Informing Your Teens Career Choice - A Parent's Guide

In 1984 I graduated high school with no ideas about what career options might suit me. As any teen would do, I sought the advice of my parents, and my oldest brother, a Chartered Accountant. Both my dad and brother advised me to become an accountant – I still remember my dad telling me “Well, if you don’t like it, accounting is a good background to have and you can always go and do something else.” It took me 20 years stuck in accounting jobs until I was finally able to do that.

As I reflect on my teen years, and the activities I enjoyed most, I remember loving music, art and drama – I used to sit all night drawing Mad Magazine cartoons; I was the lead role in our school plays for 4 years ,was in the school jazz band and played guitar in a coffee shop. Sound like a typical accountant? What on earth made my parents think accounting was a good career choice for me?

While articling at Price Waterhouse in South Africa, I was forced to learn the discipline and detail required to be a professional accountant. I learned the skills and techniques and mastered my subject matter – technically I was an excellent accountant and eventually rose to executive level as Controller for the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada and then as Director, Finance for Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver. Yet something was still wrong – from Price Waterhouse at 22 to Canuck Place at 42, the message was the same – “you’re too friendly with clients” or “you’re not professional enough” or other messages about my personality not fitting the role of accountant – and how could I change that? For most of my 20 years I was confused about these messages and what I should be doing to make my bosses happy. I moved from job-to-job, my technical expertise very much appreciated, my personality – not so much!

It was only in 2009, at Canuck Place, that my answer became clear. Through an Insights Discovery workshop I recognized that my basic personality preference was Extraverted Feeling – for those of you familiar with Carl Jung Psychology- that is the diametrically opposite type to what we would think of as an ideal accountant “type” – Introverted Thinking. My Insights Personal Profile also showed how much energy and effort I was exerting every day to try to appear introverted thinking, and how I was obviously failing, as evidenced by the repeated messages from my bosses.

Let me explain a little more about Dr. Carl Jung and his psychology. Dr. Jung was a Swiss Psychologist and the founder of modern analytical psychology. At the most basic level of his psychology, he identified two “attitudes” – Extraversion (E) and Intraversion (I), and two “decision making functions” – Thinking (T) and Feeling (F). Combinations of the attitudes and decision making functions make up the four basic personality types – IT, ET, IF and EF.

Extraverted Feeling types (EF) love interaction with people, have energy and enthusiasm and love to entertain and be part of the action. We struggle with detail, focus and working long hours on our own. Introverted Thinking types, on the other hand, are the opposite and hence are very well suited to long hours alone in a quiet office working on detailed budgets and month-ends. My personality type brought strengths that were very valuable to my job – presentation skills, interpersonal skills, energy and enthusiasm – but in the end, the negatives outweighed the positives and I never managed to find meaning in working with money and numbers. My bosses expected that of me and that caused many problems in my career.

As parents we hold a tremendous weight in the career decisions of our sons and daughters. I am a parent of two beautiful young daughters, who are very different. I have observed and learnt about their personal preferences and identified which careers and industries would match their personalities and personal preferences. These are not what they are capable of, no – I was more than capable of learning and performing the skills required as an accountant – these are their preferred ways of being and how that matches their career choices. I generally compare it to swimming downstream when your personality and strengths are aligned with your work, or swimming upstream when they aren’t. It’s a lot more effort and things don’t come naturally.

Professions, Industries and companies are generally dominated by a certain “personality type”, which is likely the natural fit for the work required. Engineers and Accountants typically reflect a THINKING preference with mostly INTROVERTED ATTITUDES, which enables them to spend long hours focusing and working alone. Health Care Workers typically reflect a FEELING preference but can be balanced between INTROVERTED and EXTRAVERTED. Let me be clear on this though – anyone is capable of working in these roles – these examples are merely where natural psychological strengths and preferences are aligned with these professions.

Advising your child on their career choice is a huge responsibility. Observe and get to know your child. Watch and learn about their communication style and what they like to do in their spare time (other than TV or computers, of course). See what excites and motivates them, and what they struggle with. Chances are, these are strongly related to their personality type and you will be able to identify their preferences.

The Centre of Excellence for Young Adults offers training using the Insights Discovery Learning and Development Program to understand your own personality type and the dynamics of your interaction with the world around you. We teach you to identify type and how to build rapport, communicate with and influence each type. We can help you to understand, advise and coach your teen to understand their personal preferences and style, and to make an informed career choice which will maximize their strengths.

To find out more, visit us at www.ceya .ca or email russell@ceya.ca