Norm Amundson and Jim Bright in Conversation

Here is part one of a conversation between Professor Norm Amundson of University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Professor Jim Bright, Australian Catholic University about Career Development issues.

We were interviewed by Deirdre Pickerell from Life Strategies in Vancouver, Canada after running a day long workshop on career development matters together. Norm’s work has emphasized the importance of creative thinking in career development. He points out that many clients present as being “stuck” – which of course is a metaphor for lack of movement in their career. Indeed Norm has championed the use of metaphor in career work more consistently and longer than anyone else in the field. Since our interview he followed up on his highly successful book – The Physics of Living with another on the use of metaphors in counseling and coaching – Metaphor Making both of which flow from his authoritative book on career counseling – Active Engagement.

Norm’s work and my own on the Chaos Theory of Careers is very compatible, and I think that CTC provides a coherent theoretical framework into which Active Engagement ideas can be understood and located. Active Engagement counseling strategies provide a response to a world that is changing, complex and unpredictable and it is an antidote to the tempting response of helplessness that many feel when confronted by the chaotic world, and indeed how some people react to the CTC wondering if it is all so unpredictable how can we do anything. The response is that there are plenty of things that we can do, and many of these go well beyond the traditional test-and-tell, control-and-predict models that have dominated our field for too long.