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Social-Emotional
Competences
Training Needs of
Career Practitioners
Johannes Katsarov,
Teresa Maltese,
Monica Miglionico,
Soili Rinne,
Speranța Țibu,
Mary Tountopoulou,
Fotini Vlachaki,
Peter C. Weber
Co-funded by the
Erasmus+ Programme
of the European Union
Co-funded by the
Erasmus+
Programme
of the European Union
Social-Emotional Competences:
Training Needs of Career
Practitioners
Johannes Katsarov, Teresa Maltese,
Monica Miglionico, Soili Rinne, Speranța Țibu,
Mary Tountopoulou, Fotini Vlachaki, & Peter C. Weber
NICE Foundation
Aerdenhout, The Netherlands
Katsarov, Johannes, Maltese, Teresa, Miglionico, Monica, Rinne, Soili, Țibu,
Speranța, Tountopoulou, Mary, Vlachaki, Fotini, & Weber, Peter (2022). Social
-Emotional Competences: Training Needs of Career Practitioners (2nd, revised
Edition). NICE Foundation.
This publication of the STRENGTh Project (2019-1-RO01-KA202-063198) has
been funded with support from the European Commission under the
Erasmus+ Programme. This publication reflects the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be
made of the information contained therein.
Social-Emotional Competences: Training Needs of Career Practitioners by
Johannes Katsarov, Teresa Maltese, Monica Miglionico, Soili Rinne, Speranța
Țibu, Mary Tountopoulou, Fotini Vlachaki, and Peter Weber is licensed under
CC BY-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Published by
NICE Foundation
Burg Bas Backerhof 20
2111TD Aerdenhout
The Netherlands
Layout: Johannes Katsarov
Front Picture: Sven Lachmann (Seaq68), Pixabay, CC0
Ethical Review: Approved by the Ethics Committee of the NICE Foundation
ISBN: 9789083174105
Co-funded by the
Erasmus+ Programme
of the European Union
Contents
Acknowledgements 6
Executive Summary 8
1. Introduction
1.1. Goal 11
1.2. Focus on Social-Emotional Competences 11
1.3. Challenge 12
1.4. General Approach 14
1.5. Target Group 15
1.6. Focus-Group Interviews 16
1.7. International Survey 18
1.8. Corroborative Interviews 21
2. Outcomes
2.1. Overview of Unexplored Critical Incidents 22
2.2. Vignette Collection 27
2.3. Sample of the Survey 31
2.4. Personal Interest in Social-Emotional Training 32
2.5. Training Needs of Fellow Practitioners 33
2.6. Relevance and Frequency of the Critical Incidents 35
2.7. Perceived Challenge of the Critical Incidents 37
2.8. Findings from the Corroborative Interviews 38
3. Training Needs
3.1. Limitations 41
3.2. General Observations 42
3.3. Country-Specific Observations 43
References 46
Appendix 1: Guidelines for Focus-Group Interviews 47
Appendix 2: Consent Form 52
Appendix 3: Critical Incident Template 53
Appendix 4: Survey 54
Acknowledgements
Following STRENGTh project colleagues supported the research design,
conducted focus-group interviews in their countries to identify critical
incidents, translated the survey into their languages, and supported the data
collection: Lea Ferrari (NICE Foundation), Marcela Claudia Călineci, Ana Maria
Oancea, & Luminita Mitrofan (CMBRAE), Angela Andrei, & Alina Crăciunescu
(Centrul National de Politici si Evaluare in Educatie), Antti Viiman (Häme
University of Applied Sciences), Varvara Pantidou & Dimitrios Adam (ISON
Psychometrica), Maria Santarcangelo (Studio Risorse), João Constâncio,
Catarina Madureira, & Sofia Rego (União das Freguesias de Gondomar Valbom
e Jovim), Rebeca Garcia Murias, & Gundula Gwenn Hiller (University of
Applied Labor Studies, Mannheim). The STRENGTh Survey would not have
been possible without this excellent partnership. Although the Covid-19
pandemic only allowed us to have one physical meeting before this research
was conducted, and we had to change our plans for live interviews to online
interviews on short notice, the cooperation always ran smoothly and
professionally.
We would also like to thank the 68 career professionals for their participation
in our focus-group interviews: Riitta Ahokas, Magda Anghel, Diana Aprodu,
Anastasios Asvestas, Nicola Barbaro, Paraskevi Basioti, Petra Bedda,
Diamanta Bulai, Elena Buneru, Andreea Ioana Ciocâlteu, Catarina Cunha, Rino
Finamore, Arnaldo Fernandes, Valentina Gafița, Marirosa Gioia, Raffaele
Gioioso, Cristina Iuliana Harap, Camelia Ion, Celina Ivan, Claudia Ana Jarnea,
Marjo Juutinen, Angeliki Kakaroglou, Marko Kallionpää, Olga Kapernarakou,
Athanasia Karagiannaki, Anna-Maria Kieferle, Heiner Kottmann, Stella Koutri,
Seija Leppänen, Eugenia Maria, Luminița Doina Mitrofan, Angela Molinari,
Violeta-Luminita Musunoiu-Hoton, Marika Nieminen, Florina Opincariu,
Geanina Oprea-Postolache, Maria Pavelescu, Fani Passia, Andre Pinto, Elena
Pop, Marlene Ribeiro, Ana Particia Rocha, María Roústa, Maria Rossi, Ioana
Sandru, Vasiliki Sarantopoulou, Sarah Schneiderlein, Zelia Silva, Jolanda
Silvestro, Sabine Simon, Maria Annunziata Simonetti, Ionela Stan, Irina
Subredu, Alina Mihaela Suciu, Susanna Syld, Sofia Tampouri, Vania Teixeira,
Goreti Teixieira, Ana Torres, Alina Minodora Toth, Ismo Turve, Lauri Värri,
Ruxandra Vasilescu, Cristina Vasiloiu, Maria Rosaria Viggiano, Eleni
Vlachogianni, Minna Yliniemi, and Valeria Zampagni.
Moreover, we would like to thank several organizations and individuals that
promoted our survey beyond the membership of our project: The
Euroguidance network, Cynthia Harrison Villalba from the CEDEFOP
CareersNet, Barbara Knickrehm and Rainer Thiel from the German guidance
counsellor association dvb, the European Doctoral Programme in Career
Guidance and Counselling (ECADOC), Paolo Cardoso, Jonas Masdonati and
Guðbjörg Vilhjálmsdóttir from the European Society for Vocational Designing
and Career Counseling (ESVDC), the GIZ Career Guidance Community of
Practice, the IAAP Counseling Division, Paul King from the Irish National
Centre for Guidance in Education (NCGE), Barbara Lampe and Karen Schober
from the German national guidance forum nfb, Isabelle Zuppiger, Monika
Wenk, and Sandra Thüring from profunda suisse, Scott Solberg, Lea Ferrari,
and Chong Park from the international Social Emotional Learning & Career
Development Project, Åsa Sundelin (Stockholm University), Emma Bolger
(University of West Scotland), and Georgia Kelly-Bakker (Career Development
Association of Australia).
Finally, we thank the National Agency of Romania, which funded the
STRENGTh Project through the Erasmus+ framework, for its continued
support in finalizing this project in times of Covid-19. Thus far, most of the
originally planned meetings needed to be cancelled and we have performed
most of work through fruitful online collaboration. The Agency was always
proactive in supporting us in dealing with the pandemic and recently also
allowed us to extend the project’s duration by one year so that we will be able
to make the best of the results and provide live trainings to practitioners.
8 ◊ Executive Summary
Executive Summary
This report summarizes the findings of a mixed-method investigation on
career practitioners’ needs for social-emotional competences conducted as
part of the STRENGTh project. The investigation was conducted throughout
the year 2020 with a primary focus on the six partner countries of the
STRENGTh project, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and
Romania.
In the first phase of the investigation, online focus-group interviews with
career professionals were conducted in each of the partner countries. The
participants shared 50 socially and emotionally challenging situations
(critical incidents) from their personal practice. Fifteen critical incidents
were explored in detail as part of the focus-group interviews. Each of the
critical incidents was regarded as relatively challenging and common by the
focus-group participants, and it was challenging to come up with
recommendations on how to deal with relevant situations professionally.
The critical incidents can be used for purposes of reflection, training, and
assessment regarding the social and emotional competences needed by
career practitioners.
Executive Summary ◊ 9
In the second phase of the investigation, we conducted an international
survey on the social-emotional competences needed by career
practitioners. The survey was simultaneously conducted in English, Finnish,
German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. The survey included
several measures to reduce the risk of biased answering behaviours.
Overall, 477 career practitioners from 27 countries participated in the
survey, with sufficient numbers of participants to draw some general
conclusions for partner countries. Despite the large number of participants,
the survey cannot claim to be representative of all career practitioners in
partner countries though, so the findings should not be generalized.
The most important finding from our survey is surely that our respondents
were – on average – “very interested” in all five clusters of social-
emotional competence training (M = 3.9, SD = 0.8). The most interested
respondents (top 50%) were even “extremely interested” on average,
while even the mean value of the people less interested (bottom 50%) was
“somewhat interested” on average (Graph 1). Overall, the largest interest
was voiced in emotion-management and cooperation training. However,
interest in the other three clusters was not significantly smaller.
Moreover, when asked to identify the two most important training needs
for fellow practitioners (from the five competence clusters), all five clusters
were identified relatively often (Graph 2). Only one cluster, emotion
management, was named somewhat more frequently than the others.
10 ◊ Executive Summary
Based on these findings, we can confidently say that it makes sense for the
STRENGTh project to develop and disseminate innovative training modules
for all five clusters of social-emotional competences. A special focus should
be given to emotion management, but the other clusters appear to be
important as well.
An unexpected finding was that female career practitioners voiced a larger
interest in social-emotional competence training than male practitioners
(Graph 3). This difference in interest mainly pertained to three of five
competence clusters, namely emotion management, diversity
management, and cooperation. This finding probably implies that female
practitioners sometimes face a lack of respect in their practice, e.g.,
through chauvinistic clients – a lack of respect to which male practitioners
are not subjected. Given that the majority of the career workforce is
composed of female practitioners, social-emotional competence training
should therefore focus explicitly on constructive ways of establishing one’s
authority as a female professional.
Finally, we observed diverse country-specific differences in view of training
interests and needs, as well as in view of how six critical incidents were
perceived. In general, it appears that existing training programs across
Europe address (different) social-emotional competences to a greater or
lesser extent already. Therefore, we recommend that the use of the
innovative training modules, which shall be developed as part of the
STRENGTh project be adapted to local training interests and needs.
Introduction ◊ 11
1. Introduction
1.1. Goal
In this report, we summarize the findings of a mixed-method investigation on
the training needs of career practitioners concerning social-emotional
competences. This investigation was conducted throughout the year 2020
with a primary focus on the six partner countries of the STRENGTh project,
Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Romania.
What we hoped to find out through our investigation was how important
career practitioners find social-emotional competences, and how they relate to
the requirements of daily practice. Moreover, we hoped to assess whether
there is a systematic lack of certain social-emotional competences among
practitioners, and for which social-emotional competences there is a national
and international demand.
Within the framework of the STRENGTh project, this report (IO2) aims to
inform the development of innovative training modules for career practitioners
who want to improve their social-emotional competences (IO3). These
training modules will be developed during the year 2021. It builds on a
previous investigation on frameworks of social-emotional competences (IO1).
1.2. Focus on Social-Emotional Competences
Following Berg, Osher, Same, Nolan, Benson, and Jacobs (2017), who
systematically reviewed 136 social-emotional competence frameworks, social-
emotional competences include…
“emotional processes such as regulating emotions and displaying
empathy; interpersonal skills such as social competence and
perspective taking; and cognitive regulation, including cognitive and
mental flexibility. But [they] also can include intercultural competence
and understanding, connectedness to others, and social
responsibility.” (p. 16)
For the purpose of our project, we are interested in practitioners’ need for 13
social-emotional competences, which are listed in Exhibit 1. The identification
of these social-emotional competences is a result of our prior project report
Desk Research and Compendium of Methods on Social-Emotional Competence
(Weber & García, 2020). To arrive at this list, our colleagues analysed
different theories of social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and social-
12 ◊ Introduction
emotional learning, and identified distinct abilities and attitudes. The final
selection concentrated on competences that can be characterized as
relational, i.e., as abilities and attitudes that facilitate good relationships
between oneself and others. For this reason, we decided to exclude
intellectual abilities, e.g., critical thinking, creativity, or problem-solving
abilities from our analysis in the project team.
Similarly, we also decided to exclude moral/ethical competences. While
moral/ethical competences, e.g., the abilities to notice and solve ethical
problems, bear a relational component, they are not typically implied when
speaking of social-emotional competences. The moral/ethical competences of
practitioners are certainly of general interest: However, we believe that they
should be addressed in another project.
For strategic purposes, we combined the 13 social-emotional competences of
interest in our study in five clusters (Exhibit 1). One of the main goals of our
project is to develop innovative training modules on social-emotional
competences of career practitioners. Each of our clusters ideally represents
one training module, which will focus on the development of several
competences that can be combined.
1.3. Challenge
The main methodological challenge in arriving at the desired insights is based
on the inherent knowledge biases that influence our beliefs about what social-
emotional competences are important in the practice of career guidance and
counselling, and how relevant competences might best be shaped. In a
nutshell, four problems are connected to the research questions:
First, people do not tend to value what they do not understand. Especially
when concepts or educational practices seem foreign to people, they may be
overly sceptical regarding their potential and relevance. Second, people may
overestimate the value of the competences and knowledge that they have
acquired – at least when they are aware of them, e.g., due to formal training,
reflective practice, or because they draw on explicit theories (books, etc.). On
the other hand, others may discount the relevance of explicit knowledge for
practice and rely on their intuition (including their implicit beliefs, their ability
to empathize with others at an emotional level, etc.). Third, people may
underestimate or overestimate the value of implicit knowledge and
competences that they have developed through experience and adaptation.
People tend to expect that their implicit assumptions are shared by others as
“common sense”. However, what appears to be “common sense” to an
experienced practitioner may resemble expert knowledge that is not
commonly found in novices. Fourth, people tend to imagine highly different
Introduction ◊ 13
Exhibit 1: Five Clusters of Social-Emotional Competences
1. Empathy Skills
The goal is to increase participants’ affective empathy and perspective-taking skills.
Affective empathy is a person’s ability to perceive and correctly express other
people’s emotions, drawing on verbal and non-verbal cues and an ability to
understand and imagine the feelings and intentions of others (including in the past
and future). Perspective taking (cognitive empathy) is a person’s ability to take
the perspective of others, e.g., by imagining what their roles and circumstances may
require from them, being able to imagine how others will be affected.
2. Emotional Management Skills
The goal is to increase participants’ understanding and awareness of their emotions
and other people’s emotions, and to help them manage their own emotions better.
On the one hand, participants will be trained in understanding emotions, their
value and nature. Also, the training will promote emotional self-awareness, i.e.,
one’s ability to perceive and correctly express one’s own emotions, to know what one
is feeling at any given time, and how one’s emotions can affect other people. Finally,
the training aims at promoting emotional self-control: Regulating and influencing
one’s own emotions to motivate oneself, achieve goals, and deal with stress, control
or redirect one’s emotions and impulses, and how to persevere in the face of
obstacles and setbacks.
3. Diversity Management Skills
The goal is to increase participants’ concern for all kinds of people, their tolerance
of different values, and their ability to cooperate with diverse people. One goal will
be to increase participants’ tolerance, i.e., their ability to understand and accept the
diverse perspectives, values, and lifestyles of others. Another goal will be to increase
participants’ diversity and intercultural competence so that they can understand
the influence of culture, age, gender, religion, and social class on identity, needs,
and emotions, and work together with diverse people better. Overall, the course shall
enable professionals to feel a commitment and concern towards all kinds of citizens.
4. Active Listening Skills
The goal is to increase participants’ abilities to attend to other people. On the one
hand, it shall increase participants’ attentiveness, i.e., their capacity to direct their
attention to the needs, feelings, and cognitions of others and to remain attentive
even when they feel distressed personally. On the other hand, the training shall
equip participants with skills to listen and focus on people in a sympathetic, non-
judgmental manner that allows others to reflect ideas and feelings openly.
5. Cooperation Skills
The goal is to increase participants’ abilities for managing relationships effectively.
Collaboration training shall promote learners’ ability to build and manage
relationships, to give and accept help, and to form agreements for cooperation.
Conflict resolution and negotiation training shall support participants in
addressing misunderstandings, value, and resource conflicts constructively. Influence
training shall promote learners understanding of their own strengths and values and
support them in convincing/persuading other people.
14 ◊ Introduction
professional situations when evaluating, rating, or ranking the importance of
generically described competences or training approaches. Depending on
what they have in mind, they may evaluate certain competences as important
or irrelevant. Therefore, generic descriptions of social-emotional competences
are ambiguous when they lack context. In a similar manner, the evaluation of
the relevance of training methods necessitates the context of the desired
learning outcomes. Considering these challenges, many approaches to
evaluate the relevance of competences for a certain practice or the adequacy
of training methods are inadequate. People will mainly convey information
about what they already believe – whether it is correct or not – and mainly
try to confirm their beliefs by a selective interpretation of empirical evidence.
These challenges are also important at the political and institutional level
when considering the question, whether social-emotional competences are
relevant at all, or at least for career practitioners. In the STRENGTh Group,
we were already convinced of the importance of social-emotional
competences for the practice of career guidance and counselling from the
beginning, although we possibly disagreed about the importance of particular
competences or approaches. On the other hand, some policy makers, faculty
leaders, public agency representatives, guidance managers, etc., may be
sceptical about the relevance of socio-emotional competences. When their
own beliefs suggest that social-emotional competences are overrated, why
should they change their opinion based on what other people tend to think?
Based on this rationale, we can summarize the main challenge in terms of two
critical questions: How can we demonstrate the importance of different social-
emotional competences to sceptics, who doubt their importance? How can we
demonstrate that certain social-emotional competences are of lesser value to
people who value them highly?
1.4. General Approach
To overcome the knowledge biases and subjectivity outlined above, we
needed to take a research approach that strives for relatively objective
knowledge. A helpful strategy is to demonstrate the relevance of social-
emotional competences for the practice of career guidance and counselling
based on the actual challenges faced in practice.
The practical challenges we were interested in, needed to fulfil two criteria.
First, they had to be relatively common and widespread in the practice.
There had to be a certain likelihood that these challenges could occur in one’s
practice of career support, in order to justify the high relevance of certain
social-emotional competences. Secondly, the practical challenges needed to
Introduction ◊ 15
be perceived as challenging by practitioners themselves. Only in looking at
situations that practitioners perceive as challenging themselves, would we be
finding out, what sorts of social-emotional competences are in high demand.
Based on these considerations, we decided to work with critical incidents in
assessing practitioners’ need for social-emotional competences. We began by
exploring the relevance of different social-emotional competences through
focus-group interviews where practitioners shared and discussed critical
incidents. On this basis, we then conducted an international survey.
1.5. Target Group
In line with our research questions, we defined career practitioners as
professionals who actively work together with other people (clients) regarding
their career development. Following the typology introduced by NICE (2016),
our investigation focused on the experiences, needs, and interests of Career
Advisors and Career Professionals (Figure 1).
“Career Advisors are important sources of basic information and support for
people facing career-related challenges. Career Advisors are teachers,
placement managers, psychologists, social workers or public administrators
(among others). They are not Career Professionals, but professionals in
another field, who offer some career support in addition to their primary roles
and tasks. Often, they are the first persons to whom people come for
advice.” (NICE, 2016, p. 41)
Figure 1: Interrelations of the three types of career professionals (NICE, 2016, p. 42)
16 ◊ Introduction
“Career Professionals are dedicated to career guidance and counselling and
see it as their vocation to support people in dealing with complex career-
related challenges. They included career counsellors, employment counsellors,
career coaches, school counsellors, personnel developers, educational or
guidance counsellors (among others).” (NICE, 2016, p. 41)
1.6. Focus-Group Interviews
We began our research with focus-group interviews in the partner countries.
The goal was to gain thick descriptions of common social-emotional
challenges experienced in practitioners’ practice, i.e., critical incidents that
necessitate social-emotional maturity.
Originally, we had also planned to conduct individual interviews with career
professionals in each partner country. However, our funding agency asked us
to complete the needs analysis more quickly, and with only half of the
foreseen budget. Therefore, we decided to concentrate on the focus-group
interviews, which would also address questions from another work package
with a reduced budget (IO1). Focus groups usually involve six to twelve
people who discuss a certain topic in an artificial environment (Littig &
Wallace, 1997). Our plan was to conduct half-day focus group interviews with
about 12 practitioners in each country.
At the NICE Academy in Split (October 2019), Johannes Katsarov conducted a
pilot workshop to test a concept for the focus-group interviews. 35 career
practitioners and specialists from approximately 15 European countries
participated at this workshop. After a PowerPoint presentation on the goals of
the STRENGTh project, participants were invited to share socially and
emotionally challenging situations (critical incidents), which could be
discussed in small groups. As an example for a critical incident, the following
sentence was presented: “A career counsellor gets pulled into a conflict
between a teenage girl and her parents regarding her choice of a vocation.”
Each critical incident was given a title by the person sharing it, whereby the
title was supposed to be short (max. 8 words), give a fictional name to the
main person of concern (e.g., the client), and highlight the main problem. For
example, one of the titles was “Laura’s disclosure of domestic violence”.
Critical incidents were collected until there were enough to form groups of 3-5
people. Eight groups then systematically analysed the critical incidents with
the following questions:
What is it that makes this situation challenging? (Develop a
description of the main features of the situation. Think of individual and
contextual aspects, the role of motivations, beliefs, incentives…)
Introduction ◊ 17
What shouldn’t you do in this kind of a situation? (Try to formulate
2-3 “Don’t…” statements)
What could work / be helpful in a situation like this? (Try to
formulate 2-3 “Do…” statements)
After about twenty minutes of small-group work, each group summarized its
findings in an elevator presentation of two minutes. These presentations were
followed by a short discussion on the relevance of different social-emotional
competences in the practice of career guidance and counselling. All workshop
participants suggested that this workshop was valuable for their professional
development. Moreover, they agreed that it highlighted the centrality of social
-emotional competences for the practice, and that analysing critical incidents
had been very insightful. A shortcoming of the workshop was that there was
little time to talk about individual competences.
Since this workshop concept had been extraordinarily successful (it was rated
the best learning activity at the Split Academy in an anonymous survey), we
decided to reproduce it in focus groups at the national level. Detailed
instructions were prepared for all project partners so that the focus-group
interviews could be conducted in the same fashion in all countries (Appendices
1-3).
In February 2020, we were just about to organize all the focus-group
interviews when it became clear that the Covid-19 pandemic would not allow
us to go forward with our plan: The situation was already bad in several
European countries, and it was clear that physical distancing would become a
priority for several months to come. Hence, we immediately reconceived our
concept. The new goal was to conduct 2-3 online focus groups with smaller
number of participants in each country. We pretested this concept with a
group of four practitioners in Germany. Then, we tested it “on ourselves” in
an online meeting, so that all of us would be able to moderate these sessions
in a common way. From March to May 2020, we conducted 15 focus-group
interviews with a total number of 68 participants (see Acknowledgements).
At the beginning of each online focus-group interview, we informed the
participants about the STRENGTh project and our intentions. Oral and written
consent for the recording of the interviews and the anonymous processing of
its contents was collected from all participants. In line with the previously
explained concept, each participant then shared one example of a critical
incident from their practice, giving the critical incident a title. In the next
step, the group decided which critical incident to focus on for detailed
analysis. The moderators of the discussion used PowerPoint to document the
main discussion points from the group. Concretely, they filled out a form that
was visible to all participants, which described the aspects that made the
18 ◊ Introduction
situation challenging, as well as do’s and don’ts when confronted with this
kind of a situation. The project partners then translated the titles of all critical
incidents and the protocol of the detailed discussions into English so that they
could be analysed by the principal investigator. An overview of all critical
incidents, as well as more detailed descriptions of the discussed incidents are
presented in Section 2 of this report.
After the critical incidents had been described, the focus-group interviews
concerned the question, which social-emotional competences were particularly
important in order to deal with this particular situation, and how these
competences ought to be trained. Participants evaluated the importance of
thirteen competences on a scale expressing how elaborate one’s competence
(e.g., one’s empathy) ought to be to deal with such an incident, e.g., whether
a person with a lower-than-average degree of empathy would be able to cope
with this kind of situation. The findings from this discussion are presented in
the STRENGTh IO1 report Desk Research and Compendium of Methods on
Social-Emotional Competence (Weber & García, 2020).
1.7. International Survey
The goal of the study was to gain insights into career practitioners’ need for
social-emotional competences. Our main interest in running the survey was to
gain an understanding of the general European and specific national needs for
social-emotional competences in career guidance and counselling.
Gaining a relatively objective understanding of the demand for social-
emotional competences in career guidance and counselling is nearly
impossible due to various sources of bias (see 1.2). To overcome these
potential sources of bias, we designed our survey to:
Ask for reactions to a standardized set of social-emotional competences,
Control whether participants’ judgments were based on reductionist
ideas about the challenges of career guidance and counselling,
Separate practitioners’ personal training interests from the training
needs they see for the profession,
Control for the potential impact of practitioners’ competence in dealing
with the relevant situations,
Compare the need for different social-emotional competences across
partner countries, and
Reduce the potential impact of social desirability bias.
Introduction ◊ 19
The survey was composed of three sections (Appendix 4). In the first section,
we asked respondents for their consent to participate in our research and
asked for some demographic information concerning their professional and
gender identities, their guidance qualifications, and the countries where they
practice/live. Respondents were then randomly directed to the second or third
section. In the second section, respondents evaluated six critical incidents
in the role of experts. The critical incidents were presented in the form of
vignettes. Respondents were asked to evaluate, how well career professionals
nowadays are prepared to deal with situations like this. This question, which
was asked after each vignette, aimed at estimating potential training gaps. It
was formulated in such a way that novice practitioners could indirectly admit
that they would feel overwhelmed by a situation like this. And it allowed
expert practitioners to offer a differentiated statement that also considered,
how well they believed their peers were prepared to deal with relevant
situations. Also, respondents were asked, how frequently career professionals
have to deal with similar challenges and whether all career professionals
ought to be able to deal with similar situations effectively after reading each
vignette. The purpose of these questions was to determine how important it is
to train career professionals to deal with relevant situations. The high degree
of generalization invited practitioners to think beyond their own practice and
include the stories that they have heard from peers in their assessment.
In the third section, respondents were asked how big their interest is in taking
a course or workshop on different topics, which reflected clusters of social-
emotional competences (Exhibit 1). Also, they were asked to suggest two
priorities for a training program for practitioners in their country
concerning these clusters of social and emotional competences. We
differentiated between these dimensions because only asking respondents
which competences were needed most strongly in their country may have
been influenced by their personal training interests. Moreover, we limited the
choice of training needs for colleagues in one’s country to two priorities
because all social-emotional competences are generally viewed as important
by practitioners, in our experience. By enforcing a prioritization, we
challenged respondents to reflect critically, which competences may be
needed most strongly.
Survey Development
The survey’s development underwent several steps. In the first step, we
selected six critical incidents for the survey internally. We evaluated each of
fifteen critical incidents by six dimensions, including the frequency of relevant
situations. Based on this internal pre-test, we selected six vignettes that
appeared to be relatively relevant across project countries, and which
20 ◊ Introduction
represented the different six types of situations that we categorized based on
all challenging situations shared with us:
Anxious Clients
Clients Whose Parents / Relaves Will Not Let Them Have Their Choice
Clients Facing Hopelessness (Severe Integraon Hindrances)
Frustrated and Aggressive Clients
Clients who Suer from Abuse or Neglect
Clients Who Are Uninterested or Who Reject Support
All of us also commented on the quesons and vignees crically at this step, so
that we could improve the selected vignees, e.g., to ensure that the cases made
sense in all of our countries. We also conducted factor and reliability analyses
across the six evaluaon quesons for each vignee. This allowed us to select the
best three vignee-evaluaon quesons for the survey. The quesons that we
rejected mainly suered from small variance, meaning that there was very lile
disagreement on how to answer them in our team – which suggests that answers
to these quesons may not be helpful in understanding what people think about
the depicted situaons.
In the second step, we conducted a pre-test of the survey with 40 praconers,
most of whom were from our own organisaons. In addion to the items and
quesons from the nal survey, respondents were asked, how well they
understood the instrucons, and we collected wrien feedback on problems, etc.
The pre-test results were in line with our expectaons: All quesons and
instrucons were viewed as understandable. The six vignees were viewed as
relavely relevant, frequent, and challenging. Only for the third vignee, which
deals with a migrant, did praconers from Romania suggest that this kind of
situaon would hardly occur in their country.
Addionally, the pre-test suggested that our quesons on training interests and
priories would lead to the kind of informaon we were interested in. As Table 1
shows, we saw signicant dierences between personal training interests and
priority training needs idened for one’s colleagues. For example, while pre-test
respondents arculated an interest in acve-listening competences that hardly
diered from the mean interest in most other competence domains, only 23% of
respondents listed acve listening as a top priority for fellow praconers.
In the third step, we nalized the survey and translated it into all partner
languages, i.e., into German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Suomi
(Finnish), including the use of local names in the vignees. In each partner
country, a team of three translators was established. Using an Excel-template,
Introduction ◊ 21
each survey item was rst translated into the local language by one team member
(forward translaon), then translated back into English by a second team member
(back translaon), before a third team member used the back translaon to
create a second translaon into the local language (backward-forward
translaon). At this point, all members of the translaon team compared the
forward and the backward-forward versions of the translaon and agreed on a
nal translaon consensually. All translaons were then imputed by the principal
invesgator using the online-survey soluon Questback (Unipark). At this stage,
each partner team reviewed the performance of their quesonnaire in the online-
survey system and nal correcons were conducted.
In the fourth step, data was collected from September to October 2020. Each
naonal partner organisaon contacted at least 100 praconers in their local
country. Addionally, the NICE Foundaon contacted diverse internaonal
organizaons to widen the scope of the survey. Results are presented in Secon 2.
1.8. Corroborative Interviews
To follow up the ndings of the focus-group interviews and survey, we conducted
a series of short online interviews with individual praconers in early 2022. The
goal was to learn how important praconers generally nd social-emoonal
competences for their pracce, and what kind of posive—or negave—
inuences they expect social-emoonal competences to have on the pracce:
irrespecve of detailed descripons of crical incidents or competences.
Table 1
Pretest Priorities
Competence Cluster Personal
Preference
(Mean)
Personal Prefer-
ence: very or ex-
tremely interested
First or second
priority for a train-
ing program for
peers
1. Empathy 3.9 28 (70%) 10 (25.6%)
2. Emotion Manage- 4.3 36 (90%) 23 (59.0%)
3. Diversity Manage- 3.9 30 (75%) 16 (41.0%)
4. Active Listening 3.8 30 (75%) 9 (23.1%)
5. Cooperation 4.0 28 (70%) 20 (51.3%)
22 ◊ Outcomes
2. Outcomes
In this section, we present the main outcomes of our focus-group interviews
and the survey. We begin by presenting 50 critical incidents shared by our 68
participants, which were not discussed in detail. In Section 2.2, we present 15
critical incidents that were explored in detail during the focus-group
interviews. Subsequently, we present the outcomes of the international
survey, looking at the sample, the general answers, and country-specific
answering behaviours. Finally, we share the results of our series of
corroborative interviews from 2022.
2.1. Overview of Unexplored Critical Incidents
The cases that were not discussed in the focus groups are informative
because they give us a broader overview of critical incidents that practitioners
find challenging. A content analysis of the short description unveiled eight
types of critical incidents. In the following, we present the short descriptions
of these cases by category, beginning with the most frequent type of
incidents, dealing with undecided and anxious clients. The least frequent type
of incidents concern career professionals who have become overinvolved in
their cases, i.e., they are failing to maintain a professional distance.
A. Undecided and anxious clients
Akis (25) does not know what kind of a career to pursue. He also thinks
that no one can help him or cares for him.
John is an excellent student. His teachers have recommended him to
pursue all kinds of studies, each of them focusing on their field of
expertise. John does not know what to study and feels very confused.
Robert is a high school student who struggles to find his sexual identity.
questions related to his sexuality interfere with his learning.
Miruna (14) suffers from panic attacks due to social isolation amidst the
Covid-19 pandemic and lack of clarity regarding her career choice. She is
anxious about passing her exams.
Laura the Eternal Student finished high school and several psychology
degrees with excellent results. Instead of entering the world of work, she
has completed several other degrees, as well, and is now embarking on
a professional training in human resource management. She says that
there is no work and that she cannot get any job without a
recommendation.
Outcomes ◊ 23
Mihaela does not know what to study.
Ina has difficulties with her relationships to others and in accepting
herself.
Emi wants to quit studying because he is at the “wrong” faculty.
Arnold, the job-switcher, gives up every job wish quickly.
Dragan, unemployed, has lost all hope, after applying for numerous jobs
without success.
Andreas has inherited a family business but wants to pursue another
career.
B. Clients Whose Caregivers Stand in Their Way
Lea’s parents get her to give up her preferred vocational training as an
interior designer and have her apply for commercial training.
Manuel’s parents do not accept his wish to become a physical therapist
because they want him to study like themselves.
George’s parents disagree with their son’s career choice.
John suffers from Tourette Syndrome and learning difficulties. He wants
to join general school with his friends, but his mother insists that he visit
a vocational school due to his difficulties.
Evana is a Syrian refugee. She has learned the local language and is a
good student. She wants to visit a vocational school to become a
hairdresser, but her brother will not allow her to do so.
Maria is talented at singing, but her parents do not accept her choice of
career and will not let her choose for herself.
Andrei (9th grade) has joined a high school in line with his family’s
tradition – however, he does not fit in and considers changing to another
school.
Fabio is faced with the choice of which studies to undertake after the
middle school. He is a shy, introverted boy, with poor results especially
in scientific subjects and he is studying violin. In an orientation
counselling session with Maria, he admits that he did not commit himself
much during the school year, but that he knows he can do better. His
parents want him to continue with the music and go to the Conservatory.
Suddenly he breaks out in tears, because he wants to enrol in the
Industrial Institute, like his older brother, and does not want to go on
with the music at all.
24 ◊ Outcomes
C. Clients with severe integration hindrances
George (28) is a former substance abuser who has just completed the
process of detoxification and wants to find a job.
Adriana is an immigrant lady in need of professional integration but
without any entitlement to subsidies or financial support, who has
troubles with language barriers and with a validation of her educational
certificates.
Dan, a special needs student, cannot participate in class due to his
disability. His parents don’t request career support, so he has no access
to career counselling.
Costi has autism and is not able to interact with teachers and peers.
Dima is an immigrant from Moldavia who needs to find work but also has
to take care of his smaller brothers.
Bob, the racist, has extremely prejudiced attitudes towards people from
other ethnicities, which he voices during a career counselling session.
Whether Said can stay in the country as a migrant depends on the
outcome of your conversation with him.
Mihai frequently disturbs school classes and is rejected by his
classmates. He was transferred to a school for children with intellectual
disabilities.
D. Frustrated and aggressive clients
George was recently fired after 15 years at a radio station. He and his
family now face severe financial difficulties. He is extremely angry at the
state and the way his former employer dealt with him and projects his
negativity on the career counsellor.
José (drunk) disturbs an information session on job search techniques
with more than 100 participants through rude behavior and remarks.
Paolo, an unemployed jobseeker who receives social support has just
returned from medical leave. When questioned about this job searching
attempts before his illness, he says that he was sick and attacks the
counsellor, suggesting that she is being aggressive and that she is
threatening his social security.
Federico does not apply for jobs, because he believes they do not exist in
the first place. Instead, he uses every opportunity to vent his anger
about the system.
Outcomes ◊ 25
Gabriela interrupts a session with 30 unemployed people, when the
counsellor talks about temporary jobs. She shouts at the counsellor that
she has bad experiences with short-term employment, when she is
interrupted by another participant, who says that he succeeded in finding
a longer job contract. A third individual enters the debate complaining
that people do not want to seek short-term employment…
A man needs proof that he is registered at the employment center so
that he can receive social benefits. However, his citizen card is out of
date, so the counsellor cannot issue such a declaration to him. He
resorts to verbal aggression and attempts to attack the counsellor
physically and finally has to be escorted out of the employment center by
a security guard.
Ari, a teacher, and Seija, a student, have a severe conflict.
E. Situations of abuse and neglect
Leonora is suffering from extreme pressure during her traineeship and
asks a counsellor to help her by speaking with her supervisor.
Adrian suffers from parental indifference. He has developed addictions
and is going to fail his exams.
Bogdan, a student at school, is smart. However, he has drug problems
and avoids his family.
Antonia (46) lives from social welfare together with her unemployed
husband and two children (8 and 10). During an orientation session to
promote her social inclusion, she appears uncomfortable and nervous.
She is a victim of domestic violence (physical and psychological).
Laura discloses that her husband has beaten her up.
F. Family members will not accept clients’ difficulties
Ilie (13) has been diagnosed with learning difficulties. However, his
parents deny the diagnosis.
Eric’s father can’t accept his child’s health problems. Eric is a primary
school student and needs constant help due to locomotion difficulties,
mental disorders etc. His father has high expectations and refuses to
accept the problems.
Gabriela is a highly sensitive person whose feelings are very intense. Her
family rejects her emotionality as shallow and will not support her in
dealing with her anxieties etc.
26 ◊ Outcomes
G. Clients with motivational and self-awareness issues
Dimitris (17) is a weak student who does not like to study, has lost a
school year due to learning difficulties – at the same time, he believes he
can succeed in highly demanding studies, like medicine.
Rodrigo (30) comes to the counsellor’s office with this mother who does
all the talking. She says that her son needs a good job because he is
already unemployed for 2 years and is at home doing nothing.
Chris, the rationalist, suppresses his emotions.
Lucia, almost graduated, appears to have no interest in her studies or a
career.
Miky (18) is a successful YouTube performer with a good income from
advertising. He is bound to fail his final exams and has no interest in
university. In Maria Annunziata’s career orientation group, he becomes a
disturbing factor, talking about his success and questioning the value of
career guidance.
Francesca, a graduate of economics, is strongly attracted to
entrepreneurship. However, she lacks confidence and self-esteem and
believes that she, as a woman, is naturally inferior to male
entrepreneurs.
H. Overinvolvement of professionals
Magda, a school counsellor, finds herself overly emotionally involved in a
conflict between a teacher and a parent. She feels that she cannot
mediate between the two anymore.
Ornella, a career professional herself, cannot keep herself from
projecting career-related expectations on her son and trying to influence
his career development.
This typology was presented to all project partners by the principal
investigator in March 2020, and was supported by the project partnership,
i.e., all partners agreed with the categories and the categorizations of the
critical incidents.
Outcomes ◊ 27
2.2. Vignette Collection
Fifteen of the collected critical incidents were explored in detail during the
focus-group interviews. As presented in our IO1 report (Weber & Garcia,
2020), the participating practitioners unanimously agreed on the importance
of diverse social-emotional competences to address situations like these. In
the following, we present them in the style of vignettes. We developed these
vignettes for three purposes: First, to analyse the critical incidents in a
common style. Secondly, as a basis for our survey. Third, to employ the
vignettes for teaching and reflection purposes in working with career
practitioners. Below, we present the vignettes in the order of the categories
presented above.
A. Anxious Clients
Giulia’s Thousand Odd Jobs
Giulia (37) is constantly looking for a stable job. She graduated from the
Scientific High School and then enrolled in the Faculty of Physics. Due to
problems in passing exams, she abandoned her studies three exams away
from graduation. Since then she has always been busy, lending herself to any
job, even of little importance, because she wanted to become independent.
During an orientation counselling session with Maria Dolores, Giulia admits
that she always has a sense of inadequacy and incompleteness. She cannot
identify her professional life plan. She also confesses that many of her jobs
have ended because of her rebellious and aggressive character.
Rossella Suffers from Panic Attacks
Rossella, an 18-year-old girl in the last year of high school, stands out at
school and has excellent marks in all subjects. With the final exams coming
up, she is very anxious now. In fear of the oral exams, she suffers from panic
attacks and nightmares. During an orientation interview on her choice of a
university, Rossella tells Marirosa that she cannot decide about her future,
because all she can think about his how she needs to complete the final
exams with the best possible grade.
B. Clients Whose Caregivers Stand in Their Way
Laura and Sports – Passion or Career?
Monica, a school counsellor, welcomes Laura (14, 8th grade) and her parent.
Laura would like to become a professional volleyball player. She wants to
continue her studies at the Sports High School and passed an aptitude test.
Her parents, who initially supported the idea, now think that Laura should
visit one of the best high schools in the city to take foreign language classes,
28 ◊ Outcomes
instead. Laura is good at foreign languages, and her parents fear that the
Sports High School will not promote Laura’s academic learning. The decision
what school Laura will attend needs to be made immediately. Laura and her
parents vehemently oppose each other.
Maria the Quarrelsome Mother
Helen, a student, attends a career counselling program together with her
mother, Maria. Maria is a financial analyst who owns her own company. She
wants Helen to study economics so that Helen will be able to take over the
company in the future. When Robert, the counsellor announces that Helen
expressed her interest in becoming a teacher in a career interest
questionnaire, Maria gets upset and starts yelling at Robert. She claims that
career questionnaire is invalid because she knows her daughter better than
anyone else and she knows best what suits her daughter.
Olga Is Not Permitted to Pursue Her Dream
Olga’s parents are famous doctors. She wants to become an artist, but her
parents do not accept this career pathway for her. There are many conflicts in
the family for this reason. In a career counselling session, both Olga and her
parents try to win Roman for their side of the conflict. They try to interpret
everything that Roman says as proof that the other side is wrong and attack
each other verbally.
C. Clients Facing Hopelessness (Severe Hindrances)
Haldi the Asylum Seeker
Haldi needs to find a job in the host country to convince local authorities to
grant him asylum. He had tried to get a job repeatedly but has failed so far,
which is why he is becoming increasingly desperate. In Despina’s counselling
session, he expresses anger, disappointment, and lack of trust towards
employers who do not want to employ migrants in their businesses. He feels
that everyone in the country is hostile and prejudiced against him as a
migrant.
Jani Will Only Accept One Option
Jani has only one career choice: He wants to become a commercial airplane
pilot. He has been studying in the field but has dropped out of school twice.
Before meeting with Jukka, he consulted several other guidance professionals.
When Jukka offers him to get acquainted with a new private school, Jani is
happy at first, but then cancels several visits to the school in the last minute.
Outcomes ◊ 29
D. Frustrated and Aggressive Clients
Alberto Loses His Temper
Alberto is an unemployed job seeker attending a personal meeting with José
showing signs of alcoholism. Alberto and José, the career counsellor, know
each other from various contexts and occasions. When José asks Alberto for
his identity card, Alberto feels offended and loses his temper. He yells at José
and suggests that it is José’s fault that he does not have a job yet.
Filipe the Agitator
Christina is facilitating a session on job search practices for more than 100
people from different educational and professional backgrounds. Throughout
the session, Christina is frequently interrupted by Filipe who appears to have
an opinion on every topic and always ends up blaming either the government,
the political system, or the big capitalist companies. Filipe’s seemingly
innocent remarks provoke approving and disapproving responses from the
rest of the group, leading to chatter among people and additional public
remarks. For Christina, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the focus
of the session and cover all contents in time.
Louis Is Attacked Personally
Louis, a career counsellor, regularly organizes forums where employers
present their professional field. Louis first interviews the employers. Later,
participants can ask questions. At the start of a forum with 20 participants,
Louis has just started interviewing the managing director of a large company
from the region. The guest likes to talk and starts to digress from the topic,
so that Louis interrupts him after a minute with a question that leads back to
employment opportunities. At this moment, one of the participants of the
forum suddenly shouts at Louis, telling him to “shut up” and let the guest
speak.
E. Clients who Suffer from Abuse or Neglect
Augusta’s Mother Realizes the Abuse
In a career counselling session with Augusta (a teenage girl), her 40-year-old
mother suddenly realizes that her high standards concerning the learning and
perfect behaviour of her daughter were emotionally abusive. The mother was
always unhappy with the results of the girl and with her behaviours,
relationships, spare time activities, and hobbies. Augusta also complains that
her mother's boyfriend behaved inappropriately by groping Augusta and
making jokes with sexual content.
30 ◊ Outcomes
Bill the Angry Teenager
Bill, a 16-year-old boy, is an excellent student. Despite his hard efforts, he
never receives any approval from his parents, especially not from his mother.
He feels that they are never satisfied with his work and achievements, while
they show great admiration for his little brother. Now, in Olivia’s career
counselling session, Bill is not interested in discussing his personal career-
related needs and interests. His primary interest is to make a choice that will
hurt and upset his parents and make them feel powerless.
Ema the Runaway Teenager
Ema (13 years old, adopted) visits the 7th grade. Ema is very introverted and
shows symptoms of a possible depression. Lately, she has been absent from
school regularly and has run away from home several times. She has gained a
lot of weight and lacks a motivation to learn. Her adoptive mother does not
accept Ema’s growing need for freedom and tries to control her daughter. In a
career counselling session, Ema’s mother interrupts the session repeatedly
and will not collaborate with Georgina, the counsellor.
G. Clients Who Are Uninterested or Who Reject Support
Pekka is Like Teflon
Pekka is having some problems with the progress of his studies, which is why
he comes to see Jaana, a school counsellor, several times. Jaana perceives
Pekka as being somewhat arrogant towards the school world and lacking
motivation. He appears to be a social and open person, but it is difficult to get
a hold of him in terms of discussing the reasons behind the issues with his
studies. He tends to cover up his problems and is not willing to give Jaana any
answers to why-questions. Instead, he states that he can handle the issue
himself, but eventually does nothing about it.
Tiina Does Not Get Interested in Anything
Tiina is a student in need of special support. In a study planning discussion
involving Ari (the counsellor), Tiina, and her parents, Tiina shows no interest
in any sort of education or vocation. Nothing seems to motivate her. It is also
extremely hard to identify any of her strengths. At the same time, her parents
expect Ari to solve the problem.
Outcomes ◊ 31
2.3 Sample of the Survey
Out of 1.664 people who opened the survey, 518 persons completed it by
October 31, 2020. 20 responses were omitted due to eight or more missing
values or because 80% or more of the responses to the vignettes were equal,
suggesting nonserious answering behavior. Another 21 respondents indicated
that they do not practice career guidance and counselling at all, so we also
omitted them from the analysis, leading to a final sample of 477 responses.
Table 2
Sample Characteristics
n (%)
Practice of career guidance and counselling
Full professional
Not main profession
317 (66.5%)
160 (33.5%)
Gender
Female
Male
Other gender
396 (83.0.%)
78 (16.4%)
3 (0.6%)
Training in career guidance and counselling
Bachelor’s degree
Master’s degree
Postgraduate diploma
Training though a professional association
Training through a private institute
No training
89 (18.7%)
163 (34.2%)
127 (26.6%)
71 (14.9%)
64 (13.4%)
35 (7.3%)
Country of practice
Finland
Greece
Germany
Italy
Ireland
Portugal
Romania
Switzerland
39 (8.2%)
41 (8.6%)
101 (21.2%)
32 (6.7%)
31 (6.5%)
44 (9.2%)
91 (19.1%)
28 (5.9%)
Order of survey completion
Randomly subjected to vignettes first
Randomly subjected to training interests/priorities
first
238 (49.9%)
239 (50.1%)
Note. Some respondents practice in several countries or have obtained sev-
eral degrees in career guidance and counselling.
32 ◊ Outcomes
Basic information about the sample is presented in Table 2. Overall, people
from 27 countries participated in the survey. In Table 2, we only present
numbers for countries where more than 20 career practitioners participated.
Countries with fewer than 20 respondents were Australia, Austria, Bahrain,
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, the Faroe Islands, France,
Hungary, Iceland, Jordan, Kosovo, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden, Uganda,
the United Kingdom, and the USA.
2.4 Personal Interest in Social-Emotional Training
Table 3 presents the average training interests of respondents on a scale from
1 (not interested) to 5 (extremely interested). Statistical tests found no
significant difference between the average interest in the five training clusters
when looking at the answers of all respondents. Moreover, there was no
significant difference between the interests of respondents who viewed the
critical incidents first (primed: yes) in comparison to the respondents who
only evaluated the critical incidents after expressing their interests. This is an
important finding, because it indicates that respondents’ judgments about
their training interests were not susceptible to the portrayal of challenging
situations. This probably indicates that practitioners have these kinds of
practical challenges in mind when evaluating the relevance of social-emotional
Table 3
Training Interests
Cluster All Primed Country
Yes No FI EL DE IE IT PT RO CH
1. Empathy 3.7
(1.1)
3.7
(1.1)
3.7
(1.1)
3.7
(0.9)
4.2*
(0.8)
3.2**
(1.0)
4.1
(1.0)
4.2*
(0.8)
4.1
(1.0)
3.9
(1.0)
3.0**
(1.1)
2. Emotion
Manage-
4.1
(0.9)
4.1
(0.9)
4.1
(0.9)
3.8
(0.9)
4.2
(0.9)
3.7**
(0.9)
4.4
(0.9)
4.3
(0.7)
4.5*
(0.8)
4.3*
(0.7)
3.6*
(1.0)
3. Diversity
Manage-
3.9
(0.9)
3.9
(0.9)
3.9
(0.9)
3.9
(0.8)
4.1
(0.8)
3.5**
(1.0)
4.3
(0.9)
4.3
(1.0)
4.3*
(0.7)
3.9
(1.0)
3.5
(0.7)
4. Active
Listening
3.8
(1.0)
3.9
(1.0)
3.8
(1.0)
4.1
(0.9)
3.9
(0.9)
3.5**
(1.0)
3.8
(1.1)
4.2
(0.8)
4.1
(1.0)
4.0
(1.0)
3.3
(1.2)
5. Coopera-
tion
4.0
(0.9)
4.0
(0.9)
4.0
(0.9)
3.9
(0.8)
4.0
(0.9)
3.8
(1.0)
4.3
(0.8)
4.2
(0.8)
4.3*
(0.8)
4.3*
(0.8)
3.3**
(1.2)
Overall 3.9
(0.8)
3.9
(0.7)
3.9
(0.8)
3.9
(0.6)
4.1
(0.6)
3.5**
(0.8)
4.2
(0.7)
4.2*
(0.5)
4.2*
(0.7)
4.1*
(0.7)
3.3**
(0.8)
Note. Significance levels for T-test (2-tailed): * p < .01; ** p < .001.
FI=Finland; EL=Greece; DE=Germany; IE=Ireland; IT=Italy; PT=Portugal; RO=Romania;
CH=Switzerland.
Outcomes ◊ 33
competence training for themselves. Statistically significant differences
between countries are highlighted. For example, Greek respondents
expressed an above-average interest in empathy training and Swiss
respondents expressed a lower interest in social-emotional competence
training overall.
2.5 Training Needs of Fellow Practitioners
When asked, which two training priorities they would set for fellow
practitioners from their country, all five clusters were named frequently (Table
4). Emotion management was named significantly more often than 40% of
the time, signifying a larger perceived need. Empathy was named significantly
less often than 40% of the time. Overall, all training clusters were prioritized
quite frequently though, indicating that career practitioners believe that all
five domains of social-emotional competence are important for the practice
and that training is required. This suggests that relevant training ought to be
included in basic qualification programs and offered in the form of further
education. Whether people evaluated the vignettes before answering this
question or not (primed: yes/no) had no significant effect on their priorities.
As for the training interests, this signifies that training priorities were not
influenced by biased representations of the practice.
Statistically significant differences between countries are highlighted. For
example, Irish and Romanian respondents expressed a high need for emotion
-management training, while Swiss respondents rarely named empathy as a
training priority but expressed a high demand for diversity-management
Table 4
Clusters named as one of two training priorities (% respondents)
Cluster All Primed Country
Yes No FI EL DE IE IT PT RO CH
1. Empathy 35* 32 38 39 46 45* 45 34 36 20** 14*
2. Emotion Mgmt 50** 49 50 31* 42 41* 71* 56 57 70** 36
3. Diversity Mgmt 37 40 35 46 37 31 32 41 34 25** 64**
4. Active Listening 39 41 38 46 37 46 16** 41 34 30* 46
5. Cooperation 38 37 39 39 39 38 36 28 39 54** 36
n 477 238 239 39 41 101 31 32 44 91 28
Note. Significance levels for Pearson Chi-Square test (2-sided): *p < .05; ** p < .01.
Mgmt=Management.
34 ◊ Outcomes
competences. Regarding the heightened need for emotional management
competences overall, it is worth mentioning that Finnish, German, Greek, and
Swiss practitioners did not signify an overproportionate need for this type of
training. This signifies that training priorities ought to be set at the national,
or even at the local/organizational level. We discuss country differences in
Section 4.
Thirty-eight respondents (8%) commented on their choice of priorities for the
training needs of fellow practitioners. In 15 cases, they argued for the
priorities that they gave. For example, a Finnish practitioner suggested that
listening skills were most important, pointing to the difficulty of giving people
space and tolerating silence, instead of lecturing them. A German practitioner
suggested that diversity management ought to have the highest priority
because of a high influx of migrants and a high number of intercultural
misunderstandings in practice. A Greek respondent remarked that “many
professionals have a lack of empathy and active listening skills” and
suggested that these competences were needed as a basis for subsequent
training in the other areas. An Italian respondent chose to prioritize emotion
management and diversity management because she felt that most
counsellors were empathic and capable of active listening, whereas some
were intolerant and too emotional. A Romanian practitioner, who prioritized
diversity management and cooperation training, remarked that “theory and
practice were becoming more and more distant.”
In 11 cases, respondents argued that training in all five clusters of social-
emotional competence was important. For example, a Portuguese practitioner
stated that all topics presented were “fundamental” and that it was difficult to
choose among them. A Swiss respondent remarked that all five clusters were
already part of basic training in Switzerland. In another 11 cases, respondents
expressed other training needs, e.g., being aware of one’s own limits, labour-
market knowledge, or group moderation.
A recurring theme was that the empathy cluster was viewed as basic
requirement for the practice. Perceptions were remarkably different here,
though. Whereas some respondents suggested that all of the practitioners
they knew were already empathic and good listeners, and that people only
entered the profession because they were already equipped with empathy
(and other social-emotional competences), others suggested that more
needed to be done to keep un-empathic people from entering the practice, or
that there was a great need for empathy training. In two cases, doubts were
raised at the possibility of training an un-empathic person to become
empathic within only two days of training. In another three cases,
respondents suggested that active listening depended on a person’s empathy,
and/or suggested that the two clusters ought to be combined.
Outcomes ◊ 35
2.6 Relevance and Frequency of the Critical Incidents
All critical incidents were generally viewed as relevant for the practice of
career guidance and counselling across European countries, i.e., the average
relevance ratings were above a value of 5 (agree to some extent) for all six
vignettes. Table 5 presents the mean relevance that was attributed to the
critical incidents. Mean ratings significantly below 5 were only found for the
Irish respondents, e.g., in view of a client who does not appear to be
interested in any career. However, even in this case, respondents tended to
agree that all practitioners ought to be ready to deal with this sort of
situation.
Our question concerning the rareness of the scenarios concerns the question,
how likely it is for a career practitioner to be confronted with a certain
situation. Arguably, it hardly makes sense to train professionals to deal with
situations that will probably never occur – unless it is absolutely vital that
they will be able to respond to such a situation correctly (e.g., schoolteachers
should immediately know what to do in the event of a fire, although a fire will
hopefully never occur). None of the critical incidents we presented to our
respondents were life-threatening though, so we expected respondents to
disagree to some extent (average rating below 3) that these kinds of incidents
were rare. As Table 6 shows, this was the case for only one of the vignettes,
suggesting that critical incidents were less frequent than we had expected.
However, all ratings were significantly below a score of 4 (neither agree nor
disagree), suggesting that none of the vignettes portrayed a situation that
was considered to be unlikely.
Table 5
Relevance of the Critical Incidents (Means)
Cluster All Country
FI EL DE IE IT PT RO CH
Phillip the Agitator 5.4**
(1.4)
5.2
(1.3)
5.9
(1.1)
5.3
(1.5)
4.9
(1.4)
6.4**
(1.0)
5.5
(1.4)
5.7
(1.3)
5.7
(1.6)
Emma the Runaway
Teenager
5.4**
(1.4)
5.6
(1.1)
5.3
(1.7)
5.4
(1.6)
4.8
(1.2)
5.8
(1.2)
5.2
(1.6)
5.5
(1.4)
6.1
(0.9)
Haldi the Desperate
Migrant
5.5**
(1.3)
5.8
(1.2)
5.7
(1.3)
5.7
(1.5)
5.0
(1.2)
6.1
(0.9)
5.4
(1.6)
5.3
(1.4)
5.9
(0.9)
Rosie Suffers from
Panic Attacks
5.8**
(1.3)
6.0
(1.3)
5.8
(1.2)
6.0
(1.1)
5.4
(1.4)
6.1
(1.4)
5.3*
(1.3)
5.9
(1.2)
6.0
(1.3)
Tim Does Not Get
Interested in Anything
5.5**
(1.5)
5.7
(1.1)
5.8
(1.5)
5.6
(1.6)
4.7*
(1.5)
5.9
(1.2)
5.2
(1.5)
5.5
(1.5)
6.3*
(0.8)
Mary the Quarrelsome
Mother
5.9**
(1.2)
6.2
(0.8)
6.3
(0.9)
6.0
(1.3)
5.4
(1.3)
6.4
(0.8)
5.1**
(1.4)
5.9
(1.3)
6.3
(0.9)
Note. Significance levels for T-test (2-sided): * p < .01; ** p < .001.
36 ◊ Outcomes
The frequency of the depicted challenges seems to vary between the
countries though – at least when looking at the experiences of our
respondents: A situation, where a large-group activity is interrupted by a
participant (“Phillip”) was found to be quite regular in Portugal and Italy but
relatively rare in Finland and Switzerland. Finnish and Swiss colleagues were
rarely confronted with situations, where a parent (“Mary”) cannot accept her
offspring’s career choice, while this situation appeared to be more frequent in
Greece and Portugal.
A question of interest for us was to see, whether the perceived relevance and
frequency of the different scenarios had an impact on practitioners’ training
interests. To analyze this connection, we checked for correlations between the
relevance and frequency ascribed to single critical incidents and individual
training interests. We only report results here, where the correlations were
significant at the .01 level:
First, the more frequently participants’ experienced situations similar to
“Phillip the Agitator”, the greater their interests were in emotional-
management and empathy training. At the same time, they placed a higher
priority on diversity-management training for fellow practitioners, the more
frequently they dealt with clients like “Phillip”. The more relevant practitioners
found situations like “Phillip the Agitator” for the practice of career guidance
and counselling, the greater their interest was in all social-emotional
competence clusters. To us, this suggest that career professionals dealing
with the moderation of large groups may experience a greater need for social-
emotional competences, especially emotional management, than others.
Table 6
Rareness of the Critical Incidents (Means)
Cluster All Country
FI EL DE IE IT PT RO CH
Phillip the Agitator 3.3*
(1.7)
4.4**
(1.6)
2.8
(1.4)
3.6
(1.8)
2.9
(1.5)
2.2**
(1.1)
2.0**
(1.3)
3.1
(1.4)
4.9**
(1.7)
Emma the Runaway
Teenager
3.3**
(1.6)
3.6
(1.4)
2.9
(1.5)
3.4
(1.6)
3.2
(1.4)
3.0
(1.5)
2.5**
(1.4)
3.2
(1.4)
4.2*
(1.8)
Haldi the Desperate
Migrant
3.2
(1.6)
3.7
(1.5)
2.7
(1.4)
2.8*
(1.6)
2.7
(1.2)
2.6
(1.5)
2.6
(1.4)
4.0**
(1.6)
3.3
(1.7)
Rosie Suffers from Panic
Attacks
2.7**
(1.6)
2.5
(1.2)
2.2
(1.0)
2.8
(1.5)
1.9*
(1.3)
2.7
(1.6)
2.7
(1.6)
2.7
(1.5)
3.4
(1.7)
Tim Does Not Get
Interested in Anything
3.1
(1.6)
3.9
(1.6)
2.5
(1.2)
3.0
(1.8)
3.0
(1.4)
2.7
(1.4)
2.3*
(1.2)
3.1
(1.5)
3.2
(1.8)
Mary the Quarrelsome
Mother
3.2*
(1.8)
4.4**
(1.7)
2.2**
(1.4)
3.5
(1.8)
2.8
(1.4)
2.8
(1.6)
2.4*
(1.3)
2.8
(1.6)
4.8**
(1.6)
Note. Significance levels for T-test (2-sided): * p < .01; ** p < .001.
Outcomes ◊ 37
Secondly, the more frequently respondents dealt with situations like “Tim
Does Not Get Interested in Anything” and “Mary the Quarrelsome Mother”,
the greater their interest in emotional-management competences were. The
more often respondents experienced situations like “Mary the Quarrelsome
Mother”, the more frequently they also suggested emotional-management
training as a key need of fellow practitioners. In both scenarios, clients’
parents complicate career counselling sessions, which could be the common
denominator here – suggesting that practitioners who deal with junior clients
may be subjected to greater stress. The more frequently respondents dealt
with clients like “Emma the Runaway Teenager”, the greater the emphasis
that they put on the need of fellow practitioners for active-listening
competences.
2.7 Perceived Challenge of the Critical Incidents
Overall, the different critical incidents were viewed as moderately challenging
by the respondents, with few significant differences between countries (Table
7). We found few significant differences between countries, other than that
Swiss respondents tended to be more confident. An interesting finding was
that respondents with post-graduate certificates felt less challenged than
respondents with other/no qualifications (t = 3.2, p = .001). We had
respondents with post-graduate certificates from many countries, so this
effect is probably not based on training in a certain country. Postgraduate
training in career guidance and counselling is often combines a practical
orientation (including internships, reflection on practice, etc.) with a strong
theoretical and empirical knowledge foundation. Therefore, we believe that
this finding may be due to a higher quality of learning.
Table 7
Perceived Challenge of the Critical Incidents (Means)
Cluster All Primed Country
Yes No FI EL DE IE IT PT RO CH
Phillip 4.5
(1.6)
4.3
(1.6)
4.6
(1.5)
4.4
(1.5)
4.5
(1.4)
4.8
(1.5)
4.3
(1.5)
4.2
(1.8)
4.8
(1.7)
4.0*
(1.6)
4.4
(1.8)
Emma 4.4
(1.5)
4.3
(1.6)
4.4
(1.5)
4.2
(1.5)
4.5
(1.4)
4.6
(1.5)
3.9
(1.4)
4.9
(1.6)
4.8
(1.6)
4.1
(1.7)
3.8
(1.6)
Haldi 4.3
(1.5)
4.2
(1.5)
4.4
(1.5)
4.0
(1.8)
4.6
(1.3)
4.3
(1.6)
4.0
(1.5)
4.5
(1.6)
4.7
(1.5)
4.1
(1.4)
3.9
(1.1)
Rosie 3.8
(1.7)
3.9
(1.7)
3.8
(1.6)
3.9
(1.8)
4.3
(1.7)
3.9
(1.6)
3.0*
(1.4)
3.8
(1.8)
4.4
(1.6)
3.7
(1.7)
2.6**
(1.2)
Tim 4.4
(1.6)
4.3
(1.6)
4.4
(1.5)
4.3
(1.6)
4.5
(1.3)
4.4
(1.6)
3.7
(1.5)
4.6
(1.7)
4.8
(1.5)
4.3
(1.8)
3.4*
(1.6)
Mary 4.1
(1.6)
4.1
(1.5)
4.1
(1.6)
3.8
(1.6)
4.2
(1.5)
4.0
(1.6)
3.7
(1.3)
4.4
(1.5)
4.7
(1.5)
4.0
(1.7)
3.5
(1.5)
Overall 4.2
(1.1)
4.1
(1.1)
4.3
(1.1)
4.1
(1.3)
4.4
(0.9)
4.3
(1.1)
3.8
(0.8)
4.4
(1.4)
4.6
(1.1)
4.0
(1.2)
3.5*
(0.9)
Note. Significance levels (2-tailed): * p < .01; ** p < .001.
38 ◊ Outcomes
This being said, we only found a small correlation between the perceived
difficulty of the critical incidents and respondents’ training interests.
Respondents who evaluated the vignettes before indicating their training
interests only had a minor tendency to express larger training interests, if
they found the situations relatively challenging (r = .14, p = .035). A closer
look suggested that only interests in two sets of competences were
heightened among “primed” respondents: empathy and active listening.
This minor influence also explains why we did not find a significant difference
between the training interests and the expressed training needs between the
respondents, depending on whether they viewed the vignettes before being
asked about their interests or not. A likely explanation is that the perceived
challenge of the vignettes is not a good indicator of respondents’ actual social
-emotional competence. We expect that studies that employ more objective
tests of practitioners’ social-emotional competences would find a stronger
correlation between competence and expressed training interests (and
needs).
2.8 Findings from the Corroborative Interviews
In 2022, we conducted a series of short online interviews with practitioners to
corroborate our results. Interviewees were asked, (1) how important they
found social and emotional competences in their practice, and (2) how social-
emotional competences influenced the effectiveness of career guidance and
counselling. Overall, we conducted 53 interviews across all partner countries,
whereby the NICE Foundation contacted practitioners internationally,
including people from Bulgaria and the Netherlands, for instance. Through a
content analysis, we identified four general themes that surfaced in these
interviews repeatedly.
Social-emotional competences as the foundation of career support
Many practitioners emphasized that social and emotional competences were
so central to their practice that they constituted core abilities, without which
they could not provide professional support at all.
“Social-emotional competences enable us to understand the views of our
clients, to be effective and be able to keep our calmness even if we need
to face difficult situations. Empathy is among the most important skills of
a counsellor, without which s/he cannot be an effective and authentic
counsellor.” (Practitioner from Greece)
“I consider social-emotional skills very important because they are the
ones that help me control how I feel and make my work much more
Outcomes ◊ 39
effective. I need to help the client with his emotions and guiding him, so
I have to get to know myself to be able to help others. Social-emotional
skills are the basis of my work. I can't do anything if I don't master and
know them.” (Practitioner from Portugal)
Confronted with the question, whether social and emotional competences
could lead to problematic outcomes, a Canadian professor of counselling
psychology stated that this idea...
“reflects … a lack of understanding of how these competences can be
effectively used and perhaps an assumption that the main goal of their
work is job placement … information giving … or guidance (assessment
followed by providing occupational options) rather than career
counselling, which allows a broader view and takes into account life
context, short- and longer-term goals.”
Providing a positive environment and building trust
A related theme emerged in various statements that emphasized how social
and emotional competences were needed for career practitioners to establish
a positive, trustful environment in their work with clients—not only to
understand them and be able to focus on them. This reemphasizes how
fundamental social and emotional competences are for the practice of career
guidance and counselling.
“The counsellor has the obligation to master the area of the client's
emotions and make sure to build a professional relationship where
emotions are a resource and not an obstacle. In particular, the use of
social-emotional skills strengthens the relationship with the client, it
becomes a space for mutual sharing and growth. They allow an increase
in users' self-esteem and a decrease in the number of
conflicts.” (Practitioner from Italy)
“Social and emotional competences are highly important to perform as a
guidance counsellor so as to be able to promote a positive environment
that enhances students’ ability to properly manage the social/emotional
demands of their lives as well as develop positive mindsets for career
planning." (Practitioner from Greece)
Maintaining one’s own mental health
Several practitioners also emphasized the relevance of social and emotional
competences in maintaining their personal mental health, coping with
challenging clients, and stress.
40 ◊ Outcomes
“There are several complicated life experiences reported by clients as
well as customers with more complicated temperaments and we should
know how to deal with these situations. If we can’t handle this, then
we're going to have problems and we're not going to be able to do our
jobs.” (Practitioner from Portugal)
“Skills needed for healthy social and emotional development of a school
counsellor must include self-esteem, self-confidence, friend-making skills,
self-control, persistence, problem solving, self-sufficiency, focus,
patience, good communication skills, empathy, and knowing right from
wrong. All these skills play a critical role in a counsellor’s overall
wellbeing.” (Practitioner from Romania)
Modelling and promoting social-emotional competences
Finally, a large number of practitioners emphasized that career practitioners
are often challenged with the need to support their clients’ development of
social and emotional competences, e.g., the ability to motivate themselves,
take others’ perspectives, or build better relationships. The key argument
here is that career practitioners are incapable of supporting the development
of abilities, which they have not mastered themselves.
“Social and emotional competencies, such as self-regulation, strong
coping and problem-solving skills, and positive social connections
strengthen the resilience of clients. I can add the fact that a school
counsellor is a role model for students. Surrounding children with positive
role models and showing appropriate ways to express emotions - by
using words and actions that are constructive and respectful -, children
will mimic this behaviour in their daily life.” (Practitioner from Romania)
“Leading research shows that our emotions and thoughts contribute to
directing and maintaining attention to relevant information in the
environment, to decision making and to learning. And social-emotional
and cognitive skills need to be developed simultaneously so that
adolescents and children can cope with the complex situations they
encounter in everyday life. Emotional development is closely related to
brain development, both of which are a result of the child's and
adolescent's personal life experience. Thus, the emotional health of
children, adolescents and adults is closely related to the social and
emotional characteristics of their environment.” (Practitioner from
Romania)
“We can't provide advice on clients’ social and emotional competences if
we don't have these same competences well developed within
ourselves.” (Practitioner from Brazil)
Training Needs ◊ 41
3. Training Needs
3.1. Limitations
The sample of practitioners in our study represents a convenience sample.
Most of this sample was collected through email-based invitations at the
national level. Project partners were often able to draw on pre-existing
mailing lists of practitioners, e.g., in the case of Romania, where one partner
organisation also acts as the national Euroguidance coordinator. In Germany,
we gained the support of the national guidance forum nfb and the German
guidance association dvb, who promoted the survey through their newsletters
and mailing lists. Additionally, several partners used social media like EPALE,
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to advertise the survey. The NICE Foundation
also tried to gain support from national associations in other English- and
German-speaking countries, where no project partners were active. These
efforts were successful in the cases of Ireland, where both Euroguidance and
the National Centre for Guidance in Education supported the survey, as well
as in Switzerland, where the guidance association profunda suisse promoted
our efforts. At the European and international level, the survey was promoted
through the CEDEFOP CareersNet, the European Doctoral Programme in
Career Guidance and Counselling (ECADOC), the European Society for
Vocational Designing and Career Counseling (ESVDC), the GIZ Career
Guidance Community of Practice, the IAAP Counseling Division, the Network
for Innovation in Career Guidance and Counselling (NICE), and the
international Social Emotional Learning & Career Development Project.
As these efforts show, we tried to recruit survey respondents in numerous
ways, whereby our ambition was to recruit at least 40 respondents from each
partner country (80 in Germany and Romania) and at least 350 respondents
overall. We met these numbers in absolute terms, i.e., before excluding non-
practitioners in Italy and Finland, which provided the statistical power for us
to conduct inferential statistical tests. However, it must be noted, our sample
is far from representative. Members of certain sub-domains of career
guidance and counselling will certainly be over-/under-represented in our
samples, e.g., school guidance counsellors, public employment counsellors,
etc. Therefore, we do not speak of findings for German, Greek, Italian career
practitioners per se, but only of findings for the people in our sample. We also
urge anybody working with this data to refrain from generalizing our findings.
42 ◊ Training Needs
3.2. General Observations
This being said, we believe that a couple of general findings can be deduced
from the outcomes of our survey. The most important finding from our
survey is surely that our respondents were – on average – “very
interested” in all five clusters of social-emotional competence training
(M = 3.9, SD = 0.8) and named all five of them as training needs for
fellow practitioners relatively often. Thinking of the large emphasis that
the humanistic tradition of counselling places on empathy (e.g., Rogers,
1959) and the prominence that coaching places on active listening, we were
somewhat surprised that practitioners would be very interested in these two
training clusters. We had expected that most practitioners would have
received extensive training on empathy and active listening. Overall, we do
not find a lower demand for these competences than for the other clusters,
though. This suggests that most training programs still do not include
empathy and active-listening training to the degree that satisfies practitioner
needs. A closer look at respondents’ qualifications showed that respondents
with no qualifications in career guidance and counselling expressed a larger
training interest in social-emotional training (M = 4.2) than respondents with
some sort of qualification (M = 3.9, t = -3.2, p = .003). This suggests that
targeted qualification programs satisfy this interest to some extent – yet only
to a small degree, since we see a strong interest overall.
Of course, people with an interest in social-emotional competences may be
over-represented in our sample, since we advertised the survey with
reference to social-emotional competences. However, with a high level of
agreement among 477 respondents, we can expect that relevant courses will
attract an acceptable number of participants. Therefore, we can confidently
say that it makes sense for the STRENGTh project to develop and disseminate
innovative training modules for all five clusters of social-emotional
competences (IO3). Since no type of qualification reduced respondents’
general interests, we recommend that these modules ought to also be
integrated in existing degree programs (initial qualifications).
A look at personal characteristics of respondents produced another important
finding concerning possible influences on people’s training interests. Male
respondents indicated a smaller interest in social-emotional competence
training (M = 3.7) than female respondents (M = 3.9, t = 2.8, p = .007). The
smaller interest of male respondents in relevant training deserves further
scrutiny. A closer look shows that male respondents were not less interested
in empathy skills and active-listening skills than female colleagues. Instead,
males expressed smaller interests in emotional management skills, diversity
management skills, and cooperation skills. Empathy skills are known to be a
domain where gender stereotypes typically lead to different self-assessments
Training Needs ◊ 43
(Baez et al., 2017). That we do not find a discrepancy here, suggests that we
are dealing with another type of gender effect: female colleagues’ larger
demand for emotional management, diversity management, and cooperation
skills may be based on being exposed to less respectful behavior in practice,
on clients who question their reasoning because they are women, etc. For
comparison, a study found that female physicians’ competence was frequently
questioned in Switzerland, if they did not communicate in a patient-centered
way, whereas male physicians were accepted as authority figures even if their
communication was not patient-centered (Schmid Mast et al., 2004). Since
the majority of the career workforce is composed of women, the possible
existence of increased pressures on female practitioners signposts a further
need for relevant training offers: Social-emotional competence training
for career practitioners may need to focus explicitly on constructive
ways of establishing one’s authority as a female professional.
3.3. Country-Specific Observations
In this section, we look at specific findings for the partner countries of the
STRENGTh project: Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Romania.
We do not discuss the specific findings for Ireland and Switzerland, because
no partners from these countries were involved on our team.
Finland: Finnish respondents expressed a significantly lower need for
emotion management training than respondents from other countries – while
their personal interest in this competence domain was not significantly lower
than for colleagues from other countries. A possible explanation is that peer
mentoring and intervision have been established in Finland for more than a
decade. Additionally, teamwork, e.g., in pairs, is common in the career
practice. For these reasons, practitioners are used to share information with
each other, including the disclosure of emotional situations. Moreover,
emotional management in explicitly included in the curricula of relevant
training programs. Finnish respondents also tended to find two of the critical
incidents rather uncommon, i.e., “Phillip the Agitator” and “Mary the
Quarrelsome Mother”. In Finland, career professionals rarely work with large
groups as in the Phillip scenario, and focus on working with individuals or in
small or medium-sized groups.
Germany: In Germany, we find a relatively weak interest in social-emotional
training overall. This could indicate that some practitioners in our sample are
already satisfied with the training that they have received. On the other hand,
it could also indicate a weaker belief in the relevance of social-emotional
competences for practice. A look at the findings from another recent survey
among German practitioners (Kleeberg, 2020) may help to interpret our
44 ◊ Training Needs
results. Kleeberg (2020) looked at competences, skills, and knowledge that
were in relatively high demand, but where practitioners felt somewhat
insecure. Among the top-5 developmental needs that were expressed in this
way (regarding client relationships and communication), were mindfulness,
intercultural competence, and being able to deal with critical counselling
situations. Each of these competence needs was expressed by about 30% of
respondents. Mindfulness corresponds with our emotional-management
cluster, intercultural competence is part of our diversity-management cluster
and being able to deal with critical counselling situations can easily be
associated with the need for conflict-management competences (cooperation
cluster) and emotional management. In view of Kleeberg’s findings, there
appears to be a sufficiently large need for social-emotional competence
training in Germany – even if some practitioners may not be interests (for
whatever reason). On another note, the scenario “Haldi the Desperate
Migrant” was found to be more frequent in Germany than in many other
countries: this is probably due to the recent acceptance of relatively many
migrants from countries like Afghanistan and Syria and due to relatively high
work-related migration to Germany from other European countries in the past
years.
Greece: Our Greek respondents expressed an interest and need for empathy
training that was comparatively higher than in other countries. Additionally,
the Mary-scenario was perceived to be more frequent than in other countries
and this can be explained due to the traditional role of Greek family. The role
of the family in children's decisions has always been important in Greece
(Πρεσβέλου & Ρήγα, 2013). Of course, especially in the last years of the crisis,
we see that important family values, such as family relationships and
children's obligations to family and relatives, still apply even to the younger
generation. Greek parents are in many cases overprotective and tend to
interfere in important decisions of children, such as choosing a profession, as
they believe that they will protect them from wrong choices.
Italy: Our Italian respondents expressed one of the largest interests in social-
emotional competence training. Like in the case of Greece, we found a
comparatively large interest in empathy training (unlike in many other
countries). In terms of needs, emotional-management training was the first
choice. Dealing with the scenario “Phillip the Agitator” was considered more
relevant and frequent than in other countries.
Portugal: Our Portuguese respondents expressed one of the largest interests
in social-emotional competence training overall. In terms of needs, emotional-
management training was the first choice. Dealing with the scenarios “Rosie
suffers from panic attacks” and “Mary the quarrelsome mother” were viewed
as relatively less relevant. At the same time, all six of the professional
challenges were viewed as quite frequent in practice.
Training Needs ◊ 45
Romania: Among our Romanian respondents, we found a heightened interest
and need for emotional-management and cooperation training. Usually,
emotional management abilities are part of a psychological initial training of
school counsellors in Romania, but there is not enough emphasis on the
practical exercise of emotional-management skills and on the use of learning
methods based on cooperation. Cooperation is a hot issue as Romanian
practitioners and services in the career guidance area are focused on their
own beneficiaries, somewhat disconnected and not covering transitions from
an educational level to another or from education to the labour market.
Regarding the need of training on cooperation skills, an aspect underlined by
David (2015) is a lack of trust in other people, who are viewed as potential
competitors. This lack of openness is probably a remnant of Romania’s history
as a former communist country (1945-1989) and the way this has affected
thinking and behaviour in the Romanian society.
Needs for empathy training, active-listening training, and diversity
management were relatively low. Related to empathy and active listening, we
assume that this may be due to previous projects that place a strong
emphasis on these skills in Romania. Moreover, training courses have been
replicated at the local level, so a large number of practitioners have been
involved, and some of them also participated in the STRENGTh Survey. Active
listening and communication abilities are addressed in initial and continuous
preparation of Romanian school counsellors/career guidance practitioners
which could explain the relatively low interest in their development.
The low rating of the needs in diversity management might be explained by
the fact that Romania is not a country with many incoming migrants. Romania
is a country that primarily “sends” people abroad (for study, work, or living),
so that the beneficiaries of career guidance and counselling services are rarely
immigrants. Unfortunately, the diversity and intercultural management
cluster’s description did not make an explicit reference to working with people
from subcultures, minority groups, and vulnerable populations, which is why
many respondents may have inferred that this cluster mainly referred to work
with people from other countries.
Interestingly, the “Phillip the Agitator” scenario was viewed as least
challenging in Romania. Qualitative studies should explore the reasons why
this scenario was perceived in this way. Some assumptions can be made
related to the relatively authoritarian culture of Romanian, which implies that
people are socialized to avoid disturbing others and asking questions (which is
perceived as rude). This culture also allows practitioners to make use of
authority when dealing with difficult situations. This does not necessarily
constitute a good practice but is an effective way of handling difficult
situations and restoring peace for the sake of running a big event smoothly.
46 ◊ References
References
Baez, S., Flichtentrei, D., Prats, M., Mastandueno, R., García, A.M., Cetkovich,
M., & Ibáñez, A. (2017). Men, women. . .who cares? A population-based
study on sex differences and gender roles in empathy and moral cognition.
PLoS ONE 12(6), e0179336. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0179336
Berg, J., Osher, D., Same, M.R., Nolan, E., Benson, D., and Jacobs, N.
(2017). Identifying, Defining, and Measuring Social and Emotional Competen-
cies. Final Report. American Institutes for Research. Available at https://
www.air.org/sites/default/files/downloads/report/Identifying-Defining-and-
Measuring-Social-and-Emotional-Competencies-December-2017-rev.pdf
David, D. (2015). Psihologia poporului român. Profilul psihologic al românilor
întro monografie cognitiv-experimentală [The psychology of the Romanian
people. The psychological profile of Romanians in a cognitive-experimental
monograph]. Iași: Polirom.
Kleeberg, C. (2020). Weiterbildungsbedarfe für Beratende in Bildung, Beruf
und Beschäftigung in Deutschland. dvb forum 1, 2020, 48-54.
Littig, B., & Wallace, C. (1997). Possibilities and limits of focus group discus-
sions for social science research. Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS). Available
at https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/22202
NICE (2016). European Competence Standards for the Academic Training of
Career Practitioners. Barbara Budrich.
Rogers, C.R. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Re-
lationships, as Developed in the Client-centered Framework. In S. Koch (Ed.),
A Study of a Science, Study 1, Vol. 3: Formulations of the Person and the So-
cial Context (pp. 184–256). McGraw-Hill.
Schmid Mast, M., Kindlimann, A., & Hornung, R. (2004). How Gender and
Communication Style of Physicians Affect Patient Satisfaction: The Little Dif-
ference. Praxis, 93, 1183-88, doi:10.1024/0369-8394.93.29.1183.
Weber, P. C., & García Murias, R. (2020). Desk Research and Compendium of
Methods on Social-Emotional Competence. STRENGTh - Strengthening The
Socio-Emotional Competences of Career Practitioners. Project report available
at www.projectstrength.net
Πρεσβέλου Κ., Ρήγα Α. (2013). Η οικογένεια στη δυτική Ευρώπη και την
Ελλάδα, 1910-2010: Κοινωνιολογικές, Ιστορικές και Ψυχολογικές διαδρομές,
Πεδίο.
Appendix ◊ 47
Appendix 1: Guidelines for Focus-
Group Interviews
1. Preparation
The workshop should take about 3 to 3.5 hours (90 min for IO2 + 90 min for
IO1). Recruit participants to participate for one-half day (morning or
afternoon). Plan to have a break in the middle of the workshop, so that
participants can refresh themselves. Please provide some drinks and
carbohydrates (fruit, chocolates, etc.) to ensure that participants’ concentra-
tion will remain strong. Ideally, the workshop will take place in a room with
some natural light (as much as the season allows).
In terms of materials, please translate and print consent forms (one per
participant). Also, please translate the PowerPoint presentations, so the
workshops can be offered in your local language. For the identification of
critical incidents, you will need a flipchart, a whiteboard or something similar.
For the group work, you can either print and distribute small paper forms for
participants, or you can ask them to work on larger flipchart papers. The
room should be set up in a ‘creative’ way, ideally. Ideally, there will be
‘islands’ of tables with chairs around them, which allow for work in small
groups.
2. Introduction
Please use the PowerPoint presentation (translated into your local language)
to inform the participants on the purpose of the STRENGTh project and the
goals of the workshop. Stress that we are welcoming them as experts on the
practice of career guidance and counselling and that we greatly value their
practical experience and want to learn from them.
To be clear about what is included when we speak about career guidance and
counselling, you can shortly present the NICE Professionals Roles. The basic
message is that career support includes several roles and tasks and is not
confined to “counselling only”, for example. Give everybody an opportunity to
present themselves to the others shortly, if people don’t know each other yet.
A helpful method to get short self-presentations is to lead by good example
and only say 1-2 sentences about oneself and one’s work before handing over
to the next person.
Share the information from the consent form with participants and ask them
to sign the consent form. Please clarify all relevant points and collect the
signed consent forms before proceeding with the workshop.
48 ◊ Appendix
3. Collection of Critical Incidents
Inform the participants about the timeline for Part 1 (the introduction and part
1 of the workshop should take about 90 minutes in total). Explain the
complete process before beginning to identify critical incidents.
In the first step, you invite participants to share critical incidents (interesting
cases for discussion), which the group can then work on in the next step. For
instance, ask the question: “If you look back to your recent practice, do you
have a situation or an incident or case in mind, where you have faced a socio-
emotional challenge?” You should collect at least one case per four partici-
pants (better: one case per three participants).
Note the title of each critical incident on a whiteboard or flipchart, so that all
participants are able to see what incidents have been collected so far. Behind
the title, note the name of the incident provider, so that you can address
them personally, and so that the other participants will know with whom they
may want to talk / which group they might want to join.
Begin by asking the experts to shortly present the critical incident they want
to share. Avoid going into detail: this will be the work of the groups in the
next step. What you want to arrive at, is a relatively general problem
statement, which is somewhat dissociated from the very concrete situation
that the person experienced (the focus is not on helping them to deal with
this particular situation).
Take time to identify a good name for each critical incident in cooperation
with the providers. Good titles are short (max. 8 words) and sound like the
title of a story. To engage the participants’ imagination and compassion,
challenge the incident providers to give the main characters of their critical
incidents a name. To focus the discussion on concrete problems, challenge the
case providers to name the problem in the title of each case. For reference,
four exemplary titles from the Split Workshop were:
Arnold, the job-switcher (shared by Viktoria)
Laura’s disclosure of domestic violence (shared by Emma)
Ari’s and Seija’s conflict (shared by Ari)
Dragan has lost all hope (shared by Milica)
What is a Critical Incident?
The critical incidents we are interested in, concern socio-emotionally chal-
lenging situations faced while offering career support. We are looking for sit-
uations that are difficult to deal with socially and/or emotionally. Example:
“A career counsellor gets pulled into a conflict between a teenage girl and
her parents regarding her choice of a vocation.”
Appendix ◊ 49
In finding a good title for the critical incident, you might need to clarify what
the concrete challenge is about. If your contributor is struggling, you can also
engage other participants and see, if they have something similar, they would
like to share. A comparison of two critical incidents can either lead to the
identification of a common problem or help to disambiguate what each
challenge is really about. It is important that participants have a relatively
clear idea about the type of problem they will be discussing, so it is fine if you
take a couple of minutes to give each case a good title together with the
group.
What do I do if there are too many critical incidents?
The situation could arise that more than every third person wants to
contribute a critical incident. A plausible explanation is that some people may
not feel that socio-emotional challenges, which are relevant for them, are “on
the table” yet. Another possibility is that they are not interested in discussing
one of the critical incidents that have already been suggested. In general, it is
certainly better for us to collect more incidents than necessary than to give
participants the feeling that we are not interested. At the same time,
participants should know that the method will only work if they work together.
It will possibly be necessary for the group to “give up” certain incidents, if
there are too many.
If this happens, you can use the following approach. Once all incidents have
been collected, each person gets to distribute 3 points among all of the cases
(max. 1 per incident). The incidents that received most points are kept.
Incidents that received only 1 or less points, are given up.
Do not cross through people’s names when doing this: people could experi-
ence shame if you do so. It is better to underline or circle the critical incidents
that have been selected. Additionally, it may be helpful to stress that
concentrating on certain incidents does not imply that the other incidents are
not relevant or interesting per se.
What do I do if there are too few critical incidents?
There are never too few critical incidents. If people are reluctant to share
incidents, there may be diverse reasons why they are holding back. One
possibility is that they are censoring their incidents themselves, e.g., because
they do not want to look weak in front of the others. To avoid this from
happening, it is important to stress that all participants are experts and that
we are also interested in incidents that they once found difficult or challenging
in the past, even if they know how to deal with these kinds of situations
nowadays.
50 ◊ Appendix
Another possibility is that there is a person in the room who is shaming
people, e.g., by laughing at the incidents they share. This happens rarely, but
it can be very detrimental. If this happens, you need to intervene immediate-
ly, e.g., by focusing the group’s attention on the problematic behavior.
What is more likely, is that people are a bit timid. For this purpose, it is
important that you try to appreciate every incident that is brought forward.
Show real interest. Try to understand the challenge yourself. If somebody in
your group thinks that a situation is challenging which you do not find it
difficult at all, do not mention your reservations. Focus on understanding what
the challenge is without evaluating how “big” it is. We want people to feel
comfortable in sharing and discussing the problems that they face regularly,
after all.
Finally, a good strategy is to tell the group from the beginning, how many
critical incidents you want to have. If you have 8 participants, you might say
that you want at least 3 incidents. You will get them because people want to
move on.
4. Joint Analysis of Critical Incidents in Groups
In the next step, we set up groups of 2-5 people, who will work on individual
incidents. A good way to get people to start working, is to ask everybody, if
they already know which group they will join. If people are undecided, they
may need some additional information on the topics of some groups.
Let people decide autonomously, which group they would like to join. It is
better to have 2 groups of 2 people and one group of 5 people, if everybody is
happy, instead of asking some people to join groups that they do not want to
be in.
Set a time, by when the groups need to be ready to make their elevator
presentations. 30 minutes should be enough, but participants will probably
also appreciate 40-45 minutes, if you have enough time on your schedule.
For the group work, formulate the following task and make sure that
participants can see it all the time (e.g., on a flipchart or by using a slide):
What is it that makes this situation challenging? (Develop a
description of the main features of the situation. Think of individual and
contextual aspects, the role of motivations, beliefs, incentives…)
What shouldn’t you do in this kind of a situation? (Try to formulate
2-3 “Don’t…” statements)
What could work / be helpful in a situation like this? (Try to
formulate 2-3 “Do…” statements)
Appendix ◊ 51
Make sure that participants understand that the description of what makes
this situation challenging can include all kinds of different aspects, e.g.,
misunderstandings, lack of knowledge, strong emotions, economic, institu-
tional, or political pressures, etc. Give them an example of a Do and a Don’t
statement, if you haven’t done so yet.
Then make sure that the participants have all the materials they need to work
on their cases. This may include flipchart paper or protocols for the descrip-
tion and analysis of their critical incidents, but also writing materials.
In the next step, there is not much for you to do. Just be present in an active
way, e.g., by walking around the room and observing the participants in a
curious way. Be ready to answer questions for clarification. If you notice
people, who aren’t engaged in their groups, you might want to check and see,
if everything is okay.
5. Elevator Presentations
In their presentations, each group shall share its main points with the others,
i.e., “What is it that makes this situation challenging?”, “What shouldn’t you
do in this kind of a situation?”, and “What could work / be helpful in a
situation like this?”
Three minutes per group are fully sufficient. At the Split Academy, each group
only had 2 minutes. As for the analysis in groups, having only a limited
amount of time focuses attention and motivates people to concentrate on
their task instead of procrastinating or talking about other topics.
A good method to manage the time for elevator presentations is to set one’s
smartphone timer to 3 minutes per presentation and make sure that it beeps
loudly when the time is up. This way you will not have to interrupt partici-
pants yourself, if they take too long, and the procedure will be viewed as fair
by everyone.
Thank the groups after their presentations and move on to the next presenta-
tion without a discussion. This way, the presentations will be completed
quickly, before you can move onto the next step.
52 ◊ Appendix
Appendix 2: Consent Form
First Name(s): ________________ Surname(s): ______________________
Thank you for your participation in this focus-group workshop of the EU-project
STRENGTh, which aims to strengthen the social-emotional competences of career
practitioners across Europe. We are very happy to welcome you here as experts
regarding the socio-emotional challenges of career guidance and counselling. Your
contributions at this workshop will help us to decide, which socio-emotional
competences are most needed in the practice of career guidance and counselling and
how to design our training program.
This workshop will be composed of two main parts. In the first part, we will work
together to identify challenging situations from the practice of career guidance and
counselling. In small groups, you will jointly analyze these situations. You will develop
a description of what makes situations like these particularly challenging and what
professionals should do and should not do in situations like these (Do’s and Don’ts).
In the second part of the workshop, you will discuss what kinds of social-emotional
competences professionals need in order to deal with challenging situations like the
ones you have described. Additionally, you will discuss, how relevant competences
can be trained.
The documentation and audio recordings from the workshop will not be published and
will be stored safely. They will only be shared with the partners of the STRENGTh
project, who will analyze them anonymously. No personal information will be
collected. Your name and personal information will not be mentioned in any
publications that emerge this workshop. Any published information will only be
statistical, e.g., the number, nationality, and gender of participants.
Date & Place: ______________________ Signature: _________________________
I hereby confirm that I have read and understood the information present-
ed above. I am participating at this workshop voluntarily as an adult. I
know that I can leave the workshop at any time. I allow the partners of the
STRENGTh project to conduct research and prepare publications based on
all materials produced at this workshop. I yield the right to be named as
an author of any publications that draw on the developed materials.
I would like to be named as an expert who contributed to the STRENGTh
project on relevant publications of the STRENGTh project.
Appendix ◊ 53
Appendix 3: CI Template
Title of the Critical Incident
Max. 8 words; give names to main characters; focus on main problem
For example, “High-Stakes Counselling with Said”
Description
What is it that makes this situation challenging? Develop a description of
the main features of the situation (short text). Think of individual and
contextual aspects, the role of motivations, beliefs, incentives…)
For example, “Said (client) is a refugee. Whether he can stay in the
country, depends on the outcome of YOUR conversation with him.”
Recommendations
Formulate the do’s and don’ts shortly and concisely, for example:
(Do) Empathize with Said’s stress and despair
(Don’t) Clarify that you are not responsible for the outcome of the
conversation
What shouldn’t you do in this kind of a situation? (DON’T)
What could work / be helpful in a situation like this? (DO)
54 ◊ Appendix
Appendix 4: Survey
1. Cover Page
Welcome to the STRENGTh Survey!
With the STRENGTh project, we aim to find out what kinds of social and
emotional competences professionals of career guidance and counselling in
Europe need. Thank you very much for contributing to this project!
This survey is anonymous. We will not ask you for your name or for any
information through which you could be identified. We will only ask you for
some basic demographic information. For example, your gender and work
experience. Otherwise, we are interested in your opinions on several
scenarios and professional skills.
Taking this survey will take you 15-20 minutes. If you cannot finish the
survey, you can continue filling it out at a later point in time by reopening the
same link.
By giving your consent to the processing of your anonymous information, you
can begin to take the survey. You can abort the survey at any time by closing
the window. We will only process completed surveys.
Best wishes from the STRENGTh Team
2. Consent Form (Please Read Carefully)
Study Coordination: NICE Foundation (www.nice-network.eu)
Contact: Johannes Katsarov (coordinator@nice-network.eu)
If you would like to obtain more information about the processing of
your personal data, please click… (Box 1 opens, see below)
I agree to the processing of my personal data in accordance with the
information provided herein
I don't want to participate
Are you sure you don't want to participate in this survey?
Once you confirm, you will not be able to participate in this survey
anymore.
Cancel
Confirm
Appendix ◊ 55
3. Demographic Questions
Before the actual survey begins, we would like to start with a few short
questions about yourself.
First, we would like to know whether you practice career guidance
and counselling.
Please select the option that fits you best.
Yes, I offer career guidance and counselling to clients seeking career-
related support. This is my main profession.
Yes, I offer some career-related support to people. However, this is not
my main profession.
No, I personally do not offer career guidance and counselling - at least
not professionally.
How do you define your gender?
Female
Male
Other
Have you received specialized training in career guidance and
counselling?
Please check all that apply.
Master degree or equivalent
Postgraduate certificate or equivalent
Training through a professional association
Bachelor degree or equivalent
Training from a private institute
Other (please explain)
No
In which country or countries do you work and live?
Please name all, ideally by spelling them in English (e.g., "Romania"). If you
live and/or work in several countries, please separate them with a comma,
e.g., "Portugal, Spain".
56 ◊ Appendix
4. Critical Incident Section (Randomized)
In the next section of our survey, we would like you to have a look at six
challenging situations in the practice of career guidance and counselling.
Please read the descriptions of these situations carefully before you answer
the following questions.
This is not a test. We are only interested in your personal opinion.
Some of the situations may be untypical for your area of practice, e.g., if they
deal with children but you only work with adults. If this is the case, please
imagine a similar scenario in your working context. We are mainly interested
in your opinion on similar situations, not on the exact scenario that is
described."
After each vignette, respondents were asked to make the following
assessments:
Please indicate how strongly you agree with the following statements on a
scale from (1) “totally disagree” to (7) “totally agree”:
Every career professional should be capable of dealing with a situation
like this.
Situations like this are rare in career guidance and counselling.
Many career professionals would struggle in dealing with this situation
effectively.
Vignette 1: Phillip the Agitator
Audrey is facilitating a session on job search practices for more than 100
people from different educational and professional backgrounds at an
employment center. Throughout the session, Audrey is frequently interrupted
by Phillip. Phillip appears to have an opinion on every topic and always ends
up blaming either the government, the political system, or the big capitalist
companies. Phillip’s seemingly innocent remarks provoke approving and
disapproving responses from the rest of the group, leading to chatter among
people and additional public remarks. For Audrey, it becomes increasingly
difficult to maintain the focus of the session and cover all contents in time.
Vignette 2: Emma the Runaway Teenager
Emma (13 years old, adopted) visits the 7th grade. Emma is very introverted
and shows symptoms of a possible depression. Lately, she has been absent
from school regularly and has run away from home several times. She has
gained a lot of weight and lacks a motivation to learn. Her adoptive mother
does not accept Emma’s growing need for freedom and tries to control her
daughter. In a career counselling session, Emma’s mother interrupts the
session repeatedly and will not collaborate with Maya, the counsellor.
Appendix ◊ 57
Vignette 3: Haldi the Desperate Migrant
Haldi, a young engineer, needs to find a job. If he cannot find a job soon, the
authorities will force him to leave the country. Haldi has tried to find a job for
two months but has failed so far, which is why he is becoming increasingly
desperate. In Ruth’s counselling session, he expresses anger, disappointment,
and lack of trust towards employers who do not want to employ migrants in
their businesses. He feels that everyone in the country is hostile and
prejudiced against him as a migrant.
Vignette 4: Rosie Suffers from Panic Attacks
Rosie, an 18-year-old girl in the last year of high school, stands out at school
and has excellent marks in all subjects. With the final exams coming up, she
is very anxious though. In fear of the oral exams, she suffers from panic
attacks and nightmares. During an orientation interview on her choice of a
university, Rosie tells Keith that she cannot decide about her future, because
all she can think about now is how she needs to complete the final exams
with the best possible grade.
Vignette 5: Tim Does Not Get Interested in Anything
Tim is a student in need of special support. In a study planning discussion
involving Tony (the counsellor), Tim, and his parents, Tim shows no interest
in any sort of education or vocation. Nothing seems to motivate him. It is also
extremely hard to identify any of Tim's strengths. Tim's parents are upset.
They begin to display their anger and impatience more and more openly.
Towards the end of the session, the father interrupts Tony angrily and tells
him to finally solve the problem.
Vignette 6: Mary the Quarrelsome Mother
Helen, a student, attends a career counselling program together with her
mother, Mary. Mary is a financial analyst who owns her own company. She
wants Helen to study economics so that Helen will be able to take over the
company in the future. When Robert, the counselor announces that Helen
expressed her interest in becoming a teacher in a career interest question-
naire, Mary gets upset and starts yelling at Robert. She claims that career
questionnaire is invalid because she knows her daughter better than anyone
else and she knows best what suits her daughter.
58 ◊ Appendix
5. Training Interests and Priorities
In the next section, we are interested in your opinion about different training
opportunities.
Priorities for the Training of Socio-Emotional Competences
In the STRENGTh project, we will design courses to promote career profes-
sionals’ socio-emotional competences. We would now like to learn, which
kinds of courses would be most important for you, personally, and for career
professionals in your country, more generally."
Please begin by thinking of yourself. In which of the following areas
would you be interested in improving your skills?
à Here, each of the clusters from Exhibit 1 (Section 1.2) was presented
separately.
Please indicate your interest in the following five course topic on a scale from
(1) “not interested at all” to (5) “extremely interested”.
Now, please think about career professionals in your country. Which
training priorities would suggest for them?
Imagine the following situation. A government agency has asked you to set
up a special training programme of 2 days for career professionals in your
field of work. The goal is to promote social and emotional competences that
allow career counsellors to deal with challenging situations.
Which priorities would you select for the programme, if you had to choose
from the five topics presented above? Please select the 2 topics that would be
most important in your opinion:"
Please select the 2 most important topics by moving them to the right. You
can find the detailed descriptions of the different options above. If you change
your mind, you can move topics back to the left. Please select no more than 2
priorities. We will ignore answers, if more than 2 priorities are selected.
1. Empathy Skills
2. Emotional Management Skills
3. Diversity Management Skills
4. Active Listening Skills
5. Cooperation Skills
If you have any comments on training priorities, you are welcome to
share them with us. (text box)
Appendix ◊ 59
6. Final Page
Thank you very much for participating in the STRENGTh Survey!
You have now completed all questions.
To assure the anonymity of this survey, we will not ask you for your contact
information here. However, if you have been invited to this survey by a
partner from the STRENGTh project, they will surely inform you once the
results of the survey are available.
With best wishes,
The STRENGTh Team
Abstract
The practice of career guidance and counselling supports people in dealing
with a wide variety of challenges related to their education and training, their
vocational development and employment. Career professionals support their
clients in diverse ways, through counselling, education, assessment, and
information, but also through interventions in social systems, e.g., through
talks with clients’ parents or employers. Little empirical research has focused
on the question thus far, which role social and emotional competences like the
management of one’s emotions play for career guidance and counselling.
With this study, the STRENGTh project, aimed at gaining some first insights
into career professionals’ needs for social-emotional competences in Finland,
Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, and beyond. Focus-group
interviews with practitioners in all project countries demonstrated that career
professionals face a wide array of social and emotional challenges in their
practice. The international survey with more than 400 participants that
followed, showed that the demand for social-emotional competence training is
large while training interests and needs differ between countries.
In consideration of the findings, we suggest that initial and further training
programs for career professionals should pay more attention to social and
emotional competences in the future. Practice-oriented, empirically founded
training of competences for diverse social and emotional challenges is needed
to equip practitioners adequately. The cases presented in this report can
provide educators with a good starting point for the design of teaching
materials and self-assessment exercises.