Working Identity Quotes

“It takes, on average, three years from the time a person decides to leave the company until the day he or she walks out the door. Those are not good or productive years.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“Rarely does “becoming an ex” happen as a result of one sudden decision. Instead, it happens over a period of time, one that often begins before we are fully aware of what is happening.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“It’s always ugly in the middle. At the root of transition is “transit,” a voyage from one place to another. As in any voyage, there is a departure, a disorienting time of travel and, finally, a destination. Transitions guru William Bridges calls the time between endings and new beginnings the “neutral zone,” a “neither here nor there” psychological space where identities are in flux and people feel they have lost the ground beneath their feet.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“To be in transit is to be in the process of leaving one thing, without having fully left it, and at the same time entering something else, without being fully a part of it.2 It is a gestation period of provisional, tentative identity when many different selves are possible and none are obvious. The psychology of this in-between period has been described as ambivalence: We oscillate between “holding on” and “letting go,” between our desire to rigidly clutch the past and the impulse to rush exuberantly into the future.3 Over a period of months or even years, we move back and forth between these poles as we explore new roles and possibilities. Rather than being a sign of one’s lack of readiness, this moving back and forth is in fact the key to successful transitioning. It is how we stave off premature closure until we have fully explored alternatives.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“this in-between period is not a literal space between one job and the next but a psychological zone in which we are truly between selves, with one foot still firmly planted in the old world and the other making tentative steps toward an as-yet undefined new world. Whether a person is working two jobs at once, finishing a lame-duck period, in outplacement, or taking an extended time to reflect on what comes next, the experience that June described as “living inside a hurricane” is common. It is a time rife with anticipation, confusion, fear, and all sorts of other mixed feelings.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“Only by testing do we learn what is really appealing and feasible—and, in the process, create our own opportunities.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“How do we move forward and reinvent ourselves when our very selves have been so shaken? For starters, we must reframe the questions, abandoning the conventional career-advice queries—“Who am I?”—in favor of more open-ended alternatives—“Among the many possible selves that I might become, which is most intriguing to me now? Which is easiest to test?” Getting started depends on whether we are looking to find our one true self or whether, instead, we are trying to test and evaluate possible alternatives.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“This is not to say that “what we do” is tantamount to “who we are,” but for most of us, work is an important source of personal meaning and social definition. Work activities and relationships are tightly woven into the fabric of our lives. In fact, work often provides the defining framework within which we set priorities and make decisions about other important facets of our lives. It is no wonder we feel so lost when that framework is in question.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“Once we are armed with more self-knowledge, the plan-and-implement method urges us to swing into action and proposes a thoughtful series of logical steps: • Research career fields. (“Knowing your interests and most enjoyable skills allows you to begin matching them with professions and industries.”) • Develop at least two different tracks or lists of ideas. (“One might be a variation on what you’re currently doing, while another might be a completely different profession than you’re in now.”) • Go out into the market for a reality check. (“Begin researching your chosen field by reading about it and joining professional groups. Network with people in the same career and ask them what the day-to-day work is really like.”) • Home in on a career target and develop a strategy for getting there. (“If you can identify your long-range target, you can identify a critical pathway for getting there.”)”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“all face two basic and interrelated questions: What to? How to?”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“Sometimes the best way to find oneself is to flirt with many possibilities.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“Change always takes much longer than we expect because to make room for the new, we have to get rid of some of the old selves we are still dragging around and, unconsciously, still invested in becoming.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“the fastest way to get to people we don’t already know is through contacts as far away as possible from our daily routine.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

“that none of their existing contacts could help them reinvent themselves. That the networks we rely on in a stable job are rarely the ones that lead us to something new and different.”
― Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career