The Factory Podcast Interview with John Krumboltz

In 2007, Jim Bright caught up with Professor John Krumboltz at Stanford University. We talked about his learning approach to career development and the Happenstance learning theory – based on the idea that you need to capitalize on unplanned events in careers.

It was great to talk to John about his significant contribution and we discussed a range of issues in career development. In particular we I was interested in his views about imposter syndrome and how this can come about due to the prevalence of chance events in careers. Afterall if you felt that your career had progressed due to chance, you are less likely to want to share your resume or to put yourself up for the scrutiny associated with promotion or even annual evaluation. Normalizing such events is an important aspect of happenstance learning.  In subsequent years I was to catch up with John regularly at conferences and had the privilege of presenting a workshop with him in New Zealand.

Since John’s initial work in the late 1990s on Serendipity others have looked at chance events in careers including Andreas Hirschi and colleagues in Europe, myself and Robert Pryor and our team in Australia, and several others. Increasingly there is an acceptance that chance events need to be incorporated into career development theory and John deserves credit for his pioneering work in bringing this to the attention of theorists and practitioners alike. This idea is central to the Chaos Theory of Careers and has certainly been observed in many of my clients in range of settings from medical legal cases arising from workplace accidents to stories about how people got into various roles during their career.

How has chance influenced your career?  Do you agree with John’s view about happenstance? How do you incorporate happenstance learning approaches into your own practice with clients? What great examples of happenstance in careers do you refer to with clients?

The Factory Interview with John Krumboltz [ 42:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download