Professional Identity Formation
Here’s a view of what constitutes professional identity formation within a medical paradigm. I believe that much of it rings true for professional identity formation for the rest of us cross-sector too:
A Schematic Representation of the Professional
The identity of an individual at any moment represents the sum of the influences impacting three domains. The individual domain includes personal characteristics, self-chosen or mandated commitments, beliefs about one’s self, and the impact of multiple life experiences. The relational domain expresses the influence on identity of significant individuals, such as family members, friends, mentors, and coworkers. The collective domain reflects the impact of the social groups to which an individual belongs or wishes to join. An individual’s status within the group and the group’s status within society are important contributors to this identity component.
If the ‘professional’ equals the skills, knowledge and attributes we bring to our work. The identity is ‘who we are’ in this role and perhaps even more importantly, it is who we want to be. The formation of our professional identity occurs when our skills interact within a context. When we practise what we have learned within a work role or with people. the formation takes place within these interactions.
What we are not told at school is that we have a choice about the formation of our professional identity. Certainly it was my experience that it was expected that i would choose a professional identity and that it would continue to form in its own organic, probably linear, way in the same sector or role, with ascending seniority. The influence on the formation process was all external,
What I have begun to realise is that as “The Career For Life” has all but gone, it is up to me, as it is up to each of you, to choose the direction in which your professional identity forms. It is not all down to the ‘relational’ or the ‘collective’ domains to define me. We can choose the interactions we create for ourselves, we can challenge beliefs that we have held that not longer serve us. We can choose how we act and indeed react to external stimuli. We can set our sights higher, or indeed in entirely different directions than we were ever led to expect of ourselves.
………and do your know what, by doing so, we can enable whole new possibilities to open up. When we think differently, we act differently, and, when we act stuff differently, new stuff happens our lives. This is when it gets really interesting. This is when sometimes we have the privilege of standing at the top of the mountain looking back at the view and thinking ‘Who knew i would ever get to this point?”, yet knowing deep inside that ‘we did this’ and we can be very proud of the journey. This is how you can influence your own professional identity formation and how you will reap the rewards.
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