Incongruities between values, motives, and skills: exploring negative effects of self-exploration in career coaching

ABSTRACT

Psychometric tools are increasingly applied during coaching, but little is known about their effects on clients’ well-being. We investigated the effects that are evoked when psychometric tools reveal incongruities between career-related values, motives, and skills during career coaching within an early-career sample. Results reveal a negative effect of within-person incongruities on life satisfaction and self-efficacy over time. Further, we compared these effects across different career coaching settings (one-on-one coaching vs. group coaching). Compared to clients in group coaching, clients who received feedback on their incongruities during a one-on-one coaching session experienced a decline in life satisfaction. The results indicate that psychometric tools should carefully be incorporated in career coaching interventions. Further practical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Career coaching
• within-person incongruities
• life satisfaction
• self-efficacy
• self-exploration

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the help provided by Dr. Sina Gessnitzer and Dr. Eva-Maria Schulte to gather the data in the group-coaching condition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Katharina Ebner is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Chair of Business and Social Psychology, at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Her research interests include coaching, career coaching, career development, stress management, and digital stress.

Roman Soucek is Assistant Professor at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Chair of Business and Social Psychology, at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He conducts research on resilience, digital stress, evaluation of personal development interventions, and escalation of commitment.

Simone Kauffeld is a Professor at the Institute of Psychology, and holds the Chair for Industrial/Organisational and Social Psychology at TU Braunschweig, Germany. She conducts research on competency development, team diagnosis and development, meetings, leadership and counselling.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.