We cannot
regenerate ourselves in isolation. We develop in and through our relationships
with others - the master teaches the apprentice a new craft; the mentor guides a
protege through the passage to an inner circle; the council of peers monitors
the standards of a professional group, conferring status within the community.
Yet, when it comes to re-inventing ourselves, the people who know us best are
also the ones most likely to hinder, rather than help. They may wish to be
supportive but they tend to reinforce - or even desperately try to preserve -
the old identities we are seeking to shed.
Changing career is not merely a matter of changing the work
we do. It is as much about changing the relationships that matter in our
professional lives. Shifting connections refers to the practice of finding
people who can help us see and grow into our new selves, people we admire in
some respect, would like to emulate in that respect, and with whom we want to
spend time. All re-inventions require social support.
But it is hard to get the support you really need, even
from career counselors, outplacers, or headhunters - or even from old friends,
family members or trusted colleagues. New or distant acquaintances - people and
groups on the periphery of your existing networks - help you push off in new
directions while providing a secure base in which change can take hold.
Although a person with whom you have had a long-standing
connection can be a guide, he or she is seldom someone you have been seeing
regularly. It might be an old boss or an old school friend you have lost sight
of. Often guides are completely new contacts with whom you feel free to try out
new personas without violating anyone's expectations. Whatever the original
relationship, the strong bond that can develop between you and the guiding
figure creates a safe zone within which the change idea starts becoming a real
possibility. A necessary feature of this relationship is that it develops
outside the web of routine interactions in which you have bee embedded (and may
be trying to break out of).
This is just one of many reasons that working with one of
our specialist career consultant/coaches can be so worthwhile.
And, just like guiding figures, new communities play a
number of important roles: They offer inclusion, provide a safe base, and
replace the community that is being lost. Communities of practice are an
integral part of the test-and-learn method because we need a context in which to
learn both the substance and style of the new self we are trying to become. Some
of us are lucky enough to find a guiding figure who can also teach us the tacit
knowledge of the occupation we are trying to enter; more often than not,
however, we have to learn by doing and participating in whatever limited way we
can in the life of the group we'd like to join.
It is important to carry our your 'role rehearsals'
outside your usual circles because the old audience tends to narrowly typecast
you. Consider how a person moves into a career the fist time around, as a young
adult. Apprentices work with their mentors and learn craftsmanship by
observation, imitation and practice. Newcomers to a profession or organization
are socialized by oldtimers, meaning that they are taught not only the required
skills and rules but also how to acquire the right look and feel - the social
norms that govern how they should conduct themselves so as to become true
members.
In the same way, re-inventing oneself as a member of a new
occupational world is a process of becoming an insider to that world, learning
its subjective viewpoint, language, demeanor and outlook. But since
apprenticeships and internships typically exist in institutional form for only
the young, at mid-career you are generally left to your own devices when it
comes to picking up the tacit knowledge of the new work you may wish to do. It
is up to you to create or find your own community that will be able to give you
the stamp of approval as your new peer group, mentor or community.
This
kind of re-invention not a personality makeover; it is a process and practice
that allows us to get back in touch with forgotten selves, to reorder
priorities, and to explore long-standing or newfound interests. As in most
voyages of discovery, the end points are never quite as we imagined them, and
they are rarely the ones we originally charted. Sometimes all we know at the
start is that we want to be somewhere else.
"The end
of all our exploring," as T. S. Eliot reminds us, "will be to arrive where we
started and know the place for the first time." In between, we try on unfamiliar
roles and experiment with trial identities, always updating our goals and
methods, with each step coming closer and closer to becoming ourselves again.
