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Career changes are more common these days. As technology and competition redefine our work, people in mid-career are more willing to pivot for a more purposeful life, and retirement for some becomes a chance to begin anew. But we go about it in the wrong way, according to London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra.
“We like to think the key to a successful career change is knowing what we want to do next and then using that knowledge to guide our action. But change usually happens the other way around: Doing comes first, knowing second,” she writes in Working Identity.
Changing careers involves redefining our working identity – how we see ourselves in our professional roles, what we convey to others and how we live our working lives. Who we are and what we do is tightly connected. It comes about through years of action that led us to the moment when our discomfort and uncertainty now prods us to contemplate reinvention.
To change, we must resort to the same methods that got us to where we are. We can’t think our way through the dilemma we are in. We must act.
“To reinvent ourselves, we must live through a period of transition in which we rethink and reconfigure a multitude of possibilities,” she explains. “A successful outcome hinges less on knowing one’s inner, true self at the start than on starting a multistep process of envisioning and testing possible futures. No amount of self-reflection can substitute for the direct experience we need to evaluate alternatives according to criteria that changes as we do.”
Try different paths, being attentive to what each step teaches you and making sure it helps you to the next step. Individuals she has studied spent a good deal of time lingering between identities, oscillating between their old, outdated roles and the still distant possible selves they might be able to make out on the horizon. “Certainly, reflecting on past experiences, future dreams and current values or strengths is an essential and valuable step. But reflection best comes later, when we have some momentum and when there is something new to reflect on,” she says.
Some tips:
- Identify projects that can help you get a feel for a new line of work or style of working. Try to do these as extracurricular activities or parallel paths to your current career so you can experiment seriously without making a big commitment. You want side projects and temporary commitments, not binding decisions.
- Don’t try to find your one true self. Focus on which of your many possible selves you want to test and learn more about. Probe; test yourself against reality.
- Allow yourself a transition period. You have decided on a career change and are living between two worlds, holding on and eager to let go. She stresses it’s better to live the contradictions than to come to a premature resolution. “The months or even years preceding a career change necessarily involve difficulty, turmoil, confusion and uncertainty. One of the hardest tasks of reinvention is staying the course when it feels like you are coming undone,” she writes.
- Think small and accept the crooked path. Resist the temptation to make a big decision that will change everything in one fell swoop. Seek small wins – incremental gains. Accept that almost nobody gets this right on the first try. An important if somewhat discouraging signal will be when you start to question what aspects apart from your job need changing.
- Don’t just focus on the work. Find people who are what you want to be and can provide support for the transition. You are unlikely, however, to find them in your same social circles so you must branch out from your existing networks.
There is no one big, cataclysmic moment when the truth is revealed, she warns. Through everyday occurrences you will find meaning in the changes you are going through. Over time, it will clarify. You will have acted your way into a new career.
Quick hits
- Venture capitalist Sahil Bloom has a rule of thumb that you’ll feel great on 10 per cent of days, okay on 80 per cent and terrible on 10 per cent. It’s easy to feel disciplined and consistent on the days you feel great or even okay. Discipline, therefore, is about what you do on the days when you feel like crap.
- Charter Work Tech tested five AI-powered e-mail tools and chose Shortwave as the best for its ability to organize your inbox and take advantage of an AI assistant that can summarize, write, translate and answer questions about your emails.
- Advertising guru Roy H. Williams says as you increase your words you decrease their impact.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.