Three Types of Career Belonging
Belonging is a loaded term. There are many ways belonging can look. You can belong to a family, to a team, to a company, to a community, to a social group, to a cooking club…you get the point.
When I began my research on career belonging, I was stumped on how to explain that career belonging doesn’t mean when you have a job and you work for an employer and feel as though you do or don’t belong to them. People I interviewed immediately went this direction.
Career belonging means being accepted for who you are in your work, whatever you choose to do, and it’s a feeling of freedom, flexibility and autonomy to go in whatever direction you like.
It’s about letting go of career paths and career fit, which are limiting concepts and force you to be what others want you to be.
In my research, I found a framework on three types of belonging by Neil and Penny Barringham. It explains three main types of belonging, which are these:
Three Types of Belonging
Belong to self
Belong to others
Belong to something greater than self
I borrowed this framework and examined what it would look like if we used it in the career space.
The new version goes:
Your career belongs to you
Your career belongs to others (a field. industry, employer, or occupation)
Your career belongs to something greater than yourself
Most career development resources and career coaches focus on the second and third aspects, finding an established career for you to be part of and helping you find purpose so that your career can make an impact on the world.
However, the first aspect, your career belongs to you, has been completely overlooked and omitted. When your career belongs to you, think of the power that gives you. Suddenly, no one can ever take your career away. You’ll never lose it, you’ll never need to search for it or find a second one because it’s the thing that’s always yours no matter what.
When we realize we own the definition and design of our career, it changes the story over why we would ever want career fit in the first place. This framework of career belonging and your career belongs to you is a big part of my next book (coming soon).