Exercises
Improving the web page. Examine the web page of your counselling centre from the
point of view of colour, visual organizers, etc. Try out a stronger contrast for main ideas
and more in-depth organization of contents.
Opinion confrontation. Find with your colleagues e-mail requests from clients (critical
incidents) that do not jeopardize confidentiality and, without reading the answer already
provided, try to propose an answer. Study then your colleagues’ answer together, examine
the differences and try to reach an agreement regarding the order, importance of the
aspects in the answer, or the best way to solve the client’s request.
Writing style. In order to practice warm and friendly writing, tape a few answer messages
sent to clients on diverse topics, then examine if they might be rephrased in a more
natural manner. Take into account these observations when composing future messages.
Vocational choice. Starting from Vroom’s expectations model described below, create a
Microsoft-Excel document for Vocational choice and use it with your clients.
Vroom’s Expectations model, created in 1964, starts from the idea that individuals make
decisions so as to obtain the desired results and avoid undesirable ones. The purpose is
maximizing the benefits of a decision by identifying the possible and important results
evaluated according to desirability. The results are then evaluated function of how
probable its alternatives are. Multiplying desirability by the hope for an alternative a
score is yielded, which indicates the force or rationality of choosing the alternative, the
best choice having the highest score.
Vroom’s decision-making model developed on the basis of client expectations
presupposes the following steps:
- identifying the possible options;
- defining all important results;
- establishing the degree of importance to the client of each result type (on a
scale of 5 where +2 is very important, and -2 totally unimportant); - calculating the instrumentality (probability of the occupation to meet
personal expectations) for each result; - calculating the degree of desirability by summing up instrumentality of
results for each possible profession; - establishing the access probability for each option (in our example 0.8 for
human resource inspector and 0.5 for project assistant); - obtaining the force of an option by multiplying desirability by the hope of
fulfilment.