The life-career rainbow
Get ready to read about rainbows, career theories, and a guy named Super. I hope to challenge your mental model of how careers progress.
We've been stuck in a career development trance that's all about "fit", and it's time for that mental block to end.
HOW CAREER THEORIES BEGAN
Meet Frank.
Frank Parsons is known as the "father of career development" and back in 1909, he proposed three broad factors that shape our career choices:
Understanding oneself
Having specific knowledge of the world of work
Understanding the relationship between the two
(Note: I'm a fan of point three because it points to intersections)
This was seen as a novel schema to make sense of career decision making at that time. However, career counselors chose to focus mostly on Parsons' second point. That is until the Great Depression happened and large scale unemployment was felt across the nation.
Around this time, it became important to classify people in a meaningful way so they "fit" into the right job. Shortly after, the General Aptitude Test was developed to increase selection and placement of army recruits, and the role of career counselors began to expand rapidly.
Parson's theory was renamed to the "trait and factor" theory.
Thus, a new era of personality assessments mapped to career placement began. And this legacy remains with us today.
(Raise your hand and say "I" if you've taken one.)
Stay with me, this is about to get more interesting.
In the 1950s, a disruptor in the career development world arrived.
His name is Donald Super! (I'm not joking, great name.)
Super had a different idea about how careers are shaped that went against popular opinion and the dominant methods.
While every other career counselor was helping individuals match their abilities and traits to the requirements of the job, fixating on congruency and the "right fit," Super believed this model was too static and insufficient.
He proclaimed, "occupational choice should be seen as an unfolding process, not a point-in-time decision."
Super embarked on developing a comprehensive career theory that connected two important dots:
career development is a lifelong process unfolding in a series of developmental stages, and
career selection is not a one-shot decision but the cumulative outcome of a series of decisions
To emphasize a key point here, Super combined life development stages with identity research/ self-concept work and career theory into a radical new comprehensive career theory.
It's rare to find another researcher who maps all these variables together. My research shares a ton in common with Super's.
SELF-CONCEPT & OCCUPATION
Super declared that self-concept (the way a person sees themselves) is central for how a person chooses to make career decisions. And, self-concept is something that begins forming in our infancy.
As we grow, so does our self-concept. As we adapt, change, and gain new experiences, so does our sense of who we are, which in turn translates into new or different vocational preferences and interests.
I call this professional identity work, but it's self-concept work too.
THE LIFE-CAREER RAINBOW
Eventually, Super's theory became known as the Life-Career Rainbow. The image is below, and there's a lot to it. I won't go into too much detail. You can investigate more here.
The outer edge of the rainbow represents age and life stages starting with birth on the left. The inner rainbows represent various social roles that interact throughout our lifespan.
The fact that the rainbows overlap at different points, and narrow or thicken in height, shows how we hold multiple social functions, and they constitute core parts of our identity at different stages.
By creating a visual that depicts lifespan with developmental phases and various identities, we understand how our roles, values, and identities wax and wane over time, AND that this is normal, healthy, and expected.
To fully understand a person and their career, it is necessary to explore their unique constellation of rainbows and the interactions between and among each row.
FINAL TAKEAWAY
As we think about career trajectories in 2022, where are the models that are helping us make sense of our self-concept from a lens of developmental theory + life stage + market demands + workforce trends + economic forces?
That's the kind of career advisor I want to work with!
Lastly, a quote I read in a newsletter this week that felt right to share:
"Work has been the most important thing in my life. It’s my identity, and has been the greatest source of reward. Yes, my kids mean more to me now. But, for 35 years, the majority of my waking hours, effort, skills, and even relationships have been focused on work. Is that dysfunctional, or American? The answer is yes."
- Scott Galloway