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Helping, negotiating, directing © 2006, Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien The goals continuum is a model reflecting in which situation you can apply which skill. The extreme left of the continuum describes situations in which the goals of the employee are the center of the discussion. In these situations helping (coaching) is the most suitable approach. The extreme right is about situations in which the goals of the manager are central. Between the two extremes on this continuum are situations that require negotiation. Managing people is not always an easy thing to do. Take a look at this example: A manager told us recently: “One of the people in my team, Bert, does not perform well. Time and again he does not meet the deadlines. As a consequence the delivery to our customers is frequently delayed. This has to stop! But no matter how much I try to help him, I can’t seem to get through to him. He gets irritated, he tries to avoid me and he dismisses my suggestions. What am I to d...

Adopting solution-focused views and tools © 2004, Coert Visser & Kirsten Dierolf As coaches and career counselors, we have developed a way of career counseling we have found to be more realistic, more effective, and more fun. One inspiration is the work of INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra, whose findings on career development collide well with our own experiences and preferences. Another very important inspiration has been the solution-focused approach, an approach to consultancy we have been using for several years now and which was originally developed by therapists Insoo Kim Berg and Steve de Shazer and their co-workers. We have experienced that this approach is highly applicable in career guidance, too, which was recently confirmed by a thesis written by Barbara Steiner (2004). In this article, we would like to explain how. We hope this will provide you with some useful new views and tools. This article is built up around four statements. 1. Careers are voyages of discovery It ...