New Peer Groups

Even before Harris started to look for work outside his firm, he began to shift his point of reference to a new peer group. His boss left for a start-up, followed by a highly regarded peer, Georgina. On the heels of her departure, he attended an alumni reunion event where he met others who had successfully changed careers. It seemed like everyone was changing but him. Much like the participants in the “becoming an ex” study described in chapter 3, Harris began to identify with the values, norms, attitudes, and expectations of entrepreneurs and small-business people. As he sought out those who had already left Pharmaco and saw them accomplishing things they would not previously have imagined, his confidence and resolve were bolstered.

The same occurred for Julio Gonzales, a forty-three-year-old heart surgeon. When Julio started a one-year midcareer course at a public-policy school, he shifted his reference group from medical coworkers at his old job to fellow students and professors. He felt a greater kinship with the latter, and the new relationships that formed became doorways to new worlds for him. His new peers led Julio to realize that he was not a “mutant” for wanting to change; in fact, he became increasingly comfortable with his new affinities. New peer groups might consist of people who are experiencing similar doubts about old paths (e.g., fellow students in a midcareer course) or who are already doing the new (e.g., the small-business entrepreneurs Harris started seeking out). What matters, psychologically, is that we come to feel that important characteristics that define them also define us.

As our points of comparison shift from inside to outside our organization, and as we encounter more and more people who have changed careers, a “tipping point” occurs.^[6] Our actions become self-reinforcing: We start to feel more determined to make a change and seek out others who have already done so. Seeing their success makes us doubly determined to make a change, and we take other actions that in turn tip the scales in favor of change. Leif Hagstrom, who went back to school before taking the leap from a large Norwegian bank to a New York travel start-up, for example, sought out among his fellow students those who wanted to make a change. From them, he gained validation for his feelings. In the same way that after we buy a new automobile, we notice how many other people have the same car, once we have decided to change, we look for information that confirms our emerging beliefs (and ignore evidence that might disconfirm our point of view).^[7]

Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

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