Navigating the Paradox of Promise through the Construction of Meaningful Career Narratives

Working with a prominent mentor can offer many benefits to one’s career: mentors provide skills, resources, and values which leave a lasting imprint. Yet these promising starting points also present a puzzle as people make sense of their careers further on: they must acknowledge their association with their prominent mentor, without being overshadowed by them. We refer to this tension as the paradox of promise. Through a qualitative study of former employees at the Eames Office, we examine how individuals navigate the paradox of promise as they construct retrospective career narratives. We find that individuals narrate their formative experience as imprints, but with two distinct emphases—values-dominant imprints versus skills-dominant imprints. Individuals then narrate their later career experiences by reprinting, reinforcing the existing meaning or finding new meaning in relation to their imprint; we induced three reprinting practices: embracing values, contrasting values, and supplanting values. Using imprints and reprinting, former Eames employees crafted overarching sources of career meaningfulness: belongingness narratives, emphasizing collaboration and contribution with others; self-expression narratives, emphasizing authenticity and freedom; and achievement narratives, emphasizing expertise and accomplishment. Our study contributes to interpretive perspectives of career success and mentor relationships, and how meaningfulness is constructed over the career.