Thursday, September 23, 2010

Career Theorist Spotlight - Sunny Hansen


In the GCDF and career development fields, we certainly have our "rock stars". I recently attended the National Career Development Association's annual conference and was fortunate enough to participate in break out sessions with heroes such as Dick Bolles, Jim Bright, and Sunny Hansen. As you may recall for our GCDF training, Dr. Hansen is most well known for developing "Integrative Life Planning" (ILP) which is a more holistic approach to career/life planning issues. This theory encompasses six critical tasks for an individual to obtain for a more integrated life.

1) Find work that needs you on a local, national, or even global level.
2) Find ways to weave life into a meaningful whole by taking into consideration the people in your life.
3) Find ways to connect family and work.
4) Make choices that validate diversity and include others.
5) Explore values, spirituality, and the meaning of life while also integrating how each affects your life.
6) Learn how to manage change and transition in your life.

In a recent email, Dr. Hansen shared the following:

"My relatively new concept of ILP - translate that as holistic life planning, looking at not only work but at other major life roles and goals - has been well received by many adult and college career professionals, as well as those involved in their own career decision-making. Although ILP is designed for both women and men, I have found that it has been of special interest to women, whose life roles have gone through major changes in the last decade. We know that many people who currently need jobs have resources available to them, but for those who have time to do more long-term planning, I believe ILP has much to offer. For further information, see my original book, Integrative Life Planning: Critical Tasks for Career Development and Changing Life Patterns, (for which I am developing a second edition). There is also a short article on my website called "Using Integrative Life Planning in Your Professional Development" (Hansen & Suddarth, Career Developments, Fall, 2008), http://www.sunnyhansenbornfree.com/.

So how do we as busy GCDF professionals integrate ILP both into our career and life roles? Does this career theory have relevance to your population of clients?

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