Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra

Then indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;

What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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儒家君子之道有三：仁者不忧、知者不惑、勇者不惧。

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“真实的自我”植根于过去，而“可能的自我”则立足于现在与未来。一部分“可能的自我”通过你当前所做的事情和我们现在所在的公司确定，另一些“可能的自我”却仍然是模糊不清的，只存在于你的个人梦想之中。

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人们通过实践而不是通过“反省”来了解自己“可能的自我”。

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急切的重大的改变会欲速则不达。一步一步地采取一些小的措施反而会使我们在重新界定自己的职业身份时，做到更加全面和更有依据。

大多数职业生涯的转变都需要3年左右的时间，这个轨迹很少成为一条直线——我们进两步退一步，最终驻足的地方会让自己大吃一惊。

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要想告别过去，你必须敢于涉足未知的关系网络，这不仅仅是为了能够寻找新的门路，更重要的是真正认识自己想成为什么样的人，最有可能帮助我们认识真正自我的人往往是那些我们不熟悉的人。

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It is nearly impossible to think out how to reinvent ourselves, and, therefore, it is equally hard to execute in a planned and orderly way. 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 change as we do.

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Making important career moves, and ultimately, life changes, requires us to live through long periods of uncertainty and doubt.

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The more unfamiliar the new possibilities, the more necessary it becomes to learn about them through direct involvement rather than planning. Because so many new ideas and bits of information surface once we get moving, spending too much time up front figuring out “the plan” wastes energy.

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How do we move forward and reinvent ourselves when our very selves have been so shaken? For starters, we must reframe the questions, abandoning the conventional career-advice queries— “Who am I?”—in favor of more open-ended alternatives—“Among the many possible selves that I might become, which is most intriguing to me now? Which is easiest to test?” Getting started depends on whether we are looking to find our one true self or whether, instead, we are trying to test and evaluate possible alternatives.

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A very different definition of working identity asserts that we are not one true self but many selves and that those identities exist not only in the past and present but also, and most importantly, in the future. Based on the work of Stanford cognitive psychologist Hazel Markus, this possible-selves model reveals that we all carry around, in our hearts and minds, a whole cast of characters, the selves we hope to become, think we should become, or even fear becoming in the future. During a career transition, our possible selves spur us to find role models whom we’d like to become (and whom to avoid becoming) and help us to benchmark our progress toward those ideals. The more vivid these possible selves become, the more they motivate us to change. Why? Because we strive to become more and more like our ideals, and we scare ourselves out of becoming our most dreaded selves.

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Only by testing do we learn what is really appealing and feasible—and, in the process, create our own opportunities.

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Working identity is not just who we are. It is also who we are not. Being able to discard possibilities means we are making progress.

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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.

 

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But the reason I wanted out, really, was much more fundamental. I just believed that if I stayed there until, say, age fifty-five,

and then put my feet up for five years and then at age sixty looked back on what I’d done, I would not feel that I had made the most of my one unrepeatable life. So I decided I had to get out.

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Until we have a story, others view us as unfocused. It is harder to get their help. Equally important is having a good story to tell others, putting it into the public sphere even before it is fully formed. By making public declarations about what we seek and what common thread binds our old and new selves, we clarify our intentions and improve our ability to enlist others’ support. Like Roy Holstrom’s elevator pitch, this is partially a problem of self-marketing. We need someone to take a chance on us since, by definition, we are moving into a new and unproven realm. Potential employers or coworkers come to know (and therefore, trust) us when they know our story and can accept it as legitimate. Sometimes it takes many rehearsals before it comes out just right. What happens in the retelling is not just a more polished story; we finally settle on a narrative that can inform the next step.

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If we knew from the start what it meant to be fully ourselves, finding a new career would be so much easier. But because we are growing and changing all the time, the oft-cited key to a better working life, "knowing yourself", turns out to e the prize at the end of the journey rather than the light at its beginning.

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We don’t find ourselves in a blinding flash of insight, and neither do we change overnight. We learn by doing, and each new experience is part answer and part question.

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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.

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Unconventional strategy 1:

Act your way into a new way of thinking and being. You cannot discover yourself by introspection.

Unconventional strategy 2:

Stop trying to find your one true self. Focus your attention on which of your many possible selves you want to test and learn more about.

Unconventional strategy 3:

Allow yourself a transition period in which it is okay to oscillate between holding on and letting go. Better to live the contradictions than to come to a premature resolution.

Unconventional strategy 4:

Resist the temptation to start by making a big decision that will change everything in one fell swoop. Use a strategy of small wins, in which incremental gains lead you to more profound changes in the basic assumptions that define your work and life. Accept the crooked path.

Small steps lead to big changes, so don’t waste time, energy, and money on finding the “answer” or the “lever” that, when pushed, will have dramatic effects. Almost no one gets change right on the first try. Forget about moving in a straight line. You will probably have to cycle through a few times, letting what you learn inform the next cycle. You will know that you are learning at a deeper level when you start to question what aspects of your life apart from your job also need changing.

Unconventional strategy 5:

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 so that you can experiment seriously without making a commitment.

Unconventional strategy 6:

Don’t just focus on the work. Find people who are what you want to be and who can provide support for the transition. But don’t expect to find them in your same old social circles.

Unconventional strategy 7:

Don’t wait for a cataclysmic moment when the truth is revealed. Use everyday occurrences to find meaning in the changes you are going through. Practice telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify.

Unconventional strategy 8:

Step back. But not for too long. When you get stuck and are short on insight, take time to step back from the fray to reflect on how and why you are changing. Even as short a break as a day’s hike in the country can remove the blinders of habit. But don’t stay gone too long, or it will be hard to reel yourself back in. Only through interaction and active engagement in the real world do we discover ourselves.

Unconventional strategy 9:

Change happens in bursts and starts. There are times when you are open to big change and times when you are not. Seize opportunities.

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