Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your CareerHow Successful Career Changers Turn Fantasy into RealityWhether as a daydream or a spoken desire, nearly all of us have entertained the notion of reinventing ourselves. Feeling unfulfilled, burned out, or just plain unhappy with what we’re doing, we long to make that leap into the unknown. But we also hold on, white-knuckled, to the years of time and effort we’ve invested in our current profession.In this powerful book, Herminia Ibarra presents a new model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned from "career experts." While common wisdom holds that we must first know what we want to do before we can act, Ibarra argues that this advice is backward. Knowing, she says, is the result of doing and experimenting. Career transition is not a straight path toward some predetermined identity, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become.Based on her in-depth research on professionals and managers in transition, Ibarra outlines an active process of career reinvention that leverages three ways of "working identity": experimenting with new professional activities, interacting in new networks of people, and making sense of what is happening to us in light of emerging possibilities.Through engrossing stories—from a literature professor turned stockbroker to an investment banker turned novelist—Ibarra reveals a set of guidelines that all successful reinventions share. She explores specific ways that hopeful career changers of any background can:
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Other editions - View all
Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career Herminia Ibarra No preview available - 2003 |
Working Identity, Updated Edition, with a New Preface: Unconventional ... Herminia Ibarra No preview available - 2023 |
Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career Herminia Ibarra No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
activities allow basic become Brenda Buddhist business school career change career reinvention career transition change careers communities of practice consulting context course create decision defined Edgar Schein executive explore feel firm freelance friends Gary going guiding figure Harris headhunters idea identity insight interests interview investment investment bank John’s June June’s knew leap leaving lives looking mentor midcareer move never Nicholson Baker nonprofit offer one’s options organization organizational organizational development ourselves palliative care path person Pharmaco Pierre and Lucy possible practice problem professional question realized reinvention process relationships role models sabbatical scuba diving shift side project social someone start-up started stay step back Susan taking the leap teaching tell theoretical sampling there’s things thought time-out trying Unconventional strategy unfreezing wasn’t work-life balance