NICEC Seminar - The Role of Love in Career Decisions

“All you need is love” sang the Beatles, and many philosophers, artists, and scientists share the same sentiment – that the relationships that we have with other people, our families, friends and those we love are absolutely central to our lives. However, when we think about our jobs and our careers, the role of relationships and love is all too often overlooked. This seminar introduced three different perspectives on the role of relationships and love in career development and aims to stimulate discussion and reflection on how we can more fully acknowledge and work with these dynamics in career guidance practice. The three presentations were:

• The role of relationships in graduate transitions - Rosie Alexander
  Rosie used recent research evidence to explore how relationships with partners, friends, and family create an important, and often under-recognised, context for the transitions of graduates into the workplace. She asked what this means for the provision of careers services, and how we can respond to this as guidance practitioners.

• Does everyone need a best friend at work? - what’s the role of relationships in career development - Rosemary McLean
  Rosemary shared the evidence around the importance of having diverse relationships at work; how these can be fostered to enable career growth, access to opportunities and build a sense of belonging.

• Without hope, all is lost - Michelle Stewart
  Michelle presented the theoretical underpinning for career hope (e.g. Amundson, Niles and Yoon) and to illustrate it with some case studies that evidence the importance of loving relationships, especially the belief of others in us as individuals.  Hope lies behind our motivation to act, but how can we instil hope in others?

Following the presentations, participants were invited to work in small groups to share their reflections on the topic, and their ideas for practice.