Writing your way to a new career: a look at the literature on narrative career learning

Are you ever unsure about what you want from your working life? If so, you may find writing about it will help. A new paper proposes that the act of writing can help develop career narratives and make sense of ourselves. Here's the big idea, and some approaches you can take to become a ball-point explorer.

Over the last few decades some career counsellors have begun to move from what psychometrics offer - fixed snapshots of current capabilities and interests - to begin exploring the value of narrative. Patterns over time, routes begun but abandoned, as well as underlying hopes and fears: all of these are material that can help in creating meaningful paths for the future. Now researchers Reinekke Lengelle and Frans Meijers suggest that with the right techniques to hand, this kind of progress can be achieved through solo writing techniques. After all, writing also involves dialogue - with the page, rather than another person - and is known to enhance meta-cognitive and self-reflective skills. Does it work, and how can we investigate what's really going on?

The current paper showcases methods for systematically evaluating writing content, a common one being to look at patterns of word use. Existing research suggests that shifting from one pronoun to another (e.g., They to I) reflects an ability to step in and out of a situation and gain control of its narrative. The mix of emotional words are also significant, with writing that contains more positive than negative words reflecting a healthier direction for a personal journey. However, an absence of negative emotions suggests an unwillingness to see the whole situation. Looking at such measures over time makes it possible to see changes in how individuals think about the world and their future – for our purposes, their career future.

The article describes a study using these techniques to explore texts produced at various stages of a writing course taken by students preparing for a work placement. The study used a very small sample that allows only a quasi-quantitative approach to the data, with no statistical analysis, and appropriately the article notes that the outcomes – that a writing course may help some people develop clearer career direction – should be considered highly tentative. My interest in this study is that it lays the groundwork for longitudinal research: I would want to see work exploring whether writing training leads to exploration of narratives, and whether that leads to better long-term career satisfaction.

It may be early days for the research on writing for career guidance, but that doesn't prevent you from exploring these techniques yourself, or even putting them to the test systematically. So here are some links which could help you get started, using the evidence base that currently exists. It should be emphasised that the techniques may well be more useful when delivered in a structured course such as the one described in the, especially for those fairly new to writing.

Creative writing

”Our fictional narratives offer important information about what is salient for us.” One approach is to write a piece that involves careers – perhaps imagining someone starting an exciting job - and then step back to reflect upon the themes that emerge. Alternatively, poetry and the construction of metaphor can also expose surprising truths as the limitations demands new ways of expression.

The authors reference Gillie Bolton as well as the collection The self on the page, and another online resource is here.

Reflective writing

To see experiences from a range of viewpoints. Lengelle's students were asked to respond to a series of prompts such as “Write a sentence about yourself and then write it again saying the opposite. Write each so that they both feel true” or “The one fear I have around writing (e.g. poetry/story) or the creative process is . . . ” followed by “I sense that an uplifting response to that fear might be . . .” Another method is to write out a dialogue between two perspectives that relate to work, such as the concept of the“Labour market” having a conversation with the archetype of an“Employed” person: “You need me”; "I don’t pay you a thought unless I’m disattisfied".

The canon suggested includes Stories at work also by Bolton, as well as this article in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Online resources include Monash University's page on the topic

Expressive writing

Try writing about personal topics , doing justice to their emotional dimension, and exploring how events make you feel. This emotional element permeates and overlaps with the others, but a clear example is perhaps the use of Byron Katie's “The Work”, involves a technique where a stressful thought is investigated through responding to four questions - eg “How do you react when you believe the thought?” to deepen and tease out the depth of the possible feelings.

Texts that explore the value of expressive writing include James Pennebaker's corpus of work, most recently The Secret Life of Pronouns, and Karen Baikie and Kay Wilhelm's paper on emotional and physical health benefits. Online resources at the national writing project.

 

Reinekke Lengelle, Frans Meijers, Rob Poell, & Mijke Post (2013). The effects of creative, expressive, and reflective writing on career learning: An explorative study Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 83, 419-427 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2013.06.014

Tendency to 'move against' others predicts managerial derailment

Derailment is when a manager with a great track record hits the skids, often spectacularly. It's highly undesirable, for the disruption and human harm it can involve, and its costs, which after tallying up lost productivity, transition, and costs of a new hire, can exceed twice an annual salary in the case of executive departures.

As a result, organisational researchers have developed measures of 'derailment potential' that consider key suspect behaviours such as betraying trust, deferring decisions, or avoiding change. Work to date has confirmed that managers fired from organisations are judged to be higher in these derailers, but these were post-hoc judgments that could have reflected biased hindsight rather than honest evaluations. 

To avoid this, a new study led by Marisa Carson utilises database information on 1,796 managers from a large organisation to examine behaviours rated during employment tenure instead of on departure. Each behaviour was rated by between eight and ten sources - from subordinates to supervisors – with ratings combined into single potential scores. Drawing on staff turnover data, the study confirmed that individuals exhibiting more derailment potential behaviours were more likely to later be ejected from the organisation. In addition, they were more likely to leave early of their own volition, suggesting they jumped before they were pushed.

The study also looked beyond the behaviours exhibited to the traits that might be behind them, through a personality inventory, the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), that all managers had completed. The researchers were exploring the philosophy that derailment isn't caused by a deficit in positive traits such as conscientiousness, but the presence of additional, unhelpful qualities, measured in the HDS, that resemble features of clinical disorders. These traits come in three areas: 'moving away from people' such as a cynical, doubtful disposition, 'moving against people' including manipulation and a tendency to drama, and a third area of 'moving towards people' involving an abiding eagerness to please and defer to others.

Carson's team predicted each of these areas would predict derailment behaviours, but in the analysis only one mattered: moving against people. This factor also predicted turnover of both kinds, and its effect on turnover was brokered by higher derailment behaviours. Conversely the 'away' area turned out to relate negatively, but non-significantly, to the derailment scores, and the 'toward' area didn't emerge as a coherent factor during preliminary analysis so wasn't pursued further. The story here, then, is that qualities that rub up badly against others, such as attention-seeking, idiosyncracy, over-confidence and rule-bending translate into red-flag behaviours that predict early exit from the organisation.

What to be done? This research provides some support for screening for these types of tendencies early in a manager's career, in order to inform decisions about future role as well as identifying priority areas for training and development. These efforts, should they avert derailment, are likely to pay off in the long run.

Marisa Adelman Carson, Linda Rhoades Shanock, Eric D. Heggestad, Ashley M. Andrew, S. Douglas Pugh, & Matthew Walter (2012). The Relationship Between Dysfunctional Interpersonal Tendencies, Derailment Potential Behavior, and Turnover Journal of Business and Psychology , 27 (3), 291-304 DOI: 10.1007/s10869-011-9239-0

How does availability of men in the environment affect women's career focus?

A recent article argues the ratio of men to women in an environment may influence women's pursuit of lucrative careers. Authored by Kristina Durante and colleagues, it begins by describing a correlational finding: women in US states with proportionately fewer men tend to have fewer babies and have them later, tending instead to be in higher-earning jobs. The rest of the article describes a series of experiments with female university students conducted to explore this.

The first experiment asked 89 participants to examine a set of photographs, ostensibly to test their ability to count frequencies of men and women in scenes from the local environment. Depending on the condition, photographs depicted more men, more women, or an equal sex ratio. Participants then rated items describing the importance of various life goals. The researchers found that participants exposed to a high-female sex ratio prioritised career over family goals to a greater extent than those in the other conditions. Perceptions of sex ratio appeared to shape personal priorities.

There are at least two explanations for why this effect exists. One is that sex ratio shapes the labour market, fewer men entailing more employment opportunities for women. The second is that sex ratio shapes a mating market, making finding a partner harder and thus encouraging a different strategy for life security. To differentiate between these, another experiment replicated the previous one using a similar exposure technique and also asked the 58 participants to rate how difficult it would be to acquire a good job or to find a mate (phrased in terms of marriage and dating prospects). Those participants exposed to a high-female ratio were more likely to see mate-finding as tough, but their expectations for the ease of finding a job were similar to their counterparts. Pulling the data into a model, the researchers demonstrated that putting career first was mediated not by their expectations that good work would be easier to find, but that a good mate would be harder to find.

A final study followed the same design, additionally asking participants to rate their self-perceived value to a mate via items such as "I receive many compliments from members of the opposite sex". Durante's team predicted that those who feel they may struggle finding a mate will be most responsive to these mating-market fluctuations, as they are more likely to end up alone. The analysis bore this out: when the environment was framed as containing many women, only those participants who personally felt they had a lower mate value placed a greater emphasis on career.

This article takes evolutionary research on sex ratios into the study of women's career decisions. It would be fascinating to see the same research pointed towards men, who also have desires to produce children and to advance their careers; does the mating market have a similar influence? The evolutionary argument predicts not, as it is based upon the concept of deep-seated divisions of labour based on biological differences. However, it could be that gender-based pay differentials shape this effect, and I wonder how different it would look in a society that had more equal pay than the US.

Durante, Kristina M., Griskevicius, Vladas, Simpson, Jeffry A., Cantú, Stephanie M., & Tybur, Joshua M. (2012). Sex ratio and women's career choice: Does a scarcity of men lead women to choose briefcase over baby? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103 (1), 121-134 DOI: 10.1037/a0027949

How can work be addictive?

You've been moping at home all week, your partner wisely giving you space as he senses how antsy you are. Then the phone goes: a buddy has scored, and it's a big one. Do you want in? You only want to know two things: when and where.

The weeks that follow are a blur.  You and the others – the gang - are in the same boat: when you're not doing it, you're talking about it. And when it's done, and you return to mundanity, that emptiness sets in. At the anniversary dinner your partner makes for you, all you can think about is the next big score.

This is a narrative of addiction. In a fascinating article on the New Zealand film industry, Lorraine Rowlands and Jocelyn Handy argue that this is just what freelancers experience due to the nature of their working patterns. They conducted interviews with 21 industry insiders, interpreting the data using interpretative phenomenological analysis, a technique that emphasises emotional features of responses, rather than simply looking to cluster content into themes.
They found a number of features that chimed with this addiction model. What were they?

Firstly, people tend to enter the film industry because it offers something scarce and intrinsically desirable: an opportunity for artistic expression. Moreover, freelance project work has a heightened quality: no lazy days at the office surfing the web and making small talk. As one respondent put it,

"From an artistic point of view there is a definite energy and pace.... you can actually come up with some incredible work and you couldn't have contrived it outside of that crazy environment. It's a collaborative energy that is created by pressure, by unreasonable deadlines and last minute changes."

This highlights a key feature of addiction: the addictive object or activity exists within a social context, where relationships strengthen with those who share the addiction and wither with those outside it. If all you want to talk about is the shoot tomorrow, your mundane friends are likely to seem like encumbrances; this leads to a vicious circle where the addictive context is the only thing that offers comfort.

Moreover, freelancing work involves extended periods of downtime, or withdrawal. A respondent notes that when their project came to a close "a lot of other people too went into depression. You start thinking 'oh god, I'll never get employed again'". These quieter times could be a time to reinvest in neglected relationships, but this can feel more like an obligation, whereas chasing ties with other industry figures remains urgent, as gaining new work involves being in the right networks. This means the relationships around the object of addiction continue to be prized.

Finally, freelance work is hard to quit, for the simple reason that without a company to formally exit, it's very easy to come back for another hit. What's more, given the specialisms of the industry you can very well be the necessary piece for your network of worker-friends to secure a piece of work, so exiting can be seen as a slight or even as a betrayal. One respondent took that plunge, and noted "all these people I had connected with were just like - snap - never seen me before....Even at the film première and the post thing - it was like - no one spoke to me".

The authors suggest this confluence of features may be common to other cultural industries such as “theatre, television, fashion, music and new media work.” And you never know; it might be worth examining the highs and lows offered by our own working patterns.

Rowlands, R., & Handy, J. (2012). An addictive environment: New Zealand film production workers' subjective experiences of project-based labour Human Relations , 65 (5), 657-680 DOI: 10.1177/0018726711431494

How 'who you could have been' could shape your workplace identity

Carter is at a formal drinks for a colleague back from secondment, part of a fast-track management scheme. he remembers opting not to apply for the scheme five years ago and wonders how things would be now had he taken that plunge: the overseas experiences, the pressures, the opportunities. What would that Carter be like? In subsequent months he finds himself returning to this idea, finally setting up a meeting with his manager, who is surprised to hear him reveal that he feels dissatisfied and wants to reinvigorate his career.

Carter has encountered an alternative self: a version of him that could have been. This concept, unpacked by Otilia Obodaru in a recent Academy of Management Review article, can be contrasted with most theories of self that work within a temporal framework - the actual past and present, extrapolating the future from an actual now. The idea of an alternative self integrates research on counterfactual thinking – 'if I had gotten that bus, I would be there by now' – into the psychology of self.

Developing an alternative self and integrating it with identity requires a few steps. First, you need a turning point, a fork in your life where you took one road over another. As the 'job for life' has given way to more boundaryless careers, there are more work-related turning points to reflect on than ever. Secondly, you must undo that turning point, imagining 'what if?', easiest to do when the event was controllable, like Carter's choice not to apply for a role. Finally, the alternative self must have opportunity and motive to be rehearsed mentally or to an audience. Identity research suggests a self-narrative tends to be taken up when relevant to ongoing desires or fears; perhaps Carter has been tiring of his fixed location and wondering if he will ever get out of the city.

Not everyone has an alternative self, the article quoting one interviewee from previous research, confessing "I'm a priest... I can't imagine not being one. I have no idea what I would do if I wasn't a priest." But many do: Obodaru cites research that reports of long-term regrets have increased fairly linearly decade on decade from around 40% of people in the 1950s to close to 100% in the last decade. Note that this measures only 'better alternative selves'; worse ones are also possible, such as those that Alcoholics Anonymous encourage their members to reflect on - the active alcoholic they chose not to be. Having an alternative self means you can compare them to your actual self, generating emotional responses, affecting satisfaction, and leading to better self-knowledge about strengths or weaknesses.

As the AA example makes clear, organisations can encourage or dampen the formation of alternative selves, by drawing attention to turning points, inviting the undoing, or giving space for rehearsing what that alternative would look like. At its best, this can lead to insight and greater resolve, such as collectively considering 'what if we had never dared to start the business together?' It can also lead to the 'crystallization of discontent' and a motivation to change circumstances. In this sense, the road not taken doesn't always vanish: it can live on in our minds, affecting our present and shaping our future.

Obodaru, O. (2012). The Self Not Taken: How Alternative Selves Develop and How They Influence Our Professional Lives The Academy of Management Review, 37 (1), 34-57 DOI: 10.5465/amr.2009.0358

Impediments to private sector careers for women in science, engineering, and technology

More than ever, women are taking advanced degrees in SET subjects: science, engineering and technology. Yet a 'leaky pipeline' means women are significantly under-represented at higher levels in academia. What's the experience of those who take their expertise into the private SET sector? A recent study investigates.

Authors Lisa Servon and M Anne Visser surveyed 2,493 women who hold or have held SET management positions in private companies, following up with focus groups. Many women experienced a grind in SET roles, with 8% of the sample working 100-hour weeks, compared to 3% of women in the general workforce. Yet only 9.6% of STEM corporate roles were held by women, worse than the 15.4% in the general workforce. As 41% of junior SET roles in private companies are held by women, this suggests the private pipeline is as leaky as the academic one.

What specific problems are women facing? 23% feel that women are actively held in low regard in their sector, notably in Engineering and Technology. Over half of respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment at work. Balancing work and family life remains a challenge. And a third of the group felt extremely isolated at work: these individuals were 25% more likely to view their career as stalled, presumably because they lacked support systems such as mentors helpful for progression and managing tough times.

Part of the isolation relates to the expectation that a good engineer (scientist, technologist) acts and thinks a certain, often stereotypically male way. One reaction was for women to act more male, even distancing oneself from other women by putting them down or disavowing their work. Another strategy was to find a 'pocket of sanity' in the organisation where being a woman wasn't an impediment to getting on with the job. But such a strategy can undermine career progression: 36% of interviewees reported making lateral job moves, and 29% down-shifted to lower positions at one point. Once a safe space is found, it may feel difficult to leave.

To address these obstacles, Servon and Visser suggest changing organisational culture, developing more diverse career routes and introducing family-friendly policies. Women at the top make a difference too: when women held at least 10% of the top roles, respondents reported higher levels of support and feeling valued. Changes could be of wide benefit as "some factors causing women in management to leave SET careers...may eventually drive men away as well", especially if they disagree that blunt criticism or living in your lab epitomise a functional SET culture.

Servon, L., & Visser, M. (2011). Progress hindered: the retention and advancement of women in science, engineering and technology careers Human Resource Management Journal, 21 (3), 272-284 DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-8583.2010.00152.x