Coping with Career Changes
Introduction
During an online event recently, I chatted with others about career development. When asked, one participant reflected on several career changes that led to where she is today. Initially I thought, “My my, that’s a lot of change.” But then I reflected on my own career. I haven’t lived in the same country for longer than a three year stretch since I began working over 20 years ago. In all of my movements around the world, colleagues and friends had experienced similarly consistent change. It seems a contemporary career is one that experiences a lot of motion.
Considering how much movement there is in a modern career, one wonders: How skillfully are we making those moves? How intentionally are we shaping them? How informed are we? Are there ways to do this better?
This is a conversation about potential spaces for control in one’s career, really. While there are variables which will impact your career (and over which you will have no control), there remain areas where you can be proactive, intentional, and skillful. Even in stormy weather, there are ways to remain the steady captain of your career ship.
What does this have to do with Professional Development?
Contemporary careers are complex. Particularly if you aren’t driving the change in your career, those shifts can make you feel vulnerable, unsupported, and in some cases even as though you are losing an identity.
It’s tempting to think of career shifts, changes, and transitions as a modern travail, but it’s was a topic on the minds of researchers back in the 70s. Douglas T. Hall wrote about the emerging phenomenon of protean careers, a career with frequent change, autonomy, and self-direction that was driven by the needs of the individual an not an organisation (Milkovich & Hall, 1977).
Coincidentally, if you wish to know more about protean careers, Hall along with Jeffrey Yip and Kathryn Doiron (2017) published a paper focusing on three empirically supported protean processes—identity awareness, adaptability, and agency.
The takeaway point here is that change is not new and it appears likely we’ll encounter it throughout several points in a career. Whether we’re driving the change, or the change is happening to you, it may be helpful to consider what you can do to support your well-being and motivation whilst coping and adjusting.
What is there to be done?
Let’s go through some evidence-based actions you can take to help you cope better with career changes. I’m going to focus on 3 different areas:
1) Career Mapping 2) Crafting Networks 3) Building Resilience
Career Mapping
Imagine (or even to sketch out) a map of where you are, where you’ve been, and a few places you’d like to go is useful. If you have a mentor or coach, talk through some of these career goals. Apply a goal-setting framework (e.g., SMART, WOOP, OKR) to clarify what you want / what’s in the way / how to get over obstacles
Use this map to get a clearer sense of your professional identity. (It might be useful to let it go if you’re trying to change careers.) List and gather up examples of your transferable skills while considering other roles.
Perhaps a useful exercise in relation to your identity is how you construct it. How do you talk about yourself and your work? How do you write about it in online spaces (e.g. on LinkedIn)? How have you come to understand ‘present’ you in relation to ‘past’ and ‘future’ you?
Crafting Networks
A description from Crafting networks: A self-training intervention (Wang et al., 2023)
“Network crafting is a networking strategy to improve the costs and benefits ratio of one’s professional network (van Gool 2022). Benefits (or resources) of a professional network include the access to diverse information, knowledge, skills (Zhou et al. 2009), and necessary instrumental/emotional support (Shin et al. 2020). Costs (or demands) of a professional network include time and energy invested in initiating or engaging in professional interactions (Brennecke 2020).” (p. 2)
Network crafting requires substantial effort to build and maintain. Also, the pros and cons of a professional network are shaped by an individual, their network, and their job/industry. When adding it to your activity, little and often is likely to be more manageable.
Consider how you can best use existing contacts, how to establish new contacts, and how to maintain all of them. Set yourself goals, and engage in reflection each week.
Did I reach my weekly goal?
What worked well? What needs adjusting?
How can I improve moving forward?
If you don’t know where/how to begin networking, consider an online networking course such as B-R-I-O (Building Relationships and Improving Opportunities). It is small scale with plenty of guidance and useful language - very useful for those who are not well-practised nor comfortable with networking.
Building Resilience
We’ve already covered two ways that aid in strengthening resilience, so we’ll focus on a third activity.
Have a goal setting approach (number 1)
Build supportive relationships (number 2)
Improve your self-efficacy
Albert Bandura (1977) defined it as a belief in your capabilities to organise and execute required action to manage anticipated situations.
While it sounds like self-confidence, it’s less to do with your overall perception of value or self worth in general and more specific to context and task. Research suggests that higher levels of self efficacy may be related to a person’s tendency to try again when faced with obstacles, setbacks and failures.
Bandura theorised four major sources of self-efficacy: Mastery experiences - Social modelling - Social persuasion - Psychological responses
Mastery experiences:
“The most effective way of instilling strong efficacy is through enactive mastery experiences structured through graduated attainments. If people experience only easy successes they come to expect quick results and are easily discouraged by failure. Hence, resilient efficacy requires experience in overcoming obstacles through perseverant effort. The route to high attainments is strewn with failure and setbacks. Success is achieved by learning from mistakes. Resilience must also be built by training in how to manage failure so that it is informative rather than demoralising.” (Bandura, 2017)
Seek out new tasks to support reaching your goals. Have your strategies in place for overcoming inevitable setbacks/failures/and flops of all sorts. This brings us to one of the other sources of self-efficacy: social modelling. Watch others successfully complete a task and engage in that behaviour to improve your own version of the task. This can also support your network crafting as you seek out strong social models and talk to them about their approach.
Final thoughts
Change is going to come in a modern career. Even if the changes are initiated by you, or they are seemingly small, they have the capacity to knock our wellbeing if not managed skillfully. By having clearer goals, strategies for failure, supportive relationships in our network, and strengthened resilience through high self-efficacy - we are better equipped to navigate changes with resolve.
“A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for.” (A quote often attributed to John A. Shedd, but who knows.)
Good luck, Professionals!
Additional Reading:
Why Career Transition is So Hard and How to Manage It Better (Ibarra, 2023)
Can job seekers achieve more through networking? The role of networking intensity, self-efficacy, and proximal benefits (Wanberg, Van Hooft, Liu, & Csillag, 2020)
Developing Career Resilience - Open University course
Works Cited
Bandura, A. (2017). Cultivate Self‐efficacy for Personal and Organizational Effectiveness. The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behaviour, 125–141. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405164047.ch9
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.84.2.191
Hall, D. T., Yip, J., & Doiron, K. (2017). Protean Careers at Work: Self-Direction and Values Orientation in Psychological success. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5(1), 129–156. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-032117-104631
Milkovich, G., & Hall, D. T. (1977). Careers in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22(3), 535. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392189
Wang, H., Demerouti, E., Rispens, S., & Van Gool, P. (2023). Crafting networks: A self-training intervention. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 149, 103956. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2023.103956