How can you help a client navigate conflicts between their career aspirations and family expectations?

Helping a client navigate conflicts between their career aspirations and family expectations requires empathy and practical strategies. Start by encouraging open and honest communication with their family to express their career goals and listen to family concerns. Assist them in identifying common ground and mutual interests. Explore flexible career options that align with family expectations while allowing the client to pursue their aspirations. Develop a balanced plan that includes setting boundaries and prioritizing time for both career and family. Support them in building a support network of friends, mentors, and professionals. Encourage patience and understanding, emphasizing that finding a harmonious balance takes time.

What you do work wise should be all about you, brand you, what are your values, strengths, super powers, motivators, preferred environments, transferable & technical skills and your passion and purpose. Once you have discovered who you are & where you are, then you explore the employment landscape. Age, life stage & BIG events affect your career priorities and therefore your career destination, it's your career & not anyone else' and the ideas need to resonate with you and you alone. I would get clear on this and when you can articulate this clearly, then you can start to share your ideas with family and explain why it makes so much sense for you. If you talk to family too early, they can be naysayers which isn't good for career confidence

In my book I talk about Super's Career Rainbow which places the various roles we all play side by side in a 'rainbow' that represents our lives. At any given time some of the rainbow colours will be more vibrant than others as we focus more attention on that aspect of our life. So, for example, for the parents of young children the parent role will be more vibrant while the career role may be less so. As children grow and eventually leave home altogether this will change. Taking this longer term view of our lives can help us define how we want to play a specific role at a given point in time, helping us reduce those conflicts and create more enriching lives.

Always encourage and steer your client in open and honest communication! Encourage them to clearly articulate their career goals and understand their family's concerns and expectations. Assist in identifying common ground and potential compromises. Help them prioritize and set realistic goals that balance both career and family needs. Explore flexible work arrangements, time management strategies, and support systems. Provide guidance on managing stress and maintaining well-being. Foster an environment of mutual understanding and respect, emphasizing the importance of both career fulfillment and family harmony.

When there is misalignment, there is conflict. It’s important to invite the client to explore underneath the iceberg to discover what is the misalignment of his/her career aspiration & his/her perception about the family expectations on him/her. To adjust the misalignment, it is important to truly & honestly accept “who I am” & “who I want to be”, in both the professional world & in the family, which are all the values that the client want you to show up & ultimately creat a harmony of work & life.

Sarah, a client of mine, once faced a significant conflict between her career aspirations and family expectations, creating stress and confusion. We tackled this through open communication. I encouraged her to have an honest discussion with her family, expressing her career goals and why they were important, while addressing the family's concerns. This transparent dialogue facilitated a deeper understanding and a mutual compromise, allowing Sarah to pursue her career while maintaining strong family bonds.

Encourage your client to identify areas where they can find common ground between their goals and their family's desires. Facilitate discussions that explore potential adjustments to their career plans that still align with their ambitions while accommodating family expectations. Help them develop flexible plans that allow for both career growth and family responsibilities, such as exploring part-time work, remote opportunities, or gradual transitions.

"Work-Life Balance" is the WRONG way to think about it. By definition the term 'Balance' indicates that if you focus more on one area, you are taking away from another. The term always conjures the image of a tight-rope walker for me. But that is an illusion. Life does not work that way. If you keep thinking of it like a binary construct, you would always be forced to choose one over the other. But once you let go of that mindset, you can think about your "Whole Life" - work and personal, in a harmonious blend. Enjoy more deeply the time you spend in the gym or with your family, and also enjoy the time you spend at work making a true impact in other people's lives.

Encourage your client to clearly define and communicate their work-related limits to their family, and their employer, ensuring that both parties understand and respect these boundaries. Help them set specific times for work and family, creating a structured schedule that prioritizes both career development and family time. Teach them to assertively say no to additional work demands that encroach on family time and vice versa.

Having strong boundaries is key to maintaining a healthy work life balance. So often, I work with clients who feel they need to be always "on" for work and as a result, their working day overflows into their homelife in a very unwelcome way. Maintaining boundaries is like working a muscle - you need to regularly exercise the muscle to maintain it. It's not a case of doing it once and expecting it to stick - persistence and consistency is key. Your future self will thank you!

Ter uma rede de apoio diversa, com pessoas que se conectem com diferentes papéis que exercemos, é importante, pois podem contribuir com perspectivas e visões diferentes sobre nós, trazendo opiniões que ajudam a nos esclarecer e direcionar. Quando precisamos de ajuda, ou temos grande dificuldade, seja em âmbito pessoal ou profissional, a nossa rede de apoio será essencial na fase de acolhimento, suporte e direcionamento.

There will be an intersection between your family and career. The secret is in finding those points of overlap and clarifying them. For example...I need to earn money to support my family. My career can provide me that income. Ok, now let's look at the facts of what you actually need to earn and how much of your time you are comfortable investing in your career. What often happens is we don't go deep enough into exploring what we really need vs what we think we need. Those quick decisions we make based on emotion may not line up with our true authentic goals and aspirations. So spending time delving deeper into what a balance looks like for each of us can be so powerful.

The pandemic had blurred the lines between work life and personal life; this has almost always created a conflict between career aspirtions and personal expectations. Whereopen communication helps its also always important to create your own boundaries and more importantly stick to it. Get an accountability partner who will help you with these boundaries and show you the mirror when you are going away from your boundary. Journal all your issues and wins and then go back to it and refer it. It will show you the journey of ups and downs and always keeps your motivated.

It’s very important to understand if your career ambitions are your own or your family’s. From an early age, your family will have a very large influence over your career ambitions, and this will impact the decisions you make as you grow independent. It’s perfectly ok if you want what your family wants for you. But most times people aren’t aware of what they really want, and discover too late that there is a difference. You must fully explore within yourself what you really want, and then take your family on this journey. To fully embrace your own career path, you need to be understanding with yourself in letting go of these opinions, and more understanding with your family who may take a little longer to let go of their opinions.

Career aspirations and family expectations can definitely co-exist and grow along. For me the word is discipline. If certain simple disciplines are followed for both the important aspects of life, the balance can be achieved. Moreover, if in pursuit of certain ambitious goals, one aspect demands greater attention, the same can be compensated at some stage by devoting additional efforts at the other front whenever time permits. Conscious efforts shall be any which way required to attain the desired achievement levels at both the fronts.