Where are you in your career cycle? Super’s career stages and Levinson’s life development models

I recently wrote about how our choice of careers can be largely determined by culture and genetics. What about our path within that career choice? Are we predestined to perform a certain way based on a prescribed career stage?

I consider these questions in light of the changes in Australian politics this week. At least one person has had to unexpectedly reassess her career options and both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd are entering into new potential stages in their careers. In doing so they are sharing in what is experienced by the wider working population on a regular basis.

Careers as cycles

Viewing careers in stages aligns with a perspective that much of life happens in cycles.  We wake and sleep according to the cycle of the sun, profits rise and fall based on seasons, business outcomes are measured by “month-end” and “financial years”, and markets follow life-cycles of projects, products and organisations.

Career theorist Donald Super articulated a similar cycle to our careers in his life-span and life-cycle approach to career development.  Super identified five stages and the types of tasks typically associated with each stage:

1. Growth (fantasy, interests, and curiosity)
2. Exploration (crystallizing, specifying, and implementing)
3. Establishment (stabilising, consolidating, frustration, and advancing)
4. Maintenance (holding, updating, stagnation, and innovating),
5. Decline (decelerating, retirement planning, and retirement living)

Others such as Daniel Levinson generalized these stages to age ranges:

• Entering adult world (22-28)
• Thirties transition (29-33)
• Settling down (34-39)
• Mid-life transition (40-45)
• Entering middle adulthood (46-50)
• Fifties transition (51-55)
• Culmination of middle adulthood (56-60)

These age brackets do not necessarily fit comfortably onto Super’s stages, and in society we do not have agreement on what we mean by a “career stage”. I recently took an online survey that asked me to select my own career stage out of the following options:

• Early stage (first 5 years in the workforce)
• Mid stage (5-15 years in the workforce
• Having a career break
• Looking for employment
• In education
• Re-educating
• Re-entry (returning to work after a career break)
• Part-time
• Full time
• Contractor
• Mature stage (more than 15 years in the workforce)

Apart from the fact that multiple options were not accommodated (e.g., I am mature stage, full time, and re-entry), the question highlights that many view career stages as what they are doing right now as compared to where we are in a wider cycle.

Research has confirmed that cycles exist, but they can often be in the form of “mini-cycles”. For example, Julia Gillard may now be re-entering into Exploration, a stage she forced Kevin Rudd into only a few years prior.  Kerr Inkson highlights the mini-cycle concept in his book Understanding Careers in a depiction I am sure Gillard, Rudd and the Australian population would prefer not to have as a reality:

“A 40-year career may not be 40 years of experience but one year of experience 40 times over”

Caveats to the cycle

A challenge in any model or metaphor is that of generalization.  The only thing we all have in common is that we belong to the same species.  Apart from that binding factor, there are some significant characteristics that alter how we fit any prescribed model.

In addition to nationality and geographic location, two factors that significantly impact the career cycle are gender and market changes.

Gender

Early research on careers was conducted by men using male participants. There are significant differences in career cycles between men and women. In addition to challenges females face in career progression, women also often experience conflict between split careers as primary carers and professionals.  This can result in women experiencing a revitalized growth and exploration stages in their 40s and 50s when children leave home.

This distinction is important, as seen by the media highlight of Julia Gillard as Australia’s first female prime minister.

Market changes

Globalisation, changing industries, and changing technologies have a disruptive impact on careers.  Just as the electric light largely did away with the candlestick maker, entire industries can expect to be eliminated through new technologies such as additive manufacturing, mobility, and on-demand digital content.

We navigate these changes to the best of our ability. Those riding the wave of technology attempt to plan and react accordingly, but certain disruptions can prompt a re-engagement with growth and exploration stages. A technology stream becoming obsolete can cause a career re-assessment as surely as a political leadership spill.

Five things to consider in your career stage

All caveats aside, there are certain things research has shown about career stages.

1. Career stage and performance

There are many stereotypes about age and career performance. These stereotypes have repeatedly been disproven over the years. A 1989 study of 535 sales people in the US assessed career decisions and job attitudes against career stages. The research showed that people later in their career were less likely to leave, had fewer promotion aspirations but had higher performance and greater job involvement.

Times change and my previous comments on generalising apply, but your age and stage do not necessarily dictate your performance.

2. Your self-image defines your career

We all have a self-image, our own perception of who we are. We choose our career in part based on this self-image. As we progress through our career stages, we make career choices based on the extent that we feel those choices reinforce this self-image.

Want a better career? Maintaining a positive self-image plays a role.

3. Develop career maturity

How effective we are at progressing within each stage is defined as our “career maturity”. This is an unfolding process, not a single point-in-time event.

Our career maturity is measured in our ability across five dimensions:

1. Plan: Have a planful attitude toward coping with career stages and tasks
2. Gain information: Gather information about educational and vocational opportunities
3. Explore: Explore the world of work
4. Make decisions: Know how to make good career decisions
5. Be realistic: Be able to make realistic judgments about one’s self and suitable occupations.

Participants who anticipated career change planfully and realistically, even when their jobs appeared to be secure, cited better experiences of the transition and perceived themselves to be coping better than did participants who ignored signs of change or reacted unrealistically soon after job loss. Plan and be prepared, even when things are going well.

4. Stay positive!

Negative career thoughts have been linked to depression, increased job avoidance behavior and low job satisfaction, and decreased employment seeking status. Further, negative career thoughts have demonstrated relationships to career indecision, career indecisiveness, sense of coherence, and emotional intelligence within a career decision-making context.  Staying positive is a powerful tools in any career development process.

5. Acknowledge the mid-life career change (aka crisis)

It is not uncommon for an adult in middle years to ask why he or she is doing what they do for a living. In serious reflection on this question, some workers find that the original reasons for their choices are no longer valid. Reasons why mid-life change occurs include: Occupational dissatisfaction, a lack of challenge, lack of career-related identity, stress and anxiety related to job insecurity, workplace bullying, and conflicts between work and other life roles. This can be mitigated by framing needs and expectations to realise a more developed self-concept.

Embrace and define your stage

Understanding career stages can help you know what to expect and understand what others are experiencing in similar situations.  Acknowledging Super’s “mini-cycles” also allows a person to intentionally move themselves into new cycles when they find themselves in a career transition that may be out of their control.

I doubt either Gillard or Rudd is thinking specifically about career development at this moment. As I read through the list above, however, it seems that it might do them well. Both could benefit from maintaining their self-image, staying positive (more difficult for one of them then the other), and planning for the next stage.

If you are at a stage in your career that affords you to provide feedback, I welcome you to do so in some manner below.