This week, I had the honour of being an "observant participant" in two face-to-face counselling sessions. It was wonderful working alongside a CIIP client counsellor and experienced how a typical individual session was conducted. While both sessions were set up to provide useful career information to the clients, it was obvious that the impact on the clients was more than informational. As immigrants, both couples (it is common for a CIIP client counsellor to meet with the key applicant and the spouse together) were unsure of their future, so they were seeking not just information from the counsellor, but also a sense of support, of validation. At the same time, the tremendous amount of information passed on by the client counsellor needs to be processed properly so that the information actually supports future actions by the client.
Emotional validation
After the first session, I made the observation that sometimes as counsellors, we were so eager to help that we spent more time talking instead of listening. In the case of helping immigrants, we tended to believe that the more information they received (and as early as possible), the more successful they would be. Since there is so much information that immigrants needed to know and process, we ended up spending much of our time simply going through information, forgetting that we are actually dealing with human beings with emotional needs.
In both sessions, I realized that the clients were looking for validation of their thoughts and choices. While it is not the role of the counsellor to make any decision on behalf of the client, it is indeed essential that we acknowledge their courage and determination in making a huge transition. It is about building up their confidence and preparing them in facing the future challenges of immigration.
Information processing
The clients - the immigrants - we serve are accomplished professionals, and are clearly intelligent and determined. For them, it's not so much information that is lacking, but someone to assist them in "understanding" the large quantity of information that any immigrant has to process. Simply giving out one piece of information after another may result in the misleading sense of "knowing" everything, only for the client to find out later that the information is still scattered and too much to digest.
Information becomes more meaningful when it is tied to action - action with a purpose and action that fulfills a goal. Information and goal setting, therefore, intercross and interact. On the one hand, the information presented should be framed in such a way that it can be easily processed. On the other hand, the client should have a set of goals that can drive their effort in obtaining and filtering new information. Without goals and an intention to act, information is no more than passing facts and figures.
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3 comments:
Michael,
Thank you for launching this initiative. It is sure to be of great value to all CIIP participants now and in the future.
As for your comments on the observation/participation in the client counselling, I fully agree that we need to provide more actual support to the clients.
Confidence building should be our job one. Confident clients will more successfully craft their own career path and integration into the Canadian labour market.
I have found in all of my counselling sessions, both F2F and telephone, that our clients really hunger for some validation that they have what it takes to succeed in Canada.
Lao gAo
CIIP-CH
Your thoughts certainly reflect some of the concepts of adult learning, particularly that adults are most interested in information that they can use immediately.
I completely agree about the information overload; I think many counsellors and facilitators have this tendency to provide as much information as possible, almost out of fear of forgetting to give every single piece of information to the client.
Great blog. Very interesting insights.
This is a great post Michael. It's a good reminder that as career practitioners we sometimes focus too much on information sharing and not enough on how that individual is understanding and applying that information to their situation.
The action part is critical to engage individuals in the process of learning. Or as you said, "information becomes more meaningful when it is tied to action".
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Tina
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