Creativity: A key concept in guidance and career counselling

An evolving concept

After the Second World War, due to many transformations at different levels in society (technological, political and economic, demographic, educational and professional), guidance practices evolved; the field moved from the early psychometric-centred approach involving statistical comparisons of standardized test scores, to a developmental and educational approach centred on the individual subject (Salgado, Anderson, & Hülsheger, 2010). As Montagnier (2012) points out, this trend was first marked by the growth of consultancy practices, particularly driven by Super’s (1953) developmental theory. Other theories of development or professional choice emerged later, notably with Holland (1973). At the same time, additional theories of counselling appeared, especially the relational approach of Rogers (1951). Special attention was placed on the posture to adopt possibilities, allowing the client to express his or her interests rather than simply evaluating performance on psychometric tests.

Early methods of career education (or educational guidance) emerged in the 1970s based on the awareness of the importance of preparing young people for their professional future. Pelletier (1974), in Canada, promoted an ‘educational orientation’ in which ADVP (Activation of Vocational and Personal Development) methodology is one of the major examples. In this approach, the guidance counsellor aims to boost the intentionality of clients and students, whose decisions, ideally, are influenced only by the knowledge that they discover themselves (Montagnier, 2012). ADVP is based on several approaches including developmental models of career choice (Ginzberg et al., 1951; Super, 1953), structure and processes of human intelligence (Guilford, 1967) and person-centred counselling (Rogers, 1951). It was rapidly imported in France in a search for innovative ways to promote educational practices and active learning. At its early stage, ADVP was implemented in secondary schools and extended later to adults, although no systematic evaluation of its impact was conducted (Guichard, 1989).

ADVP emphasizes the importance of learning experiences (Mouillet & Colin, 2005). It suggests that career projects are built on the actions engaged by individuals in interaction with their environment. Such actions may lead to increased self-awareness, knowledge about occupations and the job market and, more broadly, expanded personal and career-related resources. The approach relies on individual agency, and the main role of a guidance counsellor is to help participants define and co-construct the actions they choose to pursue. In order to reach this objective, procedures for action, research, investigation and openness to the outside world are required. But it is necessary that this experience be organized and structured in order to promote the emergence of the project; this translates the orientation sequence into a process of personal development that Michel and Mallen (1990) describe in four stages:

Exploration. Exploring self and the environment in an open and unsystematic way.

This four-step sequence has proven both popular and extremely useful in the field of guidance and in educational methods in use today. Inspired by Wallon’s work, Pémartin and Legrès (1988) proposed another theoretical approach in which conflict is seen as the key driver of vocational orientation, which alternates between internally- and externally-oriented phases of contact with the outside world (Guichard & Huteau, 2006). These ideas led to the image of an active and autonomous individual replacing that of a passive and reactive subject (Guichard & Huteau, 2006). The future is uncertain, and in these circumstances it seems logical that guidance counselling should accompany people as they build their own path. Finally, modern society is characterized by a shift in values that prioritizes the individual and his or her autonomy and development, which are the goals of orientation education methods (Guichard & Huteau, 2006).

Since the early 1980s, guidance has become a full-fledged mission for educational systems. For example, the French educational system, which is a nationwide system, recognizes guidance counselling as an essential activity to help pupils build their future. In this approach, known as ‘career education’, the objective is orienting oneself and finding one’s way in life in the act of learning. Guidance education has been institutionalized in middle school. One example is the ‘Future Course’, which has been developed in French schools. It offers students the opportunity to research information about various professions, educational programmes and the economic and professional world, in order to help prepare them to choose their vocational futures. This programme receives support and follow-up by educational teams throughout junior high school and high school. Pedagogical practices such as these enable students to discover the world of work as it continues to evolve.

The importance of creativity in career guidance

Creativity is a crucial concept in the professional world, where new ideas for solving problems, renewing oneself and adaptability are consistently required (World Economic Forum, 2016). Creativity, as previously discussed, can be seen as the ability to achieve a production that is new, original while respecting the constraints of the situation or field of expression. Since Guilford (1950), this ability has been considered universally present in all of us to varying degrees, and also susceptible to development. On a broader level, creativity plays a major role in the exploration of oneself and in the construction of a work-life project as a whole. As Guichard and Huteau remind us, our concept of self is an ongoing synthesis of references to past, present and future experiences: An individual’s concept of self is situated in a temporal dimension. Some are current references to self, others refer to the past, others to the future, when we speak of the ‘possible’. This temporal dimension of the self-image is of course central to the issues of orientation where all the behaviours are directed, in the medium and long term, towards the future (Guichard & Huteau, 2006, p. 108). And they go on to state that in guidance counselling, the counselee treats information on professions as information on a future self when it resonates with his or her current self-image. Thus, self-representation and envisioning a future self, with the necessary educational or career steps to achieve it, is a key to self-exploration and career-related decision-making processes.

Creativity: The construction of an orientation trajectory and career vision

Creative thinking can be viewed as a key part of the cross-disciplinary ability to orient oneself. Instead of the typical vision of creativity as being able to invent new things or new products, creativity is used here to produce new ideas about how to invent oneself, to invent one’s career and life path. Thus, creative problem-solving concerns the challenge of generating a professional project. This project may be rather standard, but it can also be original and unique and thus optimize the fit to the individual.

In general, the professional project holds a central place in the psychology of guidance. According to Huteau, it is quite natural that guidance focuses on projects because they are particularly valued forms of anticipation. Accordingly, the psychology of career development is essentially focused on the possible future, and is by nature prospective. For Boutinet (1996),

we can situate the present time of the project as expanded towards a double horizon … so when we analyze the relationship between project and personal history, we can say that project …  is always grafting the unpublished, desired new state on an already constituted route. (pp. 60–61)

Michel and Mallen (1990) propose that the development of a pre-project proceeds by setting aside reality. The essential mechanism of orientation is, in this case, appropriation by the individual of his or her project, and what differentiates a solid project from a fragile one is the fact that the individual shows creativity and ownership. To achieve this appropriation and ensure maximum autonomy in the process, Michel and Mallen propose a methodology in which imaginary thinking and playfulness are employed before thinking about reality.

From their observations in the field (experience with people facing unemployment and changing their orientation), Michel and Mallen find that the difficulties that people have in imagining something other than what they already know are based on mental blocks, internalized constraints that reduce the ability to change and build a new project. Based on this observation, using creativity to remove these mental blocks becomes an interesting avenue for orientation:

Why give such importance to imagination and games in our self-assessment? Are we not in danger of dragging the person … into an unreal world, far from the constraints to which he or she is subjected? Are we not going to make people dream without making them aware of the difficulties to overcome in order to achieve a project? Would not it be healthier to start from the realities offered and then choose reasonable tracks? These concerns and these biases are natural. … But precisely this acute awareness of the difficulties of the real pushes us to clearly favor the use of the imaginary at the beginning of the orientation. … How to ignore the prevailing discourse on the harshness of the labor market, on systematic selection, on the importance of relations? The constraints are not denied, they are on the contrary so integrated by the individuals that they block them in their effort to imagine something else. The problem we have encountered everywhere is not the flight into the dream but the inability to imagine anything other than the current situation. (Michel and Mallen, 1990, pp. 64–65)

Self-realization, self-construction

Here we come to a central point of our presentation concerning the dynamic aspect of the self and orientation. ‘Self-realization’ refers to the developmental aspect of self, and development is based on the idea of maturation and designates progress to increase and realize the possibilities of the individual (Cartier, 2010). Self-realization is at work when, for example, people are experiencing the need to set goals in life and to achieve projects and do not just wait for the events passively. According to Cartier (2010), it is ‘a kind of self-fulfillment of a self already there which only seeks to meet favorable circumstances to be able to be expressed’ (p. 156).

In this conception, the self is not simply something that needs to be revealed based on circumstances, rather it must be constructed, deconstructed and possibly reconstructed. The self depends both on personal characteristics and on physical and social environments, which leads it to be constantly in movement. In the constructivist perspective, the self is not conceived as a substance but as a form, as ‘a general process of reflexivity structured in the form of certain modes of self-relation as a function of interactions in the context of the individual’ (Guichard & Huteau, 2006, p. 218). Such a perspective is opposed to the fundamental postulate of the personal development movement, which focuses on updating a certain potential, already present in the latent state (Lacroix, 2004). It is potentially a process that an individual can accomplish by him or herself, but support from a counsellor is certainly beneficial and probably necessary to achieve a satisfactory result (Ball, Macrae, & Maguire, 2000; Rose, 1992).

The skills to guide oneself: The pragmatic aspect of the self

The pragmatic aspect of the self refers to skills to orient oneself. As Cartier (2010) highlights, self-image, self-esteem and self-presentation are at the centre of practical orientation and insertion. Thus, in order to be well orientated, the individual must know him or herself, have self-esteem, know how to present him or herself, feel the desire to actualize and to build him or herself. It is also preferable that he or she has a relatively stabilized, differentiated and positive self-image. In addition, a certain number of orientation skills are increasingly considered important in a changing and uncertain world that requires adaptability, flexibility, employability and transferability. Therefore, one can consider that orienting oneself is a real task which requires imagination and particular competencies (Cartier, 2010, p. 157)

Having acquired these skills reflects a certain ‘career maturity’. As Guichard and Huteau remind us, career maturity is ‘based on the idea of ​​a normative sequence ordered towards a final state of maturity – eminently desirable – corresponding to the development of certain potentialities’ (Guichard, & Huteau, 2006, p. 222). However, the dynamic nature of interests and the instability of contexts lead Savickas to question the concept of career maturity.

For Savickas et al. (2010), who prefer the term ‘career adaptability’, the dynamism of interests and unstable contexts justifies the need for theoretical models focusing on human flexibility, adaptability and training throughout life. The meaning of a career is changing. People manage their professional transitions, invest in their workplace but need also to anticipate and adapt to change, increasingly changing jobs or career tracks (Savickas et al., 2010). At the same time, new counselling methods should take a dynamic approach by stimulating creative thinking and self- exploration in people. Life design proposes to redefine the very purpose of guidance counselling. The model of life designing emphasizes that ‘building one's life’ is an activity of the person, the counsellor providing, at most, a framework for this reflection. In a life design counselling interview, the counselee's reflexive activity is essential.

The importance of creativity to adaptation and self-guidance

Creativity is necessary for vocational maturity. As Pelletier (1974) states, when a ‘person invents and truly creates his [or her] behaviors, when he/she invests his/her resources in solving personal problems, and when this adaptation repertoire is exercised on problems of orientation, it is called vocational maturity’ (p. 62).

Vocational maturity cannot be reduced to knowledge, for Pelletier (1974) vocational maturity involves: ‘Achieving positive self-esteem, opening up to multiple activities, tolerating the complexity of choices, awakening to one’s own introspective abilities, specifying self-images, conceptualizing experiences, seeking information based on identity to adjust aspirations, and developing strategies for change’ (p. 65).

Patillon (2014) examined creativity as a component of skills to orient oneself. She notes that creative skills have been little studied in the field of orientation, whereas the model of guidance in the modern societal context provides an important place for individual characteristics such as openness, flexibility, originality, adaptation and to a certain extent innovation that are characteristics of creativity. This research is part of the multivariate approach to creativity (Lubart et al., 2015). It concerns individual creativity and more particularly the creative resources that can be mobilized not only in everyday life but also in certain contexts specific to orientation. Patillon’s research reveals links between creative potential and certain dimensions of adaptability in orientation. These results show that creativity is associated with career adaptability in terms of curiosity and confidence and that it is also related to the dimensions of individual adaptability. These results make it possible to envision the beneficial role that creativity could play in certain situations of personal and professional change, but also in the management of orientation transitions.

The multivariate approach to creativity

Michel and Mallen (1990) note that each individual possesses capacities, some being actualized but others that are partly hidden. Tests can reveal these capacities and lead people to exploit them. Thus, it is useful to differentiate between ‘latent’ and ‘manifest’ skills. The capacities and the competences of each type (latent and manifest) need to be analysed and integrated into orientation. It would be ineffective and somewhat ‘false’ to work on capacities that the person does not even know exist.

The multivariate approach to creativity, as developed by Sternberg and Lubart (1995) and then extended by Lubart and collaborators (Lubart & Thornhill-Miller, 2019; Lubart et al., 2015), suggests that several distinct types of personal resources (cognitive, conative, emotional, environmental) are needed for creativity to consistently or strongly emerge. But individuals are virtually never aware of many of these resource dimensions and have even less possibility of knowing their own levels or the appropriate and optimum levels of these resources for their chosen career field or particular task at hand. The resources combine in the process of creative thinking, applied to orientation and designing one’s future. The creative process can be conceptualized as a complex interplay of divergent-exploratory thinking (getting many ideas, exploring a conceptual space with openness) and convergent-integrative thinking (bringing ideas together in a new synthesis).

In order to assist with this fundamental personal and organizational problem, the ‘Creative Profiler 2.0’ tool was developed (see Lubart et al., 2013 for information about version 1.0). The Creative Profiler 2.0 is a state-of-the-art battery of validated psychometric tests providing a means for individuals to become aware of their strengths and weakness regarding four major kinds of resources promoting their own creativity: cognitive abilities (such as mental flexibility and divergent thinking), personality traits (such as openness and tolerance of ambiguity), socio-emotional factors (such as empathy and emotional richness) and environmental conditions (such as stimulating and supportive social and work climates).

This potential may be put to use (or relevant deficits improved through training) if a person has the opportunity to become aware of them. Thus, by combining a group of systematically organized psychometric tests, it is now possible to obtain a comprehensive, multivariate profile of the factors that might contribute to or obstruct an individual’s creative potential.

Moreover, beyond individual guidance for creativity-engaging vocations, the multivariate approach may also be used in the design and benchmarking of entire programmes for the training and development of creativity in the orientation process. Thus, by offering a road map for training and development of creativity, the multivariate approach embodied by the Creative Profiler would seem to offer a perspective to boost ability to engage in active life design and building one’s own unique career path. It is possible, in this view, to compare orientation and guidance programmes in terms of their attention to creative thinking as part of the guidance process. Individuals, through tools such as the Creative Profiler, can assess and develop their creative thinking, thus, better positioning themselves to undertake career guidance and advance more effectively in their life design.

Conclusion

In a world of increasing uncertainty, instability requires everyone to evolve constantly. In these conditions, creativity is a vital resource for every individual’s overall life-project of adapting to their changing occupational and social contexts—which has become the expanded mission of modern career counselling and career education. We have sought to explore the relevance of creativity to guidance and career counselling and to offer perspectives on the use of this inventive capacity of each individual as a resource for personal development.