And, then, what qualities are you ready to part ways with? In other words, which qualities are like toxins best removed from your system? The capacity for change with a ballast of continuity defines the Modern Elder.

One critical step in this process is to re-imagine the symptom not merely as a sign of a pathological process but as an endeavour to find meaning and regain control. This would entail acknowledging rather than dismissing these often bewildering symptoms.

We give everyone we dismiss a big severance—enough to take care of themselves and their families until they move on to another job. Each time we let go of someone, we offer several months’ salary (from four months for an individual contributor to nine months for a vice president). That’s why we say: ADEQUATE PERFORMANCE GETS A GENEROUS SEVERANCE.

To some people, this will sound prohibitively expensive. And it probably would be, if it weren’t for our efforts to eliminate unnecessary control processes.

Each party in this partnership needs to know when to be hands-on and when to be hands-off, when to push and when to pull back. Sometimes these divisions are clearly delineated. More often the roles need to be redefined when there’s a change of leadership, and often it is up to you to think through and surface that new definition. The process demands a diplomatic and deliberate touch to prevent the partnership from degenerating into a “you versus them” antagonism.

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 To discard outdated identities once and for all (that is, to do the work of ending), we need some good substitutes.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 as fantasies or that 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.