Managing Career Transitions: A New White Paper about a Course for Mid-Career Adults

by Danny Mucinskas

We live in an era of rapid change. Events of the past few years alone have demonstrated that for humanity to proceed with “business as usual” is not only unrealistic but is actually not possible. Climate change, new technologies (such as generative AI), and demographic shifts are set to touch all of our lives, even in the short-term. Economic, political, and social systems are being reshaped by necessity. While it can be easy to forget that we are living through exceptional times, our lives will be altered in concrete ways in the years and decades to come, including at work and in workplaces. According to the Future of Jobs Report 2023, 23% of jobs are expected to change in the next 4 years alone, which will require people to respond by changing roles and even career fields. Well-executed programs and frameworks that will help workers handle transitions in thoughtful ways will be in demand.

Against this backdrop, from 2020 to 2023, a team from Project Zero (PZ) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education developed a course to help working adults process and manage changes in their careers. Made possible by funding from the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM), which collaborated with the PZ team throughout the project, the course is titled “Navigating Changes Successfully at Work.” It brings together insights from both the Learning Innovations Laboratory, under the direction of Marga Biller, and from The Good Project, with contributions led by Danny Mucinskas and Howard Gardner. (See the previous two blog posts that have been written about this effort here and here.) The course has been piloted, refined, and offered iteratively with Singaporean mid-career adult learners thanks to SIM’s connections and partnerships, including with SIM employees, unemployed professionals, and a group of facilitators who have now been trained to teach the course independently.

Based on the activities of this project, PZ has released a new white paper that details the background, creation process, and content of the course, as well as the challenges encountered and possible future directions. The paper is intended for a wide audience, including scholars, learning designers, and policymakers who may be interested in this particular set of ideas and in general professional development opportunities for workers.

As the paper explains, the course is structured as a series of four 3-hour session meetings, during which participants are led through a series of discussion and reflection prompts about the meanings of two core frameworks developed in recent decades at PZ: Unlearning and Good Work. 

Regarding Unlearning, participants explore three different lenses that may uncover ways of thinking and doing that “get in the way” of adapting effectively to change. First, the course looks at Mindsets, or the sets of assumptions and patterns of thinking we have about the world and how it functions. Specifically, the course prompts learners to uncover their values (such as honesty or accomplishment); to map their various identities; and to consider how expertise may help or hinder transitions. Participants then think about how each of these may need to shift. Second, the course covers Habits by analyzing how habit cycles function as patterns of cues or triggers, regular routines, and rewards or goals, and how these cycles may need to shift when our goals change. Third, the final session reviews Systems, zooming out and asking learners to diagram their learning ecosystem and also diagnose their alignment or misalignment with the views and goals of others. 

Throughout the sessions, learners are furthermore asked to consider the relationship between the lenses of Unlearning and the 3 Es of Good Work: Engagement (a sense of connection or enjoyment to work), Excellence (quality, involved in work that is well-done or meets a certain standard), and Ethics (social responsibility related to concerns of right and wrong). Course participants think about their own personal manifestations of Good Work that align with these elements. At-home extension activities completed between sessions allow for application of the concepts to learners’ daily lives and work.

The following video, developed by the course team, provides an overview of how Unlearning and Good Work may be helpful in moments of workplace change and also may interact with one another.

Several learning design principles guided the structure, pace, and activities included in the course, namely:

• Collaboration, to increase participant engagement and to ensure diverse perspectives are shared;

• Learner-centric facilitation, focusing on participants’ personal experiences rather than knowledge of the instructor;

• Relevance to relatable, real-life scenarios; and

• Metacognitive evaluation, in which participants reflect on their learning over time.

Based on the Unlearning and Good Work frameworks from this course, a team at SIM is continuing to design new learning experiences, including a core skills program focused on outcomes like learning agility and self-management. Furthermore, the standalone course will continue to be offered to Singaporean mid-career learners via SIM’s partnership with e2i as well as via SIM’s usual public enrollment and corporate channels.

As we look ahead at the trajectory of this course and its potential to aid adult learners, we recognize that we live in a continuously changing world with concomitant workplace transitions.  The PZ team is therefore considering additional audiences who may benefit from the learning materials, including younger learners (e.g., college seniors) and new cohorts of adult workers (e.g., participants drawn from a single company or organization). Additionally, in order to ensure that the course has maximum impact and staying power, it is important for the ideas to be periodically reinforced. This goal may be realized through additional follow-up workshops or the establishment of a community of learners who continue to discuss their workplace transitions with one another beyond the conclusion of the formal course.

We welcome comments below and look forward to continuing to share updates about the direction of this work in future posts.

Good Work and “Unlearning” in Times of Transition

by Danny Mucinskas

Drawing on two decades of research, The Good Project aims to help people of all ages, from young students to veteran professionals, in their efforts to do “good work.” Such work is conceptualized as excellent (high quality), ethical (socially responsible), and engaging (personally meaningful). These “3 Es of good work” are the pillars that support a productive and virtuous relationship to work. 

Similarly, the Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) at Project Zero is a long-standing initiative that brings together researchers and practitioners to ideate together regarding organizational change and learning. For the past twenty-one years, the group has developed insights into the nature of human learning and change on the individual and systemic levels, including in workplaces.

Over the course of a lifetime, the work that an individual does will change many times. According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, individuals today may have held 12 to 15 different jobs by the time they reach retirement. Most of us therefore expect to go through many points of transition that require the reinvention of our career identities, as well as “unlearning” of habits, mindsets, and systemic knowledge from previous roles.

While the process of transitioning to a new role can be daunting in itself, it becomes even more difficult when previous modes of thinking and doing are no longer useful and in fact may get in the way. By paying attention to areas that might require adjustment and new approaches, “good work” can continue to be achieved.

These topics were explored in a new course, titled “Navigating Transitions: Unlearning and Good Work,” which I have developed in partnership with Marga Biller of LILA. The course was recently presented as a pilot to a group of learners in Singapore in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Management, with a focus on helping participants navigate career transitions by becoming familiar with practices of “unlearning.”

As facilitators, Marga and I began with an introduction to the idea that transitions are part of everyday life and can be times of both excitement and anxiety. We then explored existing conceptions of “good work” that participants hold related to their current jobs and probed their relationship to the 3 Es framework. Next, we delved into the various dimensions of “unlearning” that require attention in order to successfully move from one role to another, specifically:

• Mindsets we bring to our work based on our past experiences, including values, identities, and expertise (for example, an understanding of our skill sets and how skills might need to shift in new roles);

• Habits we rely on in doing our work (which are shaped by cues, routines, and rewards, and which can be changed by paying attention to cycles of habit formation), 

• Systems we are embedded within (including organizations and teams with members who may or may not share the same goals related to work and the learning ecologies around us that support life-long learning). 

Participants were invited to reflect on these themes in exercises that included The Good Project’s value sort activity, an identity map, and the design of a learning ecology based on resources in and outside of the workplace. We also used a dilemma narrative about an employee starting a new position who made a mistake by relying excessively on past knowledge rather than meeting the requirements of her new job, analyzing what she could have done differently to succeed.

Reactions to the course from the initial audience were positive. Interviews and surveys revealed overall appreciation for the unique blend of content that combined research insights with practical models that would aid people in successfully handling career transition. Based on the feedback we received, in future offerings of the unit, participants will spend extended time exploring the concepts as well as implementation intentions in between sessions. We seek to provide more explicit suggestions about how employees can readily and appropriately apply the ideas we introduced on the job and with co-workers.

Our ultimate goal in offering this course is to help people deal with workplace change, equipping them with the tools and strategies they will need to do their best good work across the span of their careers. As a result, we are considering ways to expand further iterations of this course for adult audiences in Singapore and perhaps elsewhere.

I invite our readers to ask themselves some of the following questions that were explored in the course.

• What are some ways that unlearning preexisting mindsets, habits, and systemic knowledge could help you to better do good work in your own life?

• What values, identities, and expertise do you bring to your work? How have these changed from previous positions you may have held?

• What habits do you rely on in doing your work? Have you ever had a habit that was no longer serving you that you needed to change? How did you do so?

• How does the way you view your work overlap with or differ from your coworkers’ views? How can you open conversations that might spark dialogue about areas of difference?

• What is the relationship your work has to the broader communities you are a part of, such as your town, city, or society? How does your work affect people near and far from you?

• What responsibilities do you feel you have in your work to others?

A Reflective Space, A Just Space: Good Work in Extracurricular Activities

A guest post by Jia Wen He

Jia Wen He is a high school teacher in Singapore. She is a 2013-2014 Foreign Fulbright Student and currently pursuing a Master in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jia Wen is interested in educational psychology and evidence-based pedagogy.

In Fall 2013, I was part of Howard Gardner’s HSGE course ‘Good Work in Education’. Among the topics we explored, I was especially interested in how good work is manifested in education and the professions. In this blog, I discuss the sharing of Good Work.

I have taught high school in Singapore for seven years, a time when students are on the cusp of college and professional training. I wondered about the intersection between school and the workplace: how schools cultivated in students the work ethics they will employ in the future.

 Pressures at work, pressures in school

The principal investigators of The Good Work Project noted that most workers want to do good work, but formidable obstacles make it difficult to do so. Pressures from the market, from the field, from peers, from juggling multiple commitments, make it tempting to cut corners.

The pressures on working professionals are similar to what students experience in schools. In an age of high-stakes testing and diversifying curricular programs, schooling can seem like a blur of demands competing for students’ attention. The school day is portioned out in subjects and programs—often for logistical rather than pedagogical reasons—and it can be challenging for students to see a more coherent “why” of their education.

However, developing healthy work habits requires sustained opportunities for reflection. Piaget and Dewey believe that learning and growth are essentially dependent on activity – from doing something, thinking about the doing, and doing it again. Hence, if we hope for students to do good work in the future, habits of contemplation need to be cultivated in school. 

The ECA effect

School-based extracurricular activities (ECAs) are rich spaces for students to experiment with the “how” of doing good work. All schools offer a range of activities from waterpolo, choir, drama club, to student government bodies – and most students devote up to ten hours each week to their chosen ECA. Through membership, students go through a constant cycle of acting and reflecting on their behavior, their motivations and their relations with others. ECAs make powerful engines for development, since learning is based on observation and activity, quite different from the classroom’s more top-down instruction.

Using the Good Work framework, I set out to study how ECAs could develop student capacities for excellent, ethical, and engaging work. I interviewed young alumni from a Singapore high school about their ECA experiences. All were committed members who spend up to ten hours a week in their ECAs.

We spoke at length about how these activities years ago had impacted them. A theme that emerged from the conversations was how vital teachers and coaches were as designers of ECA experiences that could promote Good Work.

First, ECA teachers and coaches who created regular opportunities for reflection maximized the impact of learning. Whatever form or duration these reflections were, the consistent space to think led students to retain very nuanced impressions of their ECAs. Zoe spoke of how the supervising teacher held 10-minute reflection sessions after every practice. “She made me able to put my experience into words. Simply because she forced us everyday to think about what we were doing and tell it to the teammates.” Reflection led to connection building between the experience and the students’ developing work ethic.

Second, adult mentors who ensured fairness, and arbitrated in unfair situations, created a necessary condition for learning to occur. High schoolers might have greater autonomy in their ECAs, but a fair environment is one aspect they have limited control over. Kegan had a particularly vivid memory of stepping up to finish a project for an irresponsible student member: “I don’t feel the supervising teachers were a source of support or advice. They could have played a bigger role when people were not pulling their weight. They could actually intervene.”

Interestingly, those who experienced unfairness without teacher intervention went on to express disillusionment with colleagues – Kegan admits how his experience “in some ways broke my trust in people’s capability.” On the other hand, those who experienced fair and nurturing ECA environments developed a strong sense of trust. Although fairness in the workplace cannot be guaranteed, the latter group had the foundation to buffer them from minor slights. 

Teachers as designers

We know what happens when adult mentors encourage limited or flawed definitions of success – the worst iterations can be found in some elite youth sport where winning is encouraged at all costs.

Yet a less considered but no less essential concern are inattentive mentors: these adults leave much of the ECA design to students, especially if students are competent and old enough to handle the running of the group. Schools do pay attention to ECA quality, but in reality, academic programs are prioritized. ECA mentors are only accountable for the most basic of guidelines for the legal running of the groups.

At this point, I wish to flip the table on the accountability conversation. Teacher accountability is important, but the discussion tends to place teachers on the receiving and passive end of the spectrum. This research made me think about how teachers can take ownership and run personal, simple, and low-stakes accountability tests – following up with the students we had taught.

Well-designed learning experiences should be more than “good-to-haves”. If we want students to learn to do good work, and if ECAs are precious avenues to practice good habits, we need to become dedicated mentors, collecting our data and designing experiences mindfully.