What a career coach can learn from a playwright: Expressive dialogues for identity development

Abstract

Writing expressive dialogues can be used to assist individuals in developing their career identities — that is: stories that are needed to help people position themselves in relation to the current labour market. Writing expressive dialogues entails having written conversations with various parts of us — much like a playwright does with his characters — and making developmental gains in the process. In Dialogical Self Theory (DST) terms, it means talking to and with various I- positions on the page, perhaps forming coalitions, discovering counter positions, and innovating and integrating the self (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010, pp. 228–234). And as the playwright Miller suggests in the above quote, the creation of identity is an interactive process between self and others.