What Our Beliefs Beget: Identifying for Identity Development
“The turnaround moment for me was realizing my power in my situation, in my career. My coach helped me to identify the self-limiting beliefs that were holding me back from accepting the career identity that I desperately wanted.”
My dissertation focused heavily on the development of physician identity in their career, organization, and peers. I found that each of these aspects of identity heavily influence how we show up in certain teams, in different environments, and over the span of our careers. You and I are no different in our career identity development from these physicians.
Even as I write this, I am on the cusp of transitioning my social and career identity. Again.
My career identity journey was activated about 5 years ago when I met with an executive coach for the first time. I had to advocate for myself, create a business case, and even get HR involved to support the rationale for my manager to hire an executive coach for me. This was a 6-month process! Overall though, I was burned out. I felt like I had no path forward. I didn’t know where to go next.
As I talked with my career coach, I realized that I had imposter syndrome, self-limiting beliefs, and difficulty asking my leader for what I needed. In fact, my relationship with my leader, one whom I had worked with for about 7 years in various roles, was on the rocks. Our communication had become combative, avoidant, and downright awful. I didn’t know if it could or would get better, even with the help of a professional. I considered leaving the company every day.
The turnaround moment for me was realizing my power in my situation, in my career. My coach helped me to identify the self-limiting beliefs that were holding me back from accepting the career identity that I desperately wanted. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be a leader that others looked up to. I wanted to be more involved in my community. I wanted to engage with thought leaders in the talent development and learning space. These were things that I felt were out of my reach, mostly because of how I was viewing myself in the sphere of my career, my peers, and my influence. This was the catalyst for me to begin shifting my own identity about my career.
For a long time, nearly 7 years, I was living and breathing my organizational identity, believing it would get me ahead. However, during this period of introspection, I left my organizational identity on the backburner because it wasn’t something that felt necessary to help me get where I wanted to go. Then, I worked on my social identity. Who were the peers that I was hoping to have in this next phase of my career? Who did I need to begin separating myself from or spending less time with? How did I want my new peers and others in the industry to view me? What norms and values did I need to start embracing as part of this new social group?
After asking these questions, I started to have answers. I applied to Johns Hopkins University (and was accepted!) which were the peers that I wanted to have in my next career phase. I also began mentoring undergraduates for the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business and started attending their events. I made the decision to disengage with people at work who were negative or didn’t have the same goals as I did. I embraced the fact that I needed to step up my game as a manager, as a leader, and really start to learn more about and engage with the talent development community. I joined LinkedIn groups, attended local events for women’s networking, and volunteered in the community. As I began to do this work, my career identity started to take shape.
Within a year, I shifted my perspective on where I saw myself in my career, and it has been a journey ever since then. I am continually re-evaluating what is meaningful to me in my career, what I want to do to create more value for the people I serve and for the work that feels like I’m making a difference. With that said, I have changed jobs 3 times in the last 3 years. My career identity now is more focused on how I can make the biggest impact with my influence, what opportunities give me the space to grow and expand my skill set, and the ability to learn from the leaders around me.
As you consider your own identity in your career or workplace, ask yourself these 3 questions…
- What self-limiting beliefs do I have that prevent me from taking the next step?
- What is important to me from an identity perspective—social, organizational, career, or something else? (This can help you find a focal area to start identity development.)
- Who can help you in your own identity journey?
As I alluded to at the beginning of this post, I’m still on this identity transformation journey. I am continuing to evolve my social identity and understand what norms and values I need to adopt for a new peer group. I am continuing to cultivate my career identity in talent development and learning to hone in on what facets of the industry I can impart my knowledge and skills in and how I can advance the work already underway. However, what’s most important to me in this phase is that I continually evaluate my limiting beliefs about what I want to achieve and accept my abilities to reach those goals.