Careers and Life Goals

 

Whole-Life Career Management: Helping Clients Align Career and Life Goals

Introduction
Career development doesn't happen in a vacuum. Every decision we make about work is influenced by other life roles—family, health, relationships, and more. In his article, Whole-Life Career Management: A Counseling Intervention Framework, Andreas Hirschi offers a practical, action-oriented model for helping clients manage their careers while honoring their whole lives. This blog post explores Hirschi’s framework and how we, as future counselors, can integrate it into our practice.

The Big Idea
Hirschi’s whole-life career management framework is built on the idea that true career satisfaction comes from balance—not just between work and home life, but between all meaningful life roles. The framework outlines four key stages to help clients set goals, identify resources and barriers, create action strategies, and monitor progress, all while keeping work and nonwork roles in view.

Why It Matters
Our clients bring their whole selves to career counseling, not just their resumes. This model helps us move beyond traditional career planning by addressing the reality that work and life are deeply intertwined. By encouraging clients to consider multiple life roles and how they affect one another, we can support more sustainable, values-driven career decisions.

How It Works: The Four Stages

  1. Clarify Goals Across Life Roles
    Clients reflect on their goals in work and nonwork domains and how those goals support or conflict with each other. For example, a client might want both a promotion and more time with family. Helping them explore these dynamics builds awareness of potential trade-offs and synergies.
  2. Map Resources and Barriers
    Counselors guide clients to identify personal and contextual factors that support or hinder their goals. These might include a flexible work schedule, supportive partner, or workplace culture. Recognizing these factors empowers clients to make realistic plans.
  3. Develop Action Strategies
    Clients break down long-term goals into specific, attainable steps. Hirschi identifies four strategy types—allocating (using resources wisely), changing (modifying barriers/resources), sequencing (timing goals to reduce conflict), and revising (adjusting goals to fit reality).
  4. Monitor and Adapt
    Clients are encouraged to track progress, reassess goals, and make changes based on new information. This stage emphasizes flexibility and resilience—two crucial traits for navigating today’s unpredictable career landscape.

Putting It Into Practice
Whether you're working one-on-one or facilitating groups, Hirschi’s model provides a versatile structure. You can integrate it into narrative approaches, values assessments, or even CBT-based goal planning. The key is guiding clients to view their careers within the broader context of their lives—and equipping them to act accordingly.

Final Thoughts
As future mental health counselors, our role isn’t just to help people get jobs—it’s to help them build lives that feel purposeful and balanced. Hirschi’s whole-life career management framework reminds us that career counseling is, at its heart, life counseling. Let’s embrace the opportunity to help clients thrive in all their roles.

 

Hirschi, A. (2020). Whole-life career management: A counseling intervention framework. The Career Development Quarterly, 68(1), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/cdq.12209

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