Marcus Can Blog

 

Yesterday I attended another Leadership Enhancement Program and the recent trainings we had are tailor made for us to cope up with the soon-to-be closure of our company. Yesterday’s topic was about career opportunities and career counseling.

 

I was actually enjoying the whole training and find it very interactive and informative when it came to one of the foils. The first line of it read:

 

“Career Counseling is NOT…

·         Giving advice.

·         ….”

 

Hmmm. “That isn’t right”, was my immediate thought. I know that deep in my vocabulary the word counsel is for sure synonymous to advice. So I raised my hand to clarify if I’m reading it right and our trainer without batting an eyelash emphasized, “Career counseling is not giving an advice.”

 

The training ended by noon time and my colleagues and I went on with our kill-time activities disguised in the term WLE (Work Life Effectiveness) activities. Some did basketball, while we did a good badminton right after until past 7pm. But those positive stress activities didn’t shake off the “counseling” thing in my gray matter. In fact, while driving my wife to work this morning, I still kept on thinking about it.

 

Instinctively, while preparing breakfast for myself, I juggled with the plates and our trusty Merriam-Webster dictionary and there it was printed on one of the pages – to counsel is to give advice. I was so excited that I eagerly finish my bread, egg and meat loaf meal. I was in front of our PC after I gobbled the last piece of the processed meat.

 

In order to confirm if our Merriam-Webster hardcopy isn’t obsolete yet, I browsed through their internet site – www.m-w.com .

 

The following entries appeared:

 

Main Entry: ²counsel

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): counseled or counselled; counsel·ing or counsel·ling \-s(ə-)liŋ\

Date: 14th century

transitive verb : advise <counseled them to avoid rash actions — George Orwell> intransitive verb : consult <counseled with her husband>

Main Entry: counseling

Variant(s): or counselling

Function: noun

Date: 1927

: professional guidance of the individual by utilizing psychological methods especially in collecting case history data, using various techniques of the personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes

Main Entry: ad·vise

Pronunciation: \əd-ˈvīz\

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): ad·vised; ad·vis·ing

transitive verb1 a: to give advice to : counsel <advise her to try a drier climate> b: caution, warn <advise them of the consequences> c: recommend <advise prudence>2: to give information or notice to : inform <advise them of their rights>intransitive verb1: to give advice <advise on legal matters>2: to take counsel : consult <advise with friends>

 

Main Entry: ad·vice

Pronunciation: \əd-ˈvīs\

Function: noun

1 : recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct : counsel <he shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties — United States Constitution> 2 : information or notice given —usually used in plural 3 : an official notice concerning a business transaction

With those results and the fact that this top semiconductor company have some managers whom to my shock have normally pronounced words such as Freight like Fright, Sub- like Sob and my favorite irritation, Z like Zay, I wasn’t surprised that one foil in the training material may be erroneous.

 

Like a fighter aiming to finish off a sprawling and bloodied adversary, I type “Career Counseling” in the browser’s search field expecting something that will back up my vocabulary. In a matter of seconds, several results appeared and I eagerly click into each one of it and prepared to celebrate my victory over the foil item in question.

 

 

To my dismay, not one of the sites shows a bit of “Career Counseling IS about giving advice…” to support my argument. Instead it listed common words such as assessment, aptitude tests, planning, decision making, development, research. It was almost about everything related but advice. That left me raising my white flag on this subject matter.

 

As much as I hate defeat, I come to realize that Career Counseling is not just two words that can be discussed over a one-on-one meeting which in our case would only last from 15 – 30 minutes every 3 months (grin). If one staff gets lucky (or not) enough at all he’ll be into one of it at least 3 times in a quarter. Career Counseling is actually a task to be handled by a professional Career Counselor and if you’re not one of them (like me), most likely, you can only advise. Come to think of it, I might as well consider a career as a Career Counselor. Ti abi.