Job Therapy

1

The Crisis of Identity

I thought this career was for me,
but now I'm having second thoughts

I sat down with Timothy, a technology expert who's been at the same company for the past eight years. In preparation for this interview, I told him I thought he'd be perfect for the chapter on a type of career goer called the Crisis of Identity-the person who's spent years perfecting their skills but has ambivalent feelings about their career and sometimes contemplates leaving it.

Within moments of the interview, I began to question my judgment. "I know what this chapter is about, and I am not the ideal candidate to interview for it," he tells me right out the gate.

"I've been the go-to guy for helping people with technology since high school," he says, followed by a passionate take on how "technology [is the] underpinning of every function of society." If Timothy's trying to shatter my assumption that he's not dedicated to the craft anymore, he's doing a good job. Plus, there's the small issue of his having no immediate plans to leave his job and not even really looking.

But over the course of our forty-five-minute conversation, I become convinced that Tim is indeed questioning his identity. There's an ambivalence in his assertions that perfectly captures the complexity of the Crisis of Identity career goer. People like him don't experience their change in career engagement in black and white-that is, they aren't committed workaholics one day, quiet quitters the next. They're in love with their jobs and in hate with them, often at the same time. Their feelings are messy and often take a long time to unravel or process.

For Tim, much of this messiness stems from the complicated relationship he has with his organization.

Like many organizations, Tim's office was experiencing a low-level malaise that had spread through the workplace like a virus. People stopped coming in, and in his line of work, the job can't be done entirely remotely (tech in conference rooms needed to be set up in person-with someone physically there to attach wires and check on the software, for example). As a consequence, mistakes were made and a lot of people either left or were laid off. Tim, who prides himself on never having caught this virus, left his role, searching for greener pastures. He wanted to be around colleagues who brought energy to the workplace. Or at least who were willing to come in.

But when he moved to a different branch of the organization, situated in a different building, all he found was more malaise and more unmotivated people. It was dawning on him that perhaps all information technology (IT) offices are like this-that the era of engaged tech experts is long gone.

I saw small clues that he was starting to question how this reality might affect his identity as a person who loves a career in technology. He casually brings up the possibility of moving to another state and working in higher education (which would require a trip back to school). But when I ask him about how serious he is about a career change, he waves me away. "That's for when I'm much older," he tells me.

During our interview I witnessed Tim oscillate between dreaming of a different career and leveling up at the one he has. Of starting over completely and of getting that big promotion he's always dreamed of. From my perspective, Tim is in the nascent stage of an identity crisis. There are some cracks, but nothing has broken yet. There are still enough good days to keep him coming back to work. But he is ultimately questioning whether a job in technology, which he's always prided himself on, is right for him anymore.

Others I spoke with are much further along in their journey. Susan-a professor turned UX researcher-had an experience very similar to Timothy's a few years before she decided to make a big career move. She had tenure at a university and was fully committed to her career in academia.

But her job changed starkly during the pandemic, morphing into a form she didn't recognize. The recession meant layoffs and unwanted changes coming from the top down, including change to who taught the courses she regularly taught. And with shifting standards came a change in herself she didn't recognize: a sudden loss of self-efficacy. No matter how hard she worked, it did not seem to matter. Despite being a top performer her whole life, the disengagement around her started to eat away at her confidence. "I was unsure of my value, even though I had accomplished a lot in my life and I was proud of the things I'd done," she told me. Susan made me realize that you don't need to be failing at work to have an identity crisis. Many transitioners like Susan and Timothy are doing quite well, but either they aren't recognized by others for their hard work, or the recognition no longer makes them feel good about themselves. The dopamine boosts have stopped coming.

Once she no longer felt like being a professor was an important part of her identity-a process that took time and a lot of networking to figure out-Susan was methodical in her career transition. In fact, many of the steps I recommend you work through were inspired by Susan's journey. She spent time networking with people outside her profession as an academic, learning how to frame her skills in new ways that often surprised her. She learned how and when to speak like an insider, which helped her develop her new career identity. And she learned which jargon phrases and acronyms were appropriate for her résumé. These small acquisitions of new knowledge added up, and eventually she landed her dream job.

What is a Crisis of Identity career goer?

This chapter isn't about people afraid of dedicating themselves to one career, or people who don't mind a few twists and turns on the path toward career discovery. It's about focused career goers who've had their hearts set for years on making it at one profession-people who've felt their personal identity shaped by their career, and who aren't the type to impulsively leave it. They have built their identity around what they do or what their job title is. Many are far enough along in their careers to have made it through the early weeding-out process, and some, like Susan and Timothy, have enviable skill sets. They've climbed to the upper rungs of their path, but then the doubts crept in.

The decision to leave is a tough one, perhaps the toughest of all the hurdles faced by the job seekers I cover in this book. It can affect your relationships outside work, especially if the career you now hold pays well and people are dependent on you for their livelihood. Susan got pushback from her immigrant parents, who spent decades making sure their children had opportunities they didn't. They were shocked that she would deviate from a path with a guaranteed steady income. Another transitioner told me that her partner accused her of being "irresponsible, selfish, and capricious." Her partner's job had paid for her student loans, and they had just finished paying them off. "But I couldn't stop the nagging question in the back of my mind, 'Is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life?'" she told me. Living with existential angst wasn't sustainable, so she quit before landing a new job.

I've talked to dozens of people who were facing a crisis of identity at work, some of whom were so terrified of making a mistake by leaving that they spent a good number of waking hours "job lurking" instead. Most followed a three-step process: scrolling through job ads and falling in love with a dream job, finding out who got the dream job, and then stalking the person online to learn about their qualifications and career trajectory. Few actually took the next step and reached out to these people to network with them. It's a bit like getting on the dating apps and never actually going out with anyone you match with. It feels like a step in the right direction, but in the end you're still sitting at home, afraid of putting yourself out there. The first stage of this book is about breaking the cycle of fantasizing about another career.

Stage one: Why am I unhappy here?
Learn your psychological starting place

For people who are struggling with their identity at work, there's a critical question they need to ask themselves before they leave their current job: Am I truly ready to leave this career?

Psychological readiness is a complex topic. It requires you to understand your feelings of attachment to your current profession (and current workplace) before you can move on to a new career. To start this process, the first thing you need to do is evaluate how strongly you identify with your current career and with the place where you work.

How strong is my current career identity?

I asked The Power of Us author Jay J. Van Bavel, who studies the ways our identities shape our thoughts and behaviors, why identity matters so much at work. Jay has conducted dozens of studies showing how strongly held identities can lead people to engage in all sorts of behaviors, good and bad. Identity can explain why people believe in conspiracy theories and join cults (as examples of the bad), as well as why they stay motivated at work and, in some cases, have a hard time leaving jobs they no longer enjoy.

I asked him if there's a way for people to gain insight into the strength of their own workplace identities, and whether there are signs they can recognize in themselves that a workplace identity has started to wane.

The first step, he told me, is to try to understand which identities are at play. "People are often not aware of their identities, but they constrain how you think, how you behave, and who you connect with. At work, two identities are relevant. First, you need to ask yourself, do you have an organizational identity? If you do, that might make it hard to leave for another organization, even if you plan to keep your profession. Second, do you identify with your role or profession?"

It might seem strange, but it's possible to have a strong organizational identity (you love your company) even if you don't have a strong professional one, especially if you have a lot of close relationships at work: people you'd like to stay in touch with even if you make a radical career change. As you start contemplating an exit, take some time to evaluate how strongly you identify with your current career. Below are items that Colin Wayne Leach, an identity expert and professor of psychology, developed. He measures two components of identity: identity centrality, or how central your career identity is to you, and identity satisfaction, that is, how much joy your identity brings you. Both types of identity are important for figuring out what you want your future career to look like, and they tend to operate independently of each other. It's possible, for example, to feel highly identified with your career (it's a big part of how you define yourself) even if it brings you very little satisfaction.

Insert your profession in the blanks on the next page and rate each of these statements from a 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much) scale.

These statements capture your identity centrality:

                A.           I often think about the fact that I am a







                B.           Being a
is an important part of how I see myself.



These statements capture identity satisfaction:

                C.           I am glad to be a







                D.           I think that  have a lot to be proud of.



                E.           It is pleasant to be a



                F.            Being a  gives me a good feeling.



The first time you take this test, answer both sets of questions twice: once for your career (for example, "creative director"), and once for your workplace, switching out the job title for the company ("Disney employee"). If you see that you have strong identity centrality and strong identity satisfaction with your career but weak centrality and satisfaction with the place you work, you might be less of a Crisis of Identity career goer than you think. As covered in the next chapter on the Drifted Apart, sometimes we feel so negative about our jobs that our feelings of discontent spread to every facet of our working lives, from how we feel sitting in traffic to the promotion structure of the organization. Your goal here is to make sure that you aren't mistaking a low identity with your organization for a low identity with your career. It would be a shame to ditch a career you still identify with simply because you hate the place you work.

Once you've taken both parts of the test (identity centrality and identity satisfaction), you will need to create two separate scores (by summing your total score and dividing by the number of items-2 for identity centrality and 4 for identity satisfaction). An average score of 3 or below (out of 5) means that you're scoring relatively low on the measure because 3 is the midpoint, and a score of 4 or above means that you're scoring relatively high.

For example, here are my answers:

                A.           I often think about the fact that I am a professor of psychology. (4)

                B.           Being a psychology professor is an important part of how I see myself. (5)

                C.           I am glad to be a psychology professor. (4)

                D.           I think that psychology professors have a lot to be proud of. (4)

                E.           It is pleasant to be a psychology professor. (3)

                F.            Being a psychology professor gives me a good feeling. (5)

                Identity centrality = (Answers from A + B) ÷ 2

Mine is: (4+5) ÷ 2 = 4.5, or relatively high

                Identity satisfaction = (Answers from C + D + E + F) ÷ 4

Mine is: (4 + 4 + 3 + 5) ÷ 4 = 4, or relatively high

Don't forget to fill in the blanks again for your workplace.

After you've taken this test, you might be wondering, "How do I score relative to others who are thinking of leaving their careers?" I surveyed two hundred people who were thinking of leaving their careers or are currently transitioning out of their careers. In analyzing people's career centrality and career satisfaction, I observed that on average people scored either high on each of these measures (above a 3) or low (below a 3); few were in the middle of the scale. Based on this observation, I created four different categories: