A Secure Base

All transformation processes, in nature as in society, require a protected space for change—the cocoon, the chrysalis, the womb, the make-believe space, the apprenticeship, or the internship. Making a career transition likewise requires psychological safety.^[15] To come up with a creative solution for a next career, we have to be able to test unformed, even risky, identities in a relatively safe and secure environment, an incubator of sorts in which premature identities can be nurtured until a viable possibility emerges. Relationships create such an environment.

In the 1950s, psychologists showed that baby animals could become so highly attached to mother substitutes like brooms and wire figures that they would ignore their actual mothers. Such studies formed the foundation of a more general theory about the sort of human attachment that is critical for any risk taking.^{[16 ]}These “imprinting” studies pointed to the paradoxical nature of self-reliance and paved the way for the notion that people, like baby monkeys, are only capable of being fully self-reliant when they feel supported by and attached to trusted others. In making a career change, we are breaking attachments that no longer work for us, while building new connections that can support us through the transition.

Many of our ideas about psychological safety derive from research on the stages of maturity and predictable transition periods that children go through. Children imagine various possibilities for themselves in the future, and they play out those possibilities via games, reverie, and make-believe explorations. The play world they create demarcates a region between an objective external reality and the entirely subjective internal world in which the child prepares for the hard work of making the illusions real in the external world.^[17] The role of the mother is to provide a safety zone in which the child can give rein to his or her imagination. In that space, the child feels protected, safe from any danger. He or she can gradually define and test out a newly emerging self, with the mother’s blessing.

What kind of adult relationship provides such psychological safety? In developmental theory, a “good-enough mother” neither stifles nor ignores the child, neither intrudes nor abandons, but rather gives the child enough rope for discovery, all the while conveying that she is nearby if needed. Likewise, a guiding figure is neither unresponsive when we need help while in transition nor overprotective when we need to operate and explore on our own. Harris’s old mentor was unable to assume this role—he could give Harris neither enough room to experiment with a general management role nor close enough counsel on how to get there. In adulthood, therefore, a guiding figure also helps us get to the next stage by creating a safety zone in which we can create, experiment with, and slowly actualize the new self just starting to take shape.

Like the child taking his or her first steps, the person trying to make a career change will find it difficult to take risks if he or she is preoccupied with psychological safety and security. People of all ages are happiest and best able to deploy their talents when they are confident that, standing behind them, there are one or more trusted persons who will come to their aid should difficulties arise.^[18] We need a secure base from which to operate. But there is an added twist when it comes to career change: The necessary secure base cannot be close to home.

Throughout this chapter, we have seen that the only way to make a true career change is by shifting connections from the core to the periphery of our networks—finding new peer groups with whom to compare ourselves, looking for guiding figures to encourage us, and joining new communities of practice. The contacts that bring us new ideas and possibilities are not always immediate sources of comfort and reassurance. We must also venture into unknown networks—and not just for job leads. Making a significant change requires more than a little help from our new friends, mentors, guides, and role models. As we’ll see in the following chapter, often it is strangers who help us make sense of where we are going and who we will become.