Working Identity – Herminia Ibarra

“Then indecision brings its own delays,

And days are lost lamenting over lost days.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;

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

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Neither Lucy nor Pierre planned their way into their transitions, nor did they kick things off with a good dose of self-analysis. Instead, events in their lives and work led them to envision a new range of possible selves, the various images—both good and bad—of whom we might become that we all carry.

With each round of interviewing, June saw the links between old and new more clearly: “At first I wondered what I would do with my knowledge of literature. It seemed like such a waste. But then I realized that what I have always wanted is a job that keeps me constantly interested and always learning new things.” With each round, she also met more and more people who, like her, had “unconventional backgrounds,” or who impressed her as role models for whom she’d like to become: “I met an extraordinary woman—super smart and super nice—in fixed-income research, who graduated from my alma mater around the same time I did.

A working identity, however, is not merely what we do and with whom; it lies also in the unfolding story of our lives. Throughout a career transition, the narratives we craft to describe why we are changing (and what remains the same) also help us try on possibilities. June’s attempts at explaining herself—why she wanted to make such a seemingly “crazy” career change, why a potential employer should take a chance on her, why she was attracted to a company she had never heard of a day before—were at first provisional, sometimes clumsy ways of redefining herself. But each time she wrote a cover letter, went through an interview, or updated friends and family on her progress, she better defined what was exciting to her, and in each public declaration of her intent to change careers, she committed herself further.

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 To discard outdated identities once and for all (that is, to do the work of ending), we need some good substitutes.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