ABSTRACT
Economic globalization and the way the modern world works contribute to growing instability in our everyday lives and our occupations are no exception. That same instability is what triggers a key question: How can we help individuals better cope with the transitions that they will face over the course of their working lives? In response, counseling practices in a broad sense are adjusting to better assist the world’s workforce in adapting and surpassing new and often very different situations. However, career counseling in its current state does not appear to be efficient enough. A need for new models, tools and methods originates from the diversity of questions posed by society, creating a space for career coaching rooted in epistemic issues. This is essentially a new way of looking at the same problem.
This chapter will open with a short history of the key milestones of counseling and coaching, before moving into the identification of the main issues and themes that can be found in the discourse of career counseling and career coaching. The hypothetical middle ground to be found between these two approaches leads to an assumption that both have emerged as global projects, with a common mission of helping workers manage and adapt to the psychosocial and cultural demands of their working lives. A third section on common concerns and prospects follows, providing an analysis over three distinct domains: (a) counselors and coaches training; (b) delivery practices; (c) tools and techniques. In conclusion, an emphasis is shaped around a spirit of openness and future possibilities of common learning, taking lessons from the long history of career counseling and from the still relatively short history of career coaching. Both forms of intervention and practice are, of course, radically human and look to share a common mission and, to a certain extent, common models, methods, tools and materials.
