The Career and Values Genokeygram (CV Genokey) was newly-developed as a career counseling tool that explores the impact of significant relationships on one’s career decisions.
Career choices and the career-life values of key people (familial and nonfamilial significant others) are examined to uncover their underlying influences on one’s choices as these key people influencers often play key roles to influence our career-life trajectories in more ways than we know. The CV Genokey draws from the foundations of career genograms, but incorporated significant others beyond one’s family of origin by adding on one’s later-life positive and negative influencers, with a key addition of a deeper exploration of one’s career-life values, all in one diagram. The Genokey’s goal is to facilitate the process of exploring one’s past, present, and future and aims to reveal hidden roadblocks and clarify implicit and unnamed career-life values, ultimately empowering one to make changes in career goals. The tool consists of two parts: a visual component where one draws a Career and Values Genokeygram, followed by a reflective exercise, where one engages in the structured process of reflecting and journaling. Three case studies will be presented alongside to illustrate the application of the Genokey to an Asian clientele, across varying age groups.
This tool helps the counsellor to consolidate the client’s personal attributes such as interests, values, skills, together with unexamined key influencers, all in one diagrammatic form for further analyses and processing together with the career counsellor. It helps the counsellor to organize information quickly in a structured manner, and with aid of structured reflective questions to surface one’s thought-action gap in fulfilling what they would like to pursue, rather than what their significant others’ might have wanted them to pursue. The tool facilitates a process to uncover, clarify, and empower.
