The Psychology of Career Decisions | Sharon Belden Castonguay | TEDxWesleyanU

Summary

The speaker shares a personal journey of losing their runner identity due to a knee injury and explores the impact of personal identities on professional paths. They discuss the evolution of career counseling, the limitations of passion as a guiding force, and the challenges posed by the fourth Industrial Revolution. The talk emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, questioning our life narratives, and embracing the messiness of career decision-making in a constantly changing world.

Takeaways

• 🏥 The speaker had to adopt an alternate identity due to a knee injury, which has been more painful than the injury itself.
• 🏃‍♀️ Running has become a significant part of the speaker's identity, and the inability to run post-injury is a major setback.
• 🌟 Personal identities can significantly influence and shape professional identities, affecting work engagement.
• 📉 According to Gallup, 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work, which impacts the bottom line.
• 🔍 Career counselors focus on internal reasons for work engagement, such as personal interests and motivations.
• 🏭 Historically, career choices were often dictated by family, gender, and social class, but this changed with industrial revolutions.
• 🔬 The military's interest in career counseling during World Wars led to the development of psychological tests for job placement.
• 💼 The late 90s saw a shift in career counseling towards encouraging clients to follow their passions, despite practical considerations.
• 🤖 The fear of the fourth Industrial Revolution and AI replacing jobs has led to a reevaluation of the 'follow your passion' career advice.
• 🧠 Humans are not as rational as thought when making career decisions, often influenced by unconscious biases and social surroundings.
• 🔄 The design thinking process is suggested as a potential framework for career decision-making in the face of rapid change and uncertainty.

Q & A

What was the speaker's initial reaction to the news that they would no longer be able to run?

The speaker found giving up their running identity more painful than the knee injury itself, as running had become a significant part of their identity.

According to the speaker, how do personal identities influence professional choices?

Personal identities can affect and create professional identities, as people's backgrounds, skills, interests, and societal influences shape the line of work they choose and their engagement in it.

What percentage of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work according to Gallup?

Gallup reports that 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work.

Career counseling evolved from helping people choose a line of work based on their background and skills to focusing on passions and personal interests, and more recently to considering the iterative nature of career decisions in the face of rapid technological changes.

null

What is the speaker's perspective on the advice to 'follow your passion' for career choices?

The speaker suggests that the advice to follow one's passion may not be practical for everyone, as many people are not sure what their passions are and may have other immediate concerns like financial stability.

How does the speaker describe the impact of the fourth Industrial Revolution on career decisions?

The speaker highlights the fear and uncertainty that the fourth Industrial Revolution brings, as it may lead to job displacement due to advancements in artificial intelligence, making traditional career advice less relevant.

What is the speaker's view on the role of self-awareness in career decision-making?

The speaker believes that self-awareness is crucial for individuals to understand their personal biases and societal influences, which can help them make more informed career decisions and avoid internalizing limiting beliefs.

How does the speaker describe the process of career identity formation?

The speaker describes career identity as a sum of all possible identities, influencing individuals in different ways at different times, often unconsciously, and suggests that it is a deeply personal life and career narrative.

What advice does the speaker give regarding one's career narrative?

The speaker encourages individuals to embrace the messiness of their career narrative, own their story, and not let others write it for them, acknowledging that the process is iterative and complex.

What quote does the speaker use to conclude their presentation?

The speaker concludes with a quote from Cicero, emphasizing that understanding oneself and making career decisions has always been a challenging and complex process.

Outlines

00:00

🏃‍♀️ Runner's Identity and Career Counseling

The speaker discusses the impact of a knee injury on their identity as a runner and how it has affected them personally. They delve into the broader topic of personal identities and their influence on professional paths. The speaker, a career counselor, highlights the importance of understanding one's identity in the context of career choices and discusses the evolution of career counseling from the early 20th century to the digital age. They challenge the notion of finding a career based solely on passion, acknowledging the complexities and irrational aspects of career decisions.

05:01

🎓 The Reality of Career Decisions

The speaker addresses the common misconception that following one's passion guarantees job satisfaction and success. They point out that many people are unsure of their passions and are often driven by practical concerns, such as financial stability. The speaker also discusses the fear of the fourth Industrial Revolution and its potential impact on job security. They introduce the concept of Design Thinking as a framework for career decision-making, emphasizing the need for self-awareness and the iterative nature of career paths. The speaker argues that understanding and questioning one's personal biases and societal influences is crucial for making informed career choices.

10:01

🧠 Personal Identity and Decision-Making

The speaker explores how personal identities, both conscious and unconscious, shape career decisions throughout life. They present a metaphor of career identity as a sum of all possible identities, influencing individuals in various ways. The speaker emphasizes the importance of owning one's personal narrative and being open to the messiness of the decision-making process. They conclude with a call to action, urging individuals to embrace their unique life scripts and not let others dictate their career paths, and they end with a quote from Cicero to underscore the enduring challenge of understanding oneself in the context of career choices.

Keywords

💡Alternate Identity

In the context of the video, 'alternate identity' refers to the speaker's new self-perception after a knee injury that ended their running career. It's about the psychological shift from being a runner to adapting to a new identity without running. This concept is central to understanding the personal impact of losing a significant part of one's identity.

💡Orthopedist

An orthopedist is a medical professional who specializes in the musculoskeletal system, particularly bones, joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons. In the video, the orthopedist's role is to inform the speaker that their running days are over, which is a pivotal moment that triggers the speaker's reflection on identity.

💡Career Counseling

Career counseling is a professional process that helps individuals understand their interests, abilities, and values to make informed career decisions. In the video, the speaker's experience as a career counselor provides insight into how personal identities can influence professional choices and job satisfaction.

💡Engagement at Work

Employee engagement refers to the level of enthusiasm, commitment, and emotional investment an individual has towards their work. The video mentions a statistic that a significant percentage of employees worldwide are not engaged, highlighting the importance of aligning personal and professional identities for job satisfaction.

💡Design Thinking

Design thinking is an iterative problem-solving process that involves understanding the user, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. In the video, design thinking is proposed as a framework for career decision-making, emphasizing the need for flexibility and self-awareness in navigating career paths.

💡Passion

Passion in the context of the video refers to a strong interest or enthusiasm for a particular activity or subject. The speaker discusses the common advice to 'follow your passion' in career choices, but also acknowledges the limitations and challenges of this advice, especially when passions are not clear or when practical considerations like financial stability are paramount.

💡Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize and understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and biases. The video emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in making informed career decisions and in not blindly following societal or cultural scripts that dictate career paths.

💡Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, refers to the current era characterized by a fusion of technologies that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. The video discusses the uncertainty of future job roles in this era and the impact on career decisions.

💡Behavioral Economics

Behavioral economics is the study of the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural, and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions. The video uses insights from behavioral economics to argue that career decisions are often irrational and influenced by unconscious biases.

💡Cultural Influence

Cultural influence refers to the impact of one's culture on their values, beliefs, and behaviors. In the video, the speaker discusses how cultural messages about personal identities like gender, race, and socioeconomic status can shape career choices and the barriers individuals may face.

💡Life and Career Narrative

A life and career narrative is a personal story that encompasses an individual's experiences, choices, and identities. The video suggests that understanding and questioning this narrative is crucial for making career decisions that align with one's true self.

Highlights

The speaker assumed an alternate identity due to a knee injury, which led to a deeper reflection on personal identities.

Running was not just a hobby but a core part of the speaker's identity.

The speaker explores how personal identities can influence and shape professional identities.

Gallup reports that 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work, which impacts the bottom line.

The speaker's interest in internal reasons for career engagement led to a career in career counseling.

Throughout history, people's professions were often determined by their parents, gender, and social class.

The first career counseling office opened in 1908 in Boston, marking a shift in how people chose their work.

The military's interest in career counseling during World Wars I and II led to the development of psychological tests for job placement.

In the late 90s, the third Industrial Revolution brought a focus on following one's passions in career choices.

The speaker challenges the idea that passion alone should dictate career decisions, especially given the high cost of education and debt.

There has been pushback against the passion-driven career narrative due to the uncertainty of the job market in the face of the fourth Industrial Revolution.

Design thinking is proposed as a framework for career decision-making, emphasizing iteration and adaptability.

The speaker argues that self-awareness is crucial in navigating career choices, as humans are not as rational as they think.

People often make career decisions based on unconscious biases and social influences.

The speaker suggests that career identity is a sum of all possible identities, influencing decisions in various ways.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and questioning one's personal narrative or 'script'.

The speaker encourages embracing the messiness of the career decision-making process and owning one's story.

The speaker concludes with a quote from Cicero, highlighting the enduring difficulty of making career decisions.

Transcripts

[Music]

recently I was forced to assume an

alternate identity started with this

cane I suffered a knee injury and while

I will soon have surgery and be able to

walk normally again my orthopedist

assures me that my running days are over

now for those of you who only run when

chased you may be thinking what a stroke

of luck a doctor sanctioned excuse not

to work out but since taking up running

after college it's become more than just

a pastime for me but part of who I am

Runner has become one of my identities

and giving up that identity has turned

out to be more painful than the injury

itself now like everybody I have a lot

of identities I am a woman a mother an

American a proud native of Rhode Island

I've had a number of professional

identities in my life tour guide can't

counselor schoolteacher graduate student

in developmental psychology podcast host

career counselor and it is through my

career counseling practice that I've

come to recognize how personal

identities can affect and create

professional identities I'm going to

talk a little bit more about how and why

this is so but first I'd like to address

why it's important according to Gallup

eighty-seven percent of employees

worldwide are not engaged in their work

there are a lot of people who study this

phenomenon largely because it has a

pretty substantial effect on the bottom

line

now the organizations and consultants

that study this tend to look at the

external factors for why people are not

engaged things like office culture or

wages as a career counselor I'm more

interested in internal reasons like why

someone shows a particular line of work

in the first place and my field of

career development has looked

somewhat differently over time of course

throughout much of human history people

didn't actually choose a line of work

you basically did whatever your parents

did and what you did for a living was

prescribed by where you were from your

gender and your social class but during

the first and second industrial

revolutions as people started moving

from the farms into the cities the world

of work broadened and the very first

career counseling open office opened in

1908 the vocational Bureau was located

in Boston's North End neighborhood and

served the local community free of

charge to help them navigate this new

world of work they interviewed them

extensively about their backgrounds

skills and interest and provided

background about local employers now

obviously this wasn't a particularly

widespread phenomenon but the military

started to take an interest in their

work they needed to figure out a way of

putting workers placed into jobs to help

serve the war efforts during World War

one in World War two

and by the Second World War they had a

lot of psychologists that they had hired

to develop tests specifically for this

purpose some of these tests are actually

still used today in various forms and

it's possible that some of you have

taken them maybe through a high school

guidance counselor through an employer

now by the time I started in the fields

of career counseling in the late 90s we

were in the midst of the third

Industrial Revolution the digital age

and the testing industry was still alive

and well but by then a new paradigm had

emerged that held that what we really

needed to would be concerned about was

our clients passions do what you're

passionate about and you'll never work a

day in your life right I remember early

on attending a professional development

session with a woman who was considered

one of the biggest names in my field a

very successful author she told the

story of a client with whom she had

worked who was really difficult simply

because she didn't have any clearly

articulated passion

finally one day in desperation the

counselor said to her give me a sense of

something you're interested in anything

at all the woman kind of shrugged

somewhat sheepishly and said well I've

always been kind of interested in

gorillas triumphant the counsellor

announced that she had gone on to work

for a local zoo and voila problem solved

passion wins now at the time I was

working with business students who

generally speaking we're not interested

in gorillas in fact I found that the

dirty little secret of most MBAs was

that they had gone back to school

because they didn't like their first

jobs out of college and they were

looking for a socially acceptable way of

hitting the restart button if I

suggested to them that they should find

their passion they would respond that

they were tens of thousands of dollars

in debt and that while they were

interested in finding a good

professional fit they were primarily

interested in generating a paycheck now

over the last ten or fifteen years

there's actually been quite a bit of

pushback around the idea of passion

dictating career decisions and there's a

couple of reasons for why this is one is

that most people have no earthly idea

what their passions are but another

reason for this pushback comes from fear

of the fourth Industrial Revolution what

difference does it make if we're

passionate about something if artificial

intelligence is going to take away all

the jobs even those who embrace our

robot overlords will admit that no one

really knows what the jobs are gonna be

twenty ten even five years down the road

so how do we help people navigate career

decisions in this new world order

one potential framework that has emerged

from this conversation comes actually

from the field of design the design

thinking process holds the designers

work with clients to really get to know

them well understand their problems help

define them they work with them to

brainstorm possible ideas

and prototypes and then test out

possible solutions those who are

proponents of applying Design Thinking

to career decision-making holds that

people who are working today will need

to go through a lot of different

iterations for the jobs that they do

they might have to try on many different

cells and avoid prematurely foreclosing

on any one area the problem with that is

that most people don't have the

self-awareness to do that well most

people don't take the time to figure out

who they are before making a decision

about what they want to be now if

there's one thing that we have learned

from the fields of behavioral economics

and psychology in recent years is that

we as humans are not nearly as rational

as we thought we were

for example we are predisposed to make

bad financial decisions like spending

too much money today and not saving

enough for our future selves to enjoy

retirement I suggest that we are just as

irrational about making career decisions

let me give you an example a number of

years ago I was working with a law

student she came into my office very

upset she had just received her grades

for the year and realized that she had

done so poorly that she was going to be

locked out of the jobs that would pay

her the kind of salary that was going to

be necessary to pay back her

considerable loss school loans as she

sat there sobbing in my office she

admitted that she simply did not like

the study of law so I said to her well

what made you decide to go to law school

because I didn't want to go to medical

school

it is a gentlemen of the jury I submit

to you that most people do not make

career decisions rationally but rather

based on deeply-held often unconscious

biases that they received from their

social surround they're highly

influenced by their parents their peers

their local communities and they

internalize a lot of these biases that

they see around them and they tend to

then follow others into things that they

have done as well they also tend to

internalize messages that they are

receiving from their local and national

cultures particularly around personal

identities like gender race religion or

socioeconomic status and will tend to

either embrace or foreclose on options

accordingly particularly if they

anticipate barriers for success

and let's acknowledge that a lot of

people do face barriers to success

particularly along the lines of gender

race religion socioeconomic status

sexual orientation but this is exactly

why I think self-awareness is so

important because not only can it help

us not internalize these biases that are

coming from culture but also help keep

us from making false assumptions about

others when it comes time for us to do

the hiring

what is tricky is that each of us as

individuals will internalize and make

decisions upon a lot of these

unconscious as well as conscious

personal identities at different times

throughout our lives and this is going

to be constantly in flux for those of

you who are more quantitatively oriented

allow me to present this as an equation

with career identity being the sum of

every possible identity you could have

all influencing you in different ways in

different periods of time a lot of it

unconscious

but I will admit this is not my favorite

analogy I tend to think of all of those

individual variables all of those

identities coming together is not an

equation but as a script a deeply

personal life and career narrative that

tells the story of who we are and guides

our decisions this is why in the fourth

Industrial Revolution we cannot program

computers to make career decisions for

us a script is deeply personal but we

also must learn not to just follow it to

the letter we must learn to understand

it and question it your script is

iterative and like any writing process

it's likely to be messy I urge you to

embrace that messiness own your story

and don't let others write it for you

and know that this process has always

been messy if one of my identities is

former runner another of my identities

is liberal arts college graduate and as

such I cannot end a presentation without

including a quote from a dead white guy

so I offer you this from Cicero to

underscore that throughout time this is

the most difficult problem in the world

thank you very much

you