Book Review: Working Identity

I started reading books about career change. I am so happy to have read the book by Herminia Ibarra entitled "Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career". It is actually referenced in this article
http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/change/20041102-gunn.html (you can find this link also on my blog page under Career Articles). I vividly agree with Herminia on most of her points and I think this book is an excellent resource that I recommend everyone who is thinking about career change to read!

In summary, the author conducted her research by interviewing career changers. She supplemented her research with publications on the subject of career change and psychology that she references in her book. The end of the book presents what she calls unconventional strategies to career change.

While the current career books and career counselors advocate knowing ourselves first by doing self-assessment tests and exercises to discover our talents, or searching our passion through mental/emotional exercises, no one in the industry points out the importance of trial and error in the career change process, which helps in fine-tuning what we want to do and eliminating mismatches or unpractical choices. Herminia stresses on the importance of the exploration phase and states that career change is made up of the collection of the small steps we take that build our story. Action is more important than introspection and knowing ourselves. She points out that career change involves re-examining our identity and testing out our possible selves.

However, I think the author undermined a little too much the importance of introspection through the various self-assessment/personality tests. I think personally that both parts are important. Introspection provides the base from which we can narrow down the possible opportunities we want to pursue in the career exploration phase and can save us a lot of time and money. Without knowing ourselves, we may approach career change in a very chaotic way and our search may have no direction and could lead nowhere. I think that the action part of trying out several possible occupations is the complement of introspection.

Below are some excerpts from the book that I found excellent. They are so well written that I thought it is better to copy them rather than to paraphrase them. I hope that you will find these passages inspiring.

The following excerpt describes the transition period as being like a hurricane. It is an essential period that feels uncomfortable because it is riddled with uncertainty and ambivalence.
p. 64-65:
“The between-identities phase of a career transition is about bringing possibilities to life, proving they are feasible and not just pipe dreams, and learning whether they are appealing in practice or only in theory. To discard outdated identities once and for all (that is, to do the work of ending), we need some good substitutes. Old possible selves are always more vivid than the new: They are attached to familiar routines, to people we trust, to well-rehearsed stories. The selves that have existed only in our minds are fantasies or that have are grounded only in fleeting encounters with people who captured our imagination are much fuzzier, fragile, unformed. The middle period is the incubator in which provisional identities are brought, tentatively, into the world via the projects we start, the people we meet, and the meaning we lend to the events of that period.

What happens in this period sets the stage for the degree and success of one’s reinvention. Whether it takes months or years, living the contradictions is one of the toughest tasks of transition. Indeed, living with uncertain identity can feel like “living inside a hurricane.” But as we will see in the next chapter, premature closure is not the answer. People who can tolerate the painful discrepancies of the between-identities period, which reflect underlying ambivalence about letting go of the old or embracing the new, end up in a better position to make informed choices. With the benefit of time between selves, we are more likely to make the deep change necessary to discover more satisfying lives and work and to eventually restore a sense of continuity to our lives.”

The following describes the fact that our old social networks are counter-productive to our career change. They sabotage the change because they typecast us and are afraid to lose the person they know.
p. 120-121:
“Our close contacts don’t just blind us, they also bind us to our outdated identities. Reinventing involves trying on and testing a variety of possible selves. But our long-standing social networks may resist those identity experiments.

[…] But we need to realize that our inmates – spouses, bosses, close friends, parents – expect to remain the same, and they may pressure us to be consistent. Most people who have made big career changes have heard loved ones tell them, “You’re out of your mind.” Sabotage is not their intention, but a shared history has entrenched certain expectations, and reinventing oneself can amount to breaking the implicit “contract.” People who have quit smoking, lost weight, or gotten divorced are familiar with the mixed reactions of friends, who see the change as loss.”

The following two excerpts are a sequel to the previous one - we need to form new relationships outside of our old circle of contacts in order to successfully navigate career change, and these same weak-tie contacts are the ones that are going to help us to get where we want to go.
p. 122:
“Pragmatically, a career change requires weak-tie contacts outside the daily grind to provide leads, referrals, job information, and entrees to organizations and decision makers. And, emotionally, it is hard to get validation for a new self without making shifts in our social relationships. When change entails rethinking our very identity, we need substitutes for the people and groups we have to leave behind and role models for whom we might become.”

p. 130:
“If we are free to try out any identity we like, it is also true that we must rely on others to complete the picture of which we are only allowed to paint certain parts. The desired identity remains incomplete and tentative without the stamp of approval of a new peer group, mentor, or community. It is important to conduct our “role rehearsals” outside our usual circles because the old audience tends to narrowly typecast us.”

The following excerpt stresses on the importance of taking a risk and making mistakes in order to move one step closer to the new career.
p. 166:
“Another dimension on which to compare and contrast experiences concerns the outcomes of the career changes. Throughout the study, one question came up more frequently than any other: Did anyone regret the move into the new? Many people said they made at least one “wrong” move. But they learned from their mistakes and moved on to something else, adjusting their course based on their experiences. Of course, there is always an element of rationalization: After the fact, we easily conclude that we did the best we could. People did make trade-offs: Some struggled with lower incomes when they chose to pursue their passion, and others gave up some measure of challenge or intellectual stimulation in pursuit of a more secure future. But I heard great regret only from those who failed to act, who were unable or unwilling to put their dreams to the test and to find out for themselves if there were better alternatives. The only wrong move consisted of no move.”

The following outlines the unconventional strategies the whole book revolves around.
p. 167:
“Unconventional Strategies

This book started by warning the reader that there was no ten-point plan for making a career change. But some important general guidelines emerge from the many stories told here. This section distills those guidelines as a set of nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career: act, then reflect; flirt with your selves; live the contradictions; make big change in small steps; experiment with new roles; find people who are what you want to be; don’t wait for a catalyst; step back periodically but not for too long; and seize windows of opportunity.”

The following excerpt is about the fact that our identity is fluid and can change over time. Questioning and commitment are both essential to keep our identity vivid and alive.
p. 170-171:
“Identity, Lost and Regained

Psychologist Erik Erikson once wrote that identity is like a good conscience: It is never maintained once and for all but constantly lost and regained. Adult development, he argued, is a process that requires both questioning and commitment. The person who neither questions nor commits to a course of action obviously goes nowhere. Questioning that does not lead to a new (or renewed) commitment, as in the case of the perpetual student or the devoted dilettante, is not much better. Commitment without questioning produces an “organization man” who has no identity beyond title and function. To be a growing adult means to make commitments that are informed by prior questioning. As one of the career changers in this study put it, “There are two types of people. Some are always jumping. Some never jump – they settle down too easily and get stuck.”

Self-renewal requires some jumping and some settling back in. The kind of reinvention considered here is not a personality makeover; it is a process and practice that allows us to get back in touch with forgotten selves, to reorder priorities, and to explore long-standing or newfound interests. As in most voyages of discovery, the end points are never quite as we imagined them, and they are rarely the ones we originally charted. Sometimes all we know at the start is that we want to be somewhere else. “The end of all our exploring,” as T. S. Eliot reminds us, “will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” In between, we try on unfamiliar roles and experiment with trial identities, always updating our goals and methods, with each step coming closer and closer to becoming ourselves again.”

Note: You can find a link to this book under the Career Change Books section.