The Psychology of Career Decisions | Sharon Belden Castonguay | TEDxWesleyanU
Summary
TLDRThe 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.
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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
🏃♀️ 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.
🎓 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.
🧠 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Alternate Identity
💡Orthopedist
💡Career Counseling
💡Engagement at Work
💡Design Thinking
💡Passion
💡Self-Awareness
💡Fourth Industrial Revolution
💡Behavioral Economics
💡Cultural Influence
💡Life and Career Narrative
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
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