Dealing with a career shock: rethinking your professional anchors

Business Science Institute
21 hours ago
3 min read

Updated: 1 hour ago

Pauline de Becdelièvre*

University Professor

IUT de Sceaux, Paris-Saclay University, RITM

*Member of the faculty of the Business Science Institute

In the course of a professional career, certain events disrupt the apparent continuity of one's path. Career shock is one such significant, often unexpected, turning point that forces individuals to question the meaning they attribute to their professional commitment. This destabilization can be caused by a personal situation (illness, bereavement, separation) or by an organizational event (redundancy, change in hierarchy, restructuring).

Career shock: questioning meaning

This type of event acts as a revelation: it confronts individuals with their implicit representations of work and their deep-seated motivations. It is not just a functional or statutory transition, but a moment when their relationship with work is distanced, questioned, and sometimes redefined.

Career anchors: identity markers and drivers of commitment

To understand the mechanisms at work in these situations, the concept of career anchors, proposed by Schein in 1978, provides a particularly useful framework. A career anchor refers to a coherent set of values, perceived skills, and motivations that guide professional choices. In a way, it constitutes a core identity that structures career decisions over time.

The literature distinguishes eight main forms of anchoring: technical expertise, managerial competence, autonomy, security/stability, sense of service, taste for challenge, work-life balance, and entrepreneurial orientation. These anchors are not always stable at the beginning of one's professional life. They tend to become more defined, hierarchical, or combined around the age of 30. Numerous studies also highlight the frequent coexistence of a primary anchor and one or more secondary anchors, in dynamic interaction.

Coping with shock: refocusing or redeployment

In research conducted with Sophie Ennekam (Audencia Business School) and François Grima ( Paris-Est Créteil University) published in the Revue française de gestion, we analyzed the effects of career shocks on the anchors of a population of senior executives. Two major dynamics emerged from our qualitative survey, based on the analysis of thirty-one interviews.

The first consists of refocusing on the main anchor. In this case, the shock acts as an invitation to return to what, in the individual's professional history, constitutes the foundation of their commitment. This return is accompanied by a relatively passive mobilization of social capital: the skills are already there, the networks are available, and the benchmarks are solid.

The second dynamic corresponds to a redeployment towards a secondary anchor, which had previously been marginal. Here, the shock acts as a tipping point. The individual allows themselves to consider a partial or total reorientation, involving active work on their skills, possible retraining, and more sustained mobilization of their network. This reconfiguration often involves a reinterpretation of the individual's past trajectory.

Trajectories, organizations, and possibilities for adjustment

The adoption of one or other of these strategies is neither random nor based on isolated individual dispositions. It is strongly influenced by the previous structure of the professional career. A relatively consistent career centered around a stable anchor will favor refocusing. Conversely, careers marked by tensions between several anchors or by alternating roles can pave the way for more profound reconfigurations.

The organizational environment also plays a decisive role. Depending on whether the company supports or undermines the individual during these periods of transition, it can contribute to strengthening reference points or, on the contrary, accelerate the need for redefinition. The degree of perceived autonomy, opportunities for development, and recognition of work accomplished are all variables that modulate the response to shock.

Towards a process-based conception of professional anchoring

One of the major contributions of this research is to remind us that career anchors are neither fixed nor immutable. They can be strengthened, shifted, put under strain, or recombined. Career shock lays bare this plasticity: it reveals uncertainties, but also the resources that can be mobilized to rebuild professional momentum.

In a world of work marked by accelerating transitions and diverse forms of engagement, the ability to recognize one's own anchors, to revisit them or to change their configuration is an essential skill. Thinking of a career as a process of identity positioning over time, rather than as a simple addition of functions, invites a more reflective, open and undoubtedly more realistic approach to professional trajectories.

Source :

De Becdelièvre, P., Hennekam, S., & Grima, F. (2021). How to cope with a career shock as a senior employee: The case of interim managers. Revue française de gestion, 296(3), 11-26. https://doi.org/10.3166/rfg.2021.00529.