Ever wondered how the psychological stages of development influence your career choices? Join Stacy and Linton as they navigate David Tiedeman and Robert O'Hare's anticipation implementation model, revealing the emotional and cognitive steps behind career decision-making. This episode isn't just theory; it's peppered with relatable examples from astronauts to therapists that illuminate the common dilemmas faced when making critical career decisions. We're taking counseling interns and curious minds alike on a journey through the four stages of the anticipation phase—exploration, crystallization, choice, and clarification—to dissect how these milestones reflect on your professional trajectory.
Transitioning seamlessly to the implementation phase, we share tales from the field, including a microbiologist's shift to customer service in pursuit of work-life harmony, only to find a mismatch. These personal stories underscore the non-linear path of career evolution and the necessity of aligning one's job with their life and values. Whether you're studying for your licensure exams or pondering your next career pivot, this episode promises to equip you with a framework to guide your clients—or yourself—towards a fulfilling career narrative. Pull up a chair and prepare for a discussion that might just give you the clarity you've been seeking for your career journey.
If you need to study for your national licensing exam, try the free samplers at: LicensureExams
This podcast is not associated with the NBCC, AMFTRB, ASW, ANCC, NASP, NAADAC, CCMC, NCPG, CRCC, or any state or governmental agency responsible for licensure.
Ever wondered how the psychological stages of development influence your career choices? Join Stacy and Linton as they navigate David Tiedeman and Robert O'Hare's anticipation implementation model, revealing the emotional and cognitive steps behind career decision-making. This episode isn't just theory; it's peppered with relatable examples from astronauts to therapists that illuminate the common dilemmas faced when making critical career decisions. We're taking counseling interns and curious minds alike on a journey through the four stages of the anticipation phase—exploration, crystallization, choice, and clarification—to dissect how these milestones reflect on your professional trajectory.
Transitioning seamlessly to the implementation phase, we share tales from the field, including a microbiologist's shift to customer service in pursuit of work-life harmony, only to find a mismatch. These personal stories underscore the non-linear path of career evolution and the necessity of aligning one's job with their life and values. Whether you're studying for your licensure exams or pondering your next career pivot, this episode promises to equip you with a framework to guide your clients—or yourself—towards a fulfilling career narrative. Pull up a chair and prepare for a discussion that might just give you the clarity you've been seeking for your career journey.
If you need to study for your national licensing exam, try the free samplers at: LicensureExams
This podcast is not associated with the NBCC, AMFTRB, ASW, ANCC, NASP, NAADAC, CCMC, NCPG, CRCC, or any state or governmental agency responsible for licensure.
Stacy:
Welcome therapists to our licensure exams podcast and a big shout out to all the counseling interns in New York who are preparing for the exam. I'm Stacy.
Linton:
And I'm Linton. In today's episode of our theory to therapy series, we'll be taking a look at David Teedman and Robert O'Hare's approach to career counseling. So if you see something called the anticipation implementation model on the exam, you'll automatically know that they're talking about the decision making model by Teedman.
Stacy:
Says who? Linton, I happen to know that career counseling is not your favorite topic to teach.
Linton:
Well, that's true, but usually on the area of clinical focus, items will cover occupational and career development. And that's who's saying so, stacy? But you're right, I'd rather be eating a spoonful of sobby from Publix, but let's try to make this as painless as possible.
Stacy:
Okay, first off a few tidbits about Teedman that I think you'll find kind of neat. Back in the 1940s he was the associate head of the statistics division. Another topic that I know is one of your favorites there, linton.
Linton:
It is.
Stacy:
Where he worked on the Manhattan Project you know that top secret World War II government program that made the first atomic bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. After that he shifted to a more constructive profession, spending a few decades teaching at Harvard and their graduate school of education.
Linton:
And it was during that time that he and O'Hare worked on an influential career development model. Their view was that career decision making and satisfaction are closely intertwined with the person's overall self concept, values and view of the world.
Stacy:
That's right. A key premise of his theory is that making career choices is not a single event, but it's an ongoing process that people go through in distinct stages, and the model was actually influenced by Eric Erickson's model of psychosocial development which side note, you might want to be familiar with that one, as it's also one of the areas covered in the exam and Teedman used Eric Erickson's model in formulating his stages of career decision making.
Linton:
Right. The developmental making process is broken down into two phases Anticipation and implementation.
Stacy:
And the anticipation phase has four stages focused on choosing and planning a career direction. These include exploration, crystallization, choice and clarification.
Linton:
Let's take those stages one at a time, as there's some unique mindsets and conflicts associated with each stage. Take the exploration stage, for example. Individuals are surveying possibilities. They're wide-eyed, wearing rose-colored glasses, with an optimistic, future-oriented timeline, but there's a grounded part of themselves that struggles with how those passions jive with reality as they research all their career options. For example, your paradox of I've always wanted to be an astronaut but I'm not very good at physical science or astrophysics, and I'm pretty sure that you need to have a good understanding of those areas, stacey, before Elon is willing to let you blast off into the spaceship headed to Mars.
Stacy:
Well, since I can kiss that career goodbye, and given my aptitude for math and computer science, obviously from a previous life, I might have a job working with Elon, working on Dogecoin as the next cutting-edge online payment option. Get out of the way Apple Pay.
Linton:
I don't know, stacey, it might be time for you to put away those very wings.
Stacy:
Never, Linton. And hey, just for suggesting that the next time you lose a tooth, don't fall in love with Elon, Just bother looking under your pillow.
Linton:
Jeez. Anyways, after the exploration stage comes the crystallization stage. This involves sorting through alternatives and prioritizing certain career aims, like working with people versus working with data. This stage can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Your client may feel enthusiasm about some career paths, but they also feel overwhelmed when it comes to thinking about all of those possibilities.
Stacy:
Ah, sort of like when you're faced with all those sushi choices at Publix there, Linton.
Linton:
Ah nope, I've got that down to a science Two roles with extra wasabi.
Stacy:
Ah, I envy your decisiveness. Well, how about an example to help illustrate what's going on during the crystallization stage?
Linton:
Okay, let's say I figured out that I want to work with people, listening to their problems and empowering them to face and solve their issues, but I'm not quite sure what specific career path that I should take. So I start to think critically about the pros and cons of specific career options.
Stacy:
Okay, so you could be a bartender. On second thought, that might involve more passive listening and actively helping people work through their issues.
Linton:
Right.
Stacy:
Plus, as I remember, given your age, Linton, late nights might not really fit your lifestyle. That nine o'clock bedtime of yours might be a limiting factor.
Linton:
Watch it there Stacy.
Stacy:
Well, moving along. What about a pedicurist? Oh wait, I forget about your phobia of touching people's feet. I guess that also rolls out becoming a massage therapist right.
Linton:
Give me a break Stacy. Okay, how about this one?
Stacy:
I think you'll like this what about a mental health therapist? There's a lot of pros for this one. Linton, you could actively help people work through their personal issues, work during the daytime. I think that, with your interests, pursuing a career as a therapist would enable helping people work through their personal and emotional challenges in a hands-on sort of way, all those experiments that you like to do and, bonus, you wouldn't have to touch any feet.
Linton:
Okay, I like it Stacy sold. But I do remember this one intro class that I taught, where I had all the students take off their shoes and I went around polishing them when I gave a lecture on counseling as a service.
Stacy:
Well, that didn't take too much effort, but I guess that decision was in there all along, wasn't it, Linton?
Linton:
Sneaky Stacy, very sneaky.
Stacy:
So the third stage of the anticipation phase of the decision-making process is choice. This is where you actually commit to a specific career direction. After you've explored and weighed all the options, the mindset shifts from keeping possibilities open to decisively narrowing the focus to one option.
Linton:
Right, and you're probably feeling pretty swell during this stage. You don't know all the details and consequences of the decision, but yet you're feeling optimistic about the direction you're headed.
Stacy:
Exactly Okay. Rounding out the anticipation phase, we've got the clarification stage. With your choice finally made, the focus becomes affirming your comfort with it and seeking reassurance that you've made the right choice. You want to confirm you've made the right selection by talking to others in that career field and gaining more nuanced information. This is where you start getting into the details, with practical planning around next steps like education, obtaining the proper credentials and completing a job search.
Linton:
And during the clarification stage, you feel energetic and excited about having a specific direction to go, but you may also begin to feel some doubt about the roads not taken. What would have happened if I decided to become an astronaut instead of a therapist? Don't worry, stacy, when you come back in your next life, elon will have established a Mars base, so you can try that one out.
Stacy:
Sounds like a plan. Okay, so so far we've talked about the four phases in the anticipation stage Exploration, crystallization, choice and clarification. Now let's take a look at the implementation phases.
Linton:
Okay. The implementation phase has three stages centered on putting career plans into action Induction, reformation and integration. Starting with induction, after you've made a career choice, you start eagerly diving into all the activities, roles and responsibilities of the new career position or training program. It's an exciting time, as you're actively turning plans into reality.
Stacy:
And of course some disillusionment also emerges as ideals meet real workplace constraints and those politics you can never escape. Gaps between expectations and the concrete job can prompt tension.
Linton:
No kidding.
Stacy:
And in the next stage, reformation you might start to question whether your initial choices were right and or think that maybe you were just out of your mind and start to question your initial decision. So here's an example. When I graduated from college, I worked the night shift in a microbiology lab and at first I thought oh man, this is going to be great. I love my microbiology and I'm a night owl. What's not to love about this job? It takes all the boxes.
Stacy:
Well, it turns out that staying up into the wee hours of the morning is fun when you're not working and you can choose to sleep whenever you want, but when you're knee deep and stool samples and putting biopsy body parts into petri dishes at three in the morning, year after year, you might start to rethink your life decisions.
Linton:
So, stacy, what did you do?
Stacy:
Well, as soon as a job opened up during the day shift, I jumped on it. Of course I had to leave the microbiology lab behind, because the day shift post was working for the lab's customer service department. And once again I thought, ah, this will be great, I'll be working for the same company, get back on my normal circadian rhythm. But, as it turned out, being a customer service representative is not a role that suits my personality very well.
Linton:
You know that's a great example of a reformation stage. And finally, the integration stage brings acceptance of career compromises, contentment if there's an adequate fit or back to the exploration if it's still unresolved. Teedmen believe people continually revisit these mindsets in a circular lifelong process as careers and personal priorities evolve. But the stage applies especially to making those early, directional and pivotal choices.
Stacy:
Mm-hmm, Alrighty. Well, that is a wrap. You can see how there's enough material here to generate questions for your licensing exam. As you're studying for your exam, you want to keep in mind the types of activities the client would be involved in during those different stages of Teedmen and O'Hara's decision-making model. So how about a summary before we go?
Linton:
Linton Okay. The model breaks down the career decision-making process into two phases anticipation and implementation. The anticipation model is made of four stages exploration, crystallization, choice and clarification and the implementation phase is made of three stages induction, reformation and integration.
Stacy:
All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us and as you continue to study for your exam, just remember it's in there, it's in there. Thank you.
