4.3: Ways to Use the Self-Portrait

This section looks at ways to use the Self-Portrait technique in the next steps with your client.

Reviewing the Self-Portrait for Assets

Having developed a Self-Portrait, the next step is to review the Self-Portrait as a portfolio of assets. Many clients are not particularly aware of the many assets they possess in terms of skill, knowledge, attitudes, and experience. They often take these for granted and don’t see their potential value in their careers. Simply reviewing the Self-Portrait with the client can be a valuable esteem-building exercise.

Review the Self-Portrait to reinforce the connections between the client’s activities and the knowledge and skills they possess.

• First, look at each past activity to help the client understand the various tasks that they can undertake.
• Review the skills and knowledge required to carry out each activity.
• Help your client looks for activities that address values and interests to ensure that the client spots activities that may have enduring meaning.
• Have the client rank values and interests in order of importance. This is an essential step toward establishing values and interests that are sources of both long-term and short-term meaningfulness.
• Review the client’s goals and help the client rank these, distinguishing between long-term goals and short-term goals. The long-term goals will be identified in the Outcomes section of the portrait, as well as in the Preferred and Needed components of the Activities section. While the client works toward both sets of goals, it’s important to help the client address immediate needs.

Keep in mind that the responsibility for continually modifying and updating the Self-Portrait must be transferred fully from you to the client. Keeping this in mind, review the rationale used to complete each part of the Self-Portrait with your client so that they can update the profile.

When working with people, one of the critical features of reviewing the Self-Portrait is the process of evaluating skill and knowledge levels. Clients may be prone to underestimating or overestimating their skills, attitudes, and knowledge. Further, it may be difficult for you to directly assess many of the client’s alleged competencies. Consequently, clients need their own evaluation strategies and they need to learn how to accurately assess themselves. You can take the following steps to help clients develop these skills:

• Have clients identify specific examples where they have used their skills effectively. (For example, you can play the role of an employer asking your client to provide an example of their using a skill well.)
• Ask clients to talk with or observe people they know who have the same skills and compare them with their own.
• Ask clients questions about the limits of their skills (For example: How much? How fast? Under what conditions?)

While none of these will guarantee an accurate assessment of competence, undertaking the above steps will help clients further clarify their skill and knowledge assets.

Reviewing the Self-Portrait for Gaps

The next step in reviewing the Self-Portrait with the client is to analyze activity, skill, or knowledge gaps. At this stage, the review process moves from “what is” to “what needs to be.” This helps the client begin to develop a sense of what to do next. To help the client identify gaps, do the following:

• Highlight the preferred activities that the client is not yet capable of performing. In the case of the client who wants to create miniature robots, begin by highlighting the skills and knowledge that the client needs, e.g., creating miniature robots requires knowledge of electronic circuitry. Knowledge of electronic circuitry would, therefore, be added to the Self-Portrait as a needed item under Skills.
• Continue this process with all the client’s preferred activities.
• Create homework assignments for your client to gather this information. For example, the client who wants to create miniature robots may need to research this activity either by reading about it or by talking to individuals who do this work.

Once the individual’s skill and knowledge gaps have been identified, it is time to begin action planning to find ways toward filling the gap.

Using the Self-Portrait for Action Planning

Most clients will have both immediate (contextual) needs and enduring needs, each one affecting the other. It is important to address immediate needs first to help mobilize the client and reinforce commitment to the career-building process. However, immediate needs should be put in the context of the bigger picture, keeping the enduring needs in mind at all times.

Enduring needs are guiding elements in action planning. It is important to clarify them at the start of the action planning process and review them throughout the process. Enduring needs are those needs that will always be important to the client. For example, security may be identified as an enduring need by a client. It may take on different forms and vary in priority, but it will always be critical for this particular client. Security, challenge, honesty, freedom, continual growth, hard work, and a happy family life are all examples of enduring needs.