Working Identity

Bestselling author Herminia Ibarra presents a model for career reinvention that flies in the face of everything we've learned from "career experts"—and is tailor-made for changing careers in today's uncertain world. Career transition is not a linear path toward some predetermined identity, according to Ibarra, but a crooked journey along which we try on a host of "possible selves" we might become. Successful reinvention comes not from deciphering and analyzing our past, but from inventing and testing our possible futures.

We all know the pressure of feeling like we should be grinding 24/7 while simultaneously being told that we should 'just relax' and take care of ourselves, like we somehow have to decide between success and sanity. In Working Hard, Hardly Working, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed 'lazy workaholic' Grace Beverley challenges this unrealistic and unnecessary split and offers a fresh take on how to create your own balance, be more productive and feel fulfilled.

Juno Roche was born into a working-class family in London in the '60s, who dabbled in minor criminality. For their father, violence and love lived together; for their mother, addiction was the only way to survive. School was a respite, but shortly after beginning their university course, Juno was diagnosed with HIV, then a death sentence. Juno is a survivor; they outlived their diagnosis, got a degree and became an artist. But however hard you try to take the kid out of the family, some scars go too deep.

This groundbreaking text goes to the very heart of the therapeutic meeting between therapist and client. Focusing on the concept of "relational depth", the authors describe a form of encounter in which therapist and client experience profound feelings of contact and engagement with each other, and in which the client has an opportunity to explore whatever is experienced as most fundamental to her or his existence.