and culturally diverse jobs, and in high-stress time-limited situations.

Today’s career planners Tomorrow’s career strategists

Assume stable, fixed career paths View career paths as fragmented and subject to change Equate career success with trophy Equate career success with personal satisfaction collecting Focus on fixed long-term goals Focus on multiple short-term objectives Create a plan that is linear Develop a plan multidimensionally, clustered around several objectives that fulfil career needs at a particular point in one’s life Believe that goals are age-dependent Believe that goals are independent of age Develop a plan that is rigid, with goals Create a plan that is flexible, with goals that are developed developedearly and never re-examined early and continually reassessed and contingency planning regarded as essential Track progress through external career Track progress by the degree to which career decisions markers satisfy personal needs Assume that the organization that they Assume they will have to chart their own career direction, work for will chart their career direction because they cannot rely on the organization they work for to do it for them.

Are you a career planner or a career strategist?

REFERENCES

Arnold, J. (1997) Managing Careers into the 21st Century, London: Paul Chapman

Publishing. Barner, R. (1994) ‘The new career strategist: career management for the year 2000 and beyond’, The Futurist, September–October, pp. 8–14. Erikson, E.H. (1980) Identity and the Life Cycle: A Reissue, New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1998) documentation about CPD. Kanter, R.M. (1989), When Giants Learn to Dance, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Robertson, S.L. and Rousseau, D.M. (1994) ‘Violating the psychological contract: not the exception but the norm’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15, pp. 245–59. Sarch, Y. (1992) How to be Headhunted, Random House Business Books. Sarch, Y. (1998) ‘Future perfect’, in a series: The Science of Success, Observer (undated). Super, D.E. (1990) ‘Career and life development’, in D. Brown and L. Brooks (eds), Career

Choice and Development, 2nd edition, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Thody, A. (1993) Developing Your Career in Education Management, London: Longman. UK Inter-Professional Group (1995) Annual Report, 1995, UK Inter-Professional Group. Watkins, J. and Drury, L. (1994) Positioning for the Unknown, Bristol: University of

Bristol.