Professional identity is what work makes of a person.
Professional identity is the part of how someone understands themselves that comes from their work. Not the job title, and not the contract. What they are good at, who they belong to, what they are relied on for, and what they believe the work is for.
What professional identity actually includes
- Competence: what you know you can do well, and what you are trusted with.
- Belonging: the people who understand your work without you explaining it.
- Purpose: what the work is for, beyond the pay.
- Standards: the way things are done properly, which stays with you afterwards.
- Structure: where you are expected to be, and who notices if you are not.
Occupational identity is used in similar ways, usually for identification with a kind of work rather than a profession. The lived experience is the same. Work has become part of who a person is.
Why losing it destabilises people
Because it is rarely one loss. When a role ends, competence, belonging, purpose and structure often go together. Haslam and colleagues (2008) set out how group memberships carry consequences for health and wellbeing, and Iyer and colleagues (2009) found, in longitudinal studies of people in transition, that adjustment was predicted by how many compatible group memberships a person retained. Continuity is protective. Losing several identities at once is not a character weakness, it is a predictable strain.
This is also why advice that starts with a CV so often lands badly. It answers a question about employment while the person is holding a question about themselves.
What research does and does not tell us
The evidence supports several plain statements. Group membership and continuity are linked to adjustment through transition. Meaning reached, rather than meaning searched for, is more consistently associated with better adjustment after a stressful event (Park, 2010), though that literature is largely correlational. Putting an accurate word to a feeling is associated with reduced reactivity (Lieberman and colleagues, 2007), with effects that are real but modest.
What the evidence does not offer is a timetable, a stage sequence everyone follows, or a guarantee. AURIS holds its own research separately from published research and does not claim that external studies validate the framework.
Signs professional identity is under strain
- Speaking about yourself almost entirely in the past tense.
- Being unable to answer "what do you do now?" without a long explanation.
- Irritation at being asked how you are, more than at the change itself.
- Feeling competent at nothing, shortly after being highly competent at something.
- Withdrawing from people who are still in the role.
Where AURIS fits
AURIS treats identity as the thing that drives behaviour, and works through it in five stages: Awareness, Understanding, Regulation, Identity and Stability. The framework is used by individuals directly, by practitioners with the people they support, and by organisations supporting staff through role change.
Read more about the AURIS Framework, career change and identity, identity and transition coaching for practitioners, or career transition support for organisations.
If your own professional identity has changed, the Life and Role Change pathway sets out the courses that work through it in order.
Professional identity: common questions
Sources referenced on this page
- Haslam, S. A., Jetten, J., Postmes, T., and Haslam, C. (2008). Social identity, health and well-being: an emerging agenda for applied psychology. Applied Psychology, 58(1), 1 to 23.
- Iyer, A., Jetten, J., Tsivrikos, D., Postmes, T., and Haslam, S. A. (2009). Multiple group memberships and identity compatibility as predictors of adjustment after life transitions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 48(4), 707 to 733.
- Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257 to 301.
- Lieberman, M. D., and colleagues (2007). Putting feelings into words. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421 to 428.