I just completed reading a summary of Suzy Welch’s book, Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career.” One of the themes in the book that is relevant to the role of school guidance counselor is the mismatch between the values a student carries into the guidance office and the aptitudes they have documented on various personality instruments. The chart below is a summary of some of the values and aptitudes explored in Welch’s book.
The role of a school guidance counselor is typically framed around three functions: academic planning, emotional support, and college and career planning. While guidance preparation programs emphasize the therapeutic side of the work– meeting with parents about academic and behavioral concerns and providing counseling for stress, anxiety, conflict, or adjustment– the day-to-day reality in many schools is dominated by administrative responsibilities. Graduation audits, standardized testing coordination, student scheduling, college applications, and financial aid advising often consume far more time than direct counseling.
What is missing from both the ideal and real world of guidance counseling is a process to confront a central problem highlighted in Welch’s book: addressing the mismatch between students’ values and their demonstrated aptitudes when they enter the guidance office. I will not describe the various assessment instruments Welch and her associates use to develop a value-aptitude profile. The purpose of this blog, like most of my writing, is to examine the disconnect between the goals of institutional schooling—the objectives guidance counselors are directed to pursue—and the therapeutic educational goals so often highlighted in school mission statements.
Recognizing and addressing this disconnect has become even more critical with the rapid development of AI technologies, which are beginning to destabilize traditional pathways to well-paying work — college credentials, internships, entry-level white-collar positions, and managerial career ladders. In turn, the conventional tools long used by guidance counselors — standardized tests, transcripts, and college entrance requirements — are losing some of their predictive power and relevance.
Setting aside a curriculum and school structures built around the conventional tools of guidance counseling, what now matters most are school organizations and programs that intentionally connect students’ values with their aptitudes—what Welch describes as the crafting of an authentic life and career.
| VALUES | APTITUDES |
| Achievement Adventure Competition Cooperation Creative Economic Return Service Structure Variety | Generalists Specialists Brainstormer Idea Processor Problem Solver Fact-Checker |
Alan C. Jones 