Stories of Calling: How Called Professionals Construct Narrative Identities

Pastors

We interviewed 103 pastors from ten Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism. Most served churches in the U.S. Midwest. Tenures ranged from 7 years to more than 50. Forty-one were women, and 62 were men. All were fully ordained, and most were the only pastor assigned to their church.

Physicians

The 53 physicians in our sample were involved in a variety of specialties including family practice, internal medicine, sports medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, radiology, and orthopedic surgery. Tenures ranged from 7 to over 30 years; 15 were women, and 38 were men. All of the physicians were employed by the same large healthcare system, but they worked at ten different office locations in the U.S. Midwest.

International aid workers

The 51 international aid workers in our sample were involved in relief and development work at the same international organization and worked in Africa, Asia, or the Middle East. Service tenures ranged from 7 years to more than 30; 26 were women, and 25 were men; 63 percent were U.S. citizens.

Teachers

We interviewed 34 elementary school teachers, the majority of whom were part of a rural school corporation (one teacher was part of an urban school system). All but five were women. Years of experience ranged from 7 to more than 30.

Attending

Narrative research is a highly empathic (cf. Josselson, 2011) approach, and so it begins with researchers sensitizing themselves to the persons and contexts that will be studied. We read several autobiographies of physicians and pastors, first-hand accounts of relief and development work written by aid workers, lengthy descriptions of aid work provided by large international aid organizations, and several essays written by teachers about their experiences in the classroom. We conducted informational interviews with leaders in each of the professions (e.g., seminary presidents, medical directors, senior aid leaders, school principals). We also studied a variety of archival information from each of these professions to acquire important background information and insights about cultural norms (e.g., whether clergy were referred to as “pastor,”“minister,” or “reverend”), required education and credentialing processes, work trends in each profession, and other information about each profession. Our goal was to foster a more empathic approach by learning about the kinds of work and work experiences that might be customary or typical for our participants, especially those that might be related to experiencing work as a calling.

Telling

Narrative research then moves into a phase of gathering detailed stories from participants about their lives. Narratives are understood contextually; that is, they are presumed to be influenced by the circumstances under which they were obtained, so we conducted all of our interviews in the work contexts of our participants. These included physicians’ examination rooms and offices, churches and pastors’ offices, classrooms and teachers’ lounges, and remote field sites and emergency relief camps in which our aid workers lived and worked. We conducted our interviews during a time that each participant considered to be “normal” work time. In this way, we tried to place our interviews in the work contexts that were customary for each professional.

As we will describe more fully below, we used an iterative approach similar to what is done in grounded theory by moving back and forth between telling and transcribing/analyzing. We began the telling phase by conducting and reading a preliminary set of narrative interviews with 15 physicians and 15 clergy to test and refine our research methods. We used a convenience sample of participants known by one of the researchers. We found that most of these professionals were able to remember, quite vividly, the key events, interactions, and identity work activities they believe led them into their callings. Many of these stories were rich in detail, and when we asked probing questions, the participants were able to recount additional memories of specific events. Based on these early interviews, we modified our interview protocol and our sampling procedures in three ways.

First, because we wanted to understand the identity construction process for called professionals, we used a combination of snowball and purposive sampling to find individuals who experienced their work as a calling. To identify new interview candidates, we relied on the recommendations of previous interview participants to guide us to people who view their work as a calling. A disadvantage of snowball sampling is that because participants recommend people they know, the new participants may share traits and characteristics with their recommender. To overcome this limitation, we explained Bellah et al.’s (2007) job–career–callings framework and asked participants to recommend people who they thought were likely to view their work as a calling rather than a job or career. We maintained this sampling strategy throughout the study. Second, as we analyzed initial interviews from clergy and physicians, we were sensitive that these professions had strong professional role identities that may have influenced the calling stories that we were hearing. Thus we altered our sampling strategy to include two additional helping professions (teachers and aid workers) so that we could examine the similarities and differences in narrative identities across professions. Third, we decided to focus on experienced individuals so that we could study people who had formed identities as called professionals. We used five years of experience as our minimum for inclusion because of the customary length of the education and credentialing processes of these professions.

We conducted semi-structured narrative interviews. Narrative interviews place primary emphasis on gathering life stories, so in our questions and approach to interviewing we sought to elicit rich, descriptive, and detailed stories. Our interview protocol covered three general themes; see Online Appendix A, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0001839220949502. One set of questions asked participants about their path into their profession. We asked each to recall the time in their life before they experienced any sense of what their future work might be and then to recount the major memories, events, and episodes from that time until they first fully enacted their professional role. A second set of questions explored the kinds of relationships, both positive and negative, that might have shaped participants’ identity formation. When a participant mentioned a relationship, we asked about the characteristics of that relationship, typical interaction patterns, and how they felt that relationship influenced them. The final set of questions focused on initial role enactment—both the participant’s own experiences and their perceptions of how other people responded to them.

The interview protocol was a guide, and we did not follow it lock-step but rather adapted questions as each interview proceeded. Throughout each interview, we asked probing questions to gather details of particular episodes, focusing on information about how an episode influenced the participant’s identity formation. All interviews were conducted by an author or a graduate-trained research associate, and all but one was recorded. (One participant declined having the interview recorded.) We had each of our 90- to 150-minute narrative interviews transcribed. We then used our purposeful, snowball sampling to identify new interview candidates, recruited and interviewed another set of professionals, and then moved to the next phase.

Transcribing and analyzing

Narrative analysis entails first re-presenting the participant’s narrative and then taking “interpretive authority for going beyond, in carefully documented ways, its literal and conscious meanings” (Josselson, 2011: 227). Unlike grounded theory, which often begins with line-by-line coding, narrative analysis moves from the whole to the specific (Josselson, 2011). We began by reading each transcript in its entirety while also listening to the audio recording, noting speech patterns and non-verbal expressions (e.g., sighs, a laugh, crying) where appropriate. We created memos that sketched out the kinds of stories contained in the transcript using primarily in vivo codes. We then returned to the beginning of the transcript and conducted open coding of the transcript. We read and coded stories, or what Riessman (2002) refers to as narrative segments, rather than conducting line-by-line coding. We focused in particular on personal episodic memories that comprise what happened in a particular “event” (e.g., what occurred, where it happened, who was there) and personal semantic memories that comprise how the individual interpreted what happened (e.g., how that “happening” impacted them, its meaning and significance; Addis and Tippett, 2008; Prebble, Addis, and Tippett, 2013). Again, we used in vivo coding whenever possible to remain close to the participants’ language.

Another important part of narrative analysis is use of the “hermeneutic circle” (Riessman, 2008; Josselson, 2011) in which specific stories are drawn from the whole narrative and then considered in terms of how they form the whole narrative. After coding an entire transcript, we created a narrative map—a chronological ordering of the stories—that helped to illustrate the narrative structure of that transcript. Narrative maps capture the way participants weave their stories together to “impose order on the flow of experience to make sense of events and actions in their lives” (Riessman, 2002: 218) and were our primary tool for applying the hermeneutic circle.

Each analyst coded the same set of four transcripts, one from each profession, using this approach. The team then met to go through each transcript story by story. We compared the specific interview segment that each analyst included as a story, debating and discussing places where we disagreed about what should be included in each story. We then discussed our open coding of the content and meaning of each story. We probed instances of agreement and disagreement seeking, whenever possible, to integrate our views into a common interpretation. These common interpretations emerged over time, often through a repeated process of debate and discussion. For example, we had a variety of open codes such as “learned I was good at . . .” or “I really excelled at . . .” that we combined into the code “stories of learning about talents, aptitudes, and abilities.” We compared narrative maps, noting points of agreement and discussing differences. We re-read earlier transcripts to connect our current analysis with earlier analysis. We highlighted gaps in our understanding and lingering points of disagreement among analysts’ interpretations and then updated our interview protocol as necessary.

We then moved into second-order coding by interpreting our participants’ stories. We grouped stories that we thought were similar, and we identified and interpreted the themes we saw in these emerging groups, seeking to elucidate recurring themes. For example, “stories of learning about talents, aptitudes, and abilities” was abstracted into “gain true self-knowledge.” Our goal here was to interpret what participants’ stories meant to them and what those stories revealed about how they came to experience their work as a calling. For example, we developed our theorizing about milestone experiences (i.e., key events in the narratives) and the role of significant others (i.e., supporting characters in the narratives) from interpreting themes.

We also worked to develop a conceptual understanding of what the chronological ordering of participants’ stories and the underlying themes revealed about the processes by which they created their narratives. We looked for similarities across narrative maps, and over time we identified common plot lines using the narrative maps we created. These plot lines revealed, for example, the two paths our participants followed into their callings. By exploring plot lines we also came to a new understanding of an early code for participants who had 2+ jobs. The “+” became particularly meaningful because we began to see that these participants tried different jobs until they found one they loved. It was here that the explorer’s quest (and the discerner’s journey) became clear.

We drew a variety of graphical representations to visualize these patterns and bring clarity to the major story themes and plot lines. The graphics helped us to theorize the two different paths our participants followed to enter their callings and to theorize how the way they lived out their callings was instrumental in resolving the uniqueness–similarity tension. Our final model proposes how the different identity work tasks were part of an underlying identity construction process that led both discerners and explorers to author identities as called professionals. When our interviews were no longer yielding new kinds of stories or new chronologies, and our existing coding scheme was sufficient for coding these interviews, we stopped recruiting new participants. We did, however, complete the interviews with participants we had already recruited, who were mostly clergy. This contributed to the larger clergy sample.

Reading

The final stage of narrative analysis will be accomplished when researchers and others read and respond to this work. The reader is an “agent of the text” (Riessman, 2002: 227), and their interpretations of what we present may be regarded as part of the analysis of our participants’ narratives. In this way, narrative research is rarely regarded as finished; instead it is understood as inviting further inquiry to provide deeper understanding.

Gaining true self-knowledge

As illustrated in this physician’s story, discernment narratives began with stories of self-discovery that were usually first located in the discerner’s childhood. Another physician described self-discovery this way:

For me it began probably when I was very young. Just sort of being innately aware of the kinds of things I enjoyed in school. I naturally drifted towards things that were more science and math and kind of left-brain thinking, solving problems . . . I remember in fourth grade when I finished my math homework quickly my teacher would give me additional things that I could work on, challenging things. And I really enjoyed that. So I think early on I realized that I enjoyed the challenge of solving problems. (Physician P37)

Discerners’ stories of self-discovery clustered around three kinds of self-elements. Capabilities comprised talents, aptitudes, and abilities: “I have always been really good at math and science” (physician P26); “I realized I was a very good writer” (teacher T23). Personal characteristics were dispositions, personality traits, and other self-relevant attributes: “I can see now that I have always been an introvert” (pastor C2); “I realized that during tough times I could always persevere” (aid worker A21). Core convictions were core life values, closely held beliefs, and ultimate concerns (cf. Emmons, 1999): “I wanted work where I could really help people, help them when they really needed it” (pastor C67); “Even as a child I had a strong sense . . . of really wanting justice in situations, of really feeling like truth should be known, justice should be done” (aid worker A23). Essential to discerners’ stories of self-discovery was gaining what we refer to as true self-knowledge, learning things they believed were essential to their most genuine or “true selves” (Rosso, Dekas, and Wrzesniewski, 2010; Schlegel et al., 2011). The stories discerners offered suggested that they saw some of their self-elements as not part of their true selves: “I mean, I love baseball, but that’s not a basic thing for me,” as one pastor explained (C98). True self-knowledge refers to those self-elements that are perceived as essential and fundamental to “who one really is”—who one is hardwired, destined, or created to be. Consider this quote from a physician (P40): “I was one of those kids who was always asking why, why, why. . . . So at an early age I was fascinated with the world around me. . . . It was a natural curiosity about science. I’ve always loved science.” Here, curiosity and a love of science are described as essential aspects of who he truly is.

As this quote also illustrates, true selves had to be actual selves, not fictions or unattainable ideals. Significant others, including parents, close family members, pastors, and teachers, were crucial sources to confirm that true self-knowledge reflected actual self-elements. When participants described, for example, a parent’s early observation about a core self-element, such stories were interpreted as “this self-element was apparent in me before I was even conscious of it” and therefore evidence of their actual self. Some insights from significant others were an impetus for a participant’s own self-discovery. Stories like “my mother or father told me I was good at . . .” were often followed by comments like “and so I really started to pay attention to . . .,” which eventually led to gaining additional true self-knowledge. Significant others could also confirm that certain self-elements were true self-elements: “If others see this as true about me, as I do, then it must be true of me.” Non-family members seemed to have special credibility because they were seen as more “objective” sources, people who were less inclined to say things “just to be nice” as parents might, and so their objectivity created a double-confirmation of a true self-element.

Introspection

After stories about gaining true self-knowledge, discerners began telling stories that indicated they were thinking about what that knowledge meant for “find[ing] my place in the world” (pastor C56) or “try[ing] to figure out what I should do with my life” (teacher T14). Phrases like this were very common in discerners’ narratives. This stage of the process involved two closely linked milestone experiences, introspection and mapping exemplars. Introspection involved stepping back from the flow of life to reflect on oneself and one’s life. Stories like this one from a pastor (C77) were common: “At that stage in my life I journaled much better than I do now. I remember reflecting . . . ‘well I’m pretty sure I want to be a minister or something, but I don’t know exactly what. It could be a missionary . . . I could be a youth pastor’ . . . It was pretty wide open.” This process of “looking around” involved intentional acts of self-reflection or “soul searching” as several of our participants described it. It was an opportunity for discerners both to think about what they were learning about themselves—”to just acknowledge what I knew about myself” (pastor C77)—and to deepen their understanding of the true self-knowledge they had gained—”figure out what being good at science really said about me” (physician P9). Introspection provided our participants with a range of possible selves—ideas of what they might become (Markus and Nurius, 1986)—that aligned with their developing self-knowledge.

Mapping exemplars

Stories about mapping exemplars accompanied stories about introspection, indicating that these paired milestone experiences built on each other. Exemplars were people who were both “comfortable in their own skin” (several participants used this phrase) and models of excellence in a profession. Exemplars were important in at least two ways. First, they were archetypes of what living a calling might look like. Exemplars were seen as living proof that callings were real, showing our participants that pursuing a calling was valid. Second, discerners used exemplars as targets onto which they could map themselves. Consider this story from a pastor:

I’m this little girl growing up in the ‘60s . . . church, it was always part of our life, but pursuing (the pastorate) wasn’t really encouraged . . . pastors are men. I never thought someone like me could be a pastor. . . . When I saw [female pastor], it was like a bolt: suddenly everything was clear to me. All those inklings? All along, they were my call. (C53)

As this quote illustrates, when discerners were able to map some of their self-elements onto characteristics they saw in exemplars, they could form clearer connections between their self-knowledge and possible selves. Consider this quote from another pastor (C37): “I just began to see that I could be a pastor, like Pastor [Exemplar], I had this deep love for helping people, for preaching God’s truth, for being present to people. That helped me connect to my call to ministry, and it was something I could turn back to as a reminder.” Here, the pastor connects his deep love for helping, preaching, and being present to what he sees as the same self-elements in his exemplar, and then he uses that mapping to “connect to [his] call to ministry.”

Wise guidance

Discerners also often recounted turning to wise guides, people who both knew them very well and could provide expert advice, sage counsel, and positive support as discerners imagined their callings. Wise guides helped point participants toward specific professions that were possible matches for their capabilities, characteristics, and core convictions. For example, the physician (P37) quoted earlier had a talent for science and math, yet these capabilities are not exclusively applicable to medicine—he thought he would become a high school science teacher. As he notes, a wise guide directed him toward medicine. This quote from a female pastor (C48) illustrates the way a wise guide influenced her journey: “My pastor said, ‘What are you going to do after college . . . have you thought about going to seminary?’ and I said, ‘Yes, but guys do that.’ He said, ‘No, that’s changing, women are serving as pastors. I could see you doing that.’ That was when I really began to believe ministry could be in my future.”

Acknowledgment

Over time, introspection, mapping exemplars, and wise guidance led to discerners developing a growing image of themselves in particular professions. They told stories about how they began to “put it all together” (physician P4); “I realized I was trying to decide whether the glass slipper would fit” (pastor C5). This was when discerners’ narratives suggested that a particular desired possible self had emerged, a self that they now felt destined to become. Consider this story from an aid worker:

I just felt it. I mean, I just felt in my soul, in the deepest part of me, that this was right. This was right for me. I wasn’t afraid of it. I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, well, what if this doesn’t work?” I just knew it would work. I don’t know why. I can’t explain that, but it was clearly the turning point in my life because this is what I’ve been doing ever since. (Aid worker A36)

We labeled this milestone experience acknowledgment because it was the moment when discerners admitted to themselves that they had found the one possible self they felt was their destiny. Out of a repertoire of possible selves they considered during introspection and mapping, a clear image had emerged of the self they were called to become. The significance of that clarity was manifest in the powerful emotional experience that was part of acknowledgment. Many discerners used the term “burst” to describe how acknowledgment occurred in a particular moment—while driving in the car, while praying, while talking with an important other. This “bursting” into consciousness and the powerful emotions that accompanied it helped convey the sense that this possible self was their destiny, their calling. Discerners were often adamant that their calling could not be reduced to adding up the facts about what kind of work they could do; it was a “revelation” (several discerners used this term). “In that moment, it all added up. I could see this was my calling” (pastor C29), or as this aid worker (A5) said, “It was such a powerful feeling, I knew it was what I was supposed to do.”

Discerners’ narratives made clear that they did not yet regard themselves as having become that called self. But acknowledgment gave them the level of clarity necessary to cross an important threshold in their journey: because they had a clear image of the self they were called to become, they formed a strong commitment to become that self. Because of this clarity and commitment, we refer to this as a nascent called identity (cf. Gioia et al., 2010; Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly, 2014). It was not one among a range of provisional selves they would try out (cf. Ibarra, 1999). Rather, this nascent called identity was a possible self that participants were committed to become. It would be built upon, strengthened, adapted, and refined as they worked to craft an identity as a called professional. It was nascent because the process of actually and fully becoming that called self would be the next phase of their journey.

Exploring work experiences for something missing

Explorers told relatively few stories about gaining true self-knowledge. Learning about themselves was mostly a byproduct of moving from job to job. The stories above illustrate that explorers were willing to leave “good jobs” they could perform well, that were stable and provided a steady paycheck, when they experienced that something was missing in their work. They were not always able to articulate what was missing, but they knew they were “finding something bigger and more important” as several explorers described it. As the engineer’s story illustrates, while his early jobs leveraged his capabilities, it was not until he found a job that also aligned with his core convictions—his deep desire to help vulnerable and victimized persons—that he experienced a job he loved and really felt called to his work.

Fortuitous events

Many explorers told stories of fortuitous events—”coincidences,”“good fortune”—and other silver-lining experiences that were turning points in their quests. Their narratives implied that without these fortuitous events they might not have discovered their callings. Consider the silver-lining experiences in a radiologist’s narrative (physician P3). He did not get his first choice of residency appointment and had to take a residency in mammography—the one part of radiology he wanted to avoid. As he explained, the “residency that I didn’t want turned out to be amazingly lucky . . . it changed everything. . . . Doing mammography, I finally saw that it was the caring part of medicine that I was really drawn to.” During that time, another unexpected experience occurred. His mother developed breast cancer. “She declined traditional medical treatment . . . which I found exasperating, and it just really threw me.” His mother’s physician was “just a technician, none of the caring side.” Notice how this physician describes the impact of those experiences: “I originally got into medicine because of the intellectual side thinking it would be a good career for me. I think that my mom’s experiences and that residency made me realize what was important . . . after that I felt that the helping others side of medicine was almost everything to me. It still is.” Here, unexpected negative events—the wrong residency and a devastating family illness—were pivotal. The silver lining of these events made them turning points because through them he clarified his core convictions and created opportunities to learn how he could embrace medicine as a calling as well as a career.

Social support

Exemplars and wise guides were rare in the narratives of explorers, and when they appeared, explorers had already found work they loved. But caring and supportive significant others appeared often and prominently. Stories like this one were common: “I’ve been very fortunate in my birth parents. I think that’s probably the most important thing that anybody gets. I had very gentle, loving, thoughtful parents and a wonderful brother and that set me up for success ever since” (aid worker A8). As this quote illustrates, while rarely sources of confirmation of explorers’ callings—indeed they often expressed concerns about where the quest was leading explorers—significant others were sources of confidence in the explorer him- or herself. A common phrase was “they’ve always believed in me,” and explorers relied on the confidence of others to keep questing “during the times I almost gave up” (aid worker A24) or “when I didn’t know if I would ever be a pastor” (pastor C27).

Choosing “work I love.”

Exploration narratives differed from discernment narratives in another way. Rather than experiences of acknowledgment, explorers described their discovery of callings as emerging more slowly, only after they had entered their profession, and culminating in a sense that they loved the work they were doing. This quote from another aid worker illustrates this pattern (A34): “I felt like it evolved. . . . When I went in development work, I thought it would be cool, and I thought I might like it, but then I really loved it. And that’s when I decided that’s what I wanted my life to be.” The key for explorers was finding work they “loved”—variations on “work I loved” and “I became passionate about my work” were almost ubiquitous among explorers. For explorers, “loving” their work hinged on discovering that they could express their core convictions in a professional role. Their work was seldom described as blissful—physicians, clergy, and aid workers are exposed to intense human suffering. There were many stories of hard, often intense work and the need for personal sacrifice as essential to their work. Rather, this experience of “loving” their work was the signal that prompted explorers to realize that they had found work aligned with their deepest personal beliefs and values, work that allowed them to express those beliefs and values in and through the way they lived out that work and the kind of person they could be in that work.

Being able to express core convictions in and through work was the “something missing” that explorers were questing for. It allowed them to connect their work to “something bigger and more important” beyond themselves. To complete the quest, explorers needed to first clarify what they valued, believed in, or were passionate about. When their previous work experiences did not resonate with anything they cared about, they moved on to new work roles. Once they started to experience work that felt meaningful, they began to “see”—or, more precisely, to feel—what was missing. What was missing was experiencing, “knowing” in a deep way, that their work had real value in the world. That is why it was work they loved.

At this point, explorers’ narratives portrayed that, similar to discerners, a specific, desired possible self had emerged, one they associated with this work that they loved. Explorers thus experienced the level of clarity necessary to form a strong commitment to this desired possible self. And so like discerners, explorers formed a nascent called identity. For the time being, there would not be another move to a different job because they had found what they were searching for—work they loved—and that search had led them to a clear, compelling image of the work self they wanted to become. They would more fully invest in this specific work role because they could now strongly commit to pursuing that nascent called identity. Even so, there was more “becoming” that had to be undertaken to realize the promise of this nascent identity.

Personalizing core role features

As we will discuss, our participants emphasized the importance of conforming to a commonly held professional standard. But they also described a parallel process that homed in on the capabilities, characteristics, and core convictions that were unique to them. While role models provided an initial set of role prototypes that informed each nascent called identity, our participants described moving beyond these prototypes to develop their own unique style of role enactment.

To achieve a sense of uniqueness and authenticity in their professions, participants described two key milestone experiences: personalizing the way they enacted core role features (Ashforth, 2000; Ashforth, Kreiner, and Fugate, 2000) and claiming peripheral role features in ways consistent with their true selves. Personalizing core role features involved adapting the ways they enacted those features to fit their unique capabilities and characteristics. For example, preaching is a core role feature for pastors, an aspect of the role that is typical and necessary. When enacting this core role feature, each pastor described adopting a style that matched their true self-elements. Consider these three illustrative examples of personalizing preaching: “I’m not an inspirational guy, so I am more teacher in the pulpit than charismatic preacher” (C17); “I really love stories and storytelling, so that is always a part of my sermons” (C13); and “Whenever [I am] preaching . . . [I] open [my]self to the Holy Spirit . . . I read text, and God gives me a title, and I get a good idea of what’s going on” (C29). Physicians also described personalizing their way of practicing medicine, as this quote illustrates: “I always really loved teaching . . . [it] is an important part of my practice, the way I interact with every patient I see” (P39).

Claiming peripheral role features

Participants more fully achieved personal authenticity by claiming peripheral role features that aligned with their true selves. Peripheral role features are not central to a role identity, opening a wider selection of features that participants could enact authentically. For example, an elementary school teacher (T24) described himself as “good at computers when I was growing up. . . . I still love technology, and I’ve always used it as much as I can with the kids.” He also described being the “go-to technology guy” for his colleagues, helping them be more adept at using educational technology, and he added that “I love that part too.” Technology was one of his passions, and by claiming peripheral role features, he was able to bring that unique aspect of his true self into his called identity. Similarly, an aid worker (A28) built a strong reputation for the work she did helping colleagues deal with stress, and so “expert on staff care” became an important part of her identity. She described “loving the development work I do, but I also love that I have a special role helping my colleagues.” A pastor (C77) with an undergraduate degree in marine biology described herself as a “committed environmentalist.” She created a yearly sermon series on “caring for God’s creation” (personalizing a core role feature), and she led her congregants in creating a community garden (a peripheral role feature). She has added more environment-oriented ministries to help her church “be more connected to our local community.” She describes herself as “a pastor for people and the earth,” giving voice to how claiming this peripheral feature helped her experience personal authenticity. Our participants moved between personalizing core role features and claiming peripheral role features, and the combination of these processes allowed them to experience an extraordinary personal connection with the work. As the quotes above illustrate, they modified their identities to include these authentic elements.

The fullness of experiencing personal authenticity in a calling was being able to express core convictions in one’s work by “making a difference that matters” (physician P3) and “tak(ing) a stand for something truly important” (teacher T3). The expression of these core convictions shaped their called identity, “the way I show up as a pastor” (pastor C74) and “how I am as a physician, you know, really being a compassionate doc” (physician P5). Consider how core convictions are prominent in the quotes of the environmentalist/pastor, the physician/teacher, and the aid worker/staff care expert who described being able to bring herself into the work because she believes in what she is doing. In an especially poignant story, a pastor (C12) told us how taking a stand in favor of ordaining gay and lesbian pastors was a way for him to express a core conviction that stood at odds with some members of his church:

There were some people who wanted to take a vote on where we [the local church] stand on this, and that was hard, real hard, but [my family and I] stayed. I love that. It’s one of the reasons why I think [being a pastor] is a call on my life. If I wasn’t there, [oppositional members] wouldn’t have been challenged by this new thing. So I think it’s a really holy thing that God landed me there and that we stayed.

He described how, before this experience, he felt constrained as a pastor. After it, he felt a much deeper “affirmation” of his call and a “new freedom to be the pastor God created me to be.” These quotes illustrate that authoring an identity that embodied one’s core convictions was essential to the experience of living a calling.

Proficiency experiences

Our participants’ narratives also conveyed the importance of constructing an identity that achieved professional legitimacy, in part through demonstrating mastery in enacting the profession. Consider this quote in which a teacher describes a realization of mastery:

To middle schoolers I looked really young, so they thought they can get away with stuff, so I just had to learn how to show that I wasn’t going to take anything from them. . . . I was glad that the kids felt comfortable talking to me, but they also knew, I got a little smile on my face when they would walk in and they’re like, “oh we have Miss [Name] again, we’ll actually have to do work today.” . . . They were fine with that. They may roll their eyes or whatever, but they still liked being in my classroom. (T9)

As this quote illustrates, participants pursued mastery over time through a series of proficiency experiences in which they enacted their roles and observed the results of these performances with the goal of confirming where they were proficient and identifying where they needed to develop competency. Participants described responding to successful proficiency experiences by making those role features a more prominent part of their identity as a called professional. Stories of “I performed this (role feature) well” became stories of “I am the kind of professional who does (role feature).” Unsuccessful proficiency experiences were seen by professionals as an impetus to develop those elements they lacked: “I bombed my first sermon, so I worked hard, day and night, to get better. Over time, I became good, at least good enough, at preaching” (pastor C20). As this quote illustrates, however, those features were often not made central to their identity.

Mastery mattered because, as an expression of both one’s true self and an embodiment of one’s core convictions, living a calling meant aspiring to be one’s personal best. As one seminary dean put it, “[N]o one is called to mediocracy; we are all called to be excellent.” Many of our participants spoke with disapproval, even condemnation, about colleagues who did not appear to “really care about our work” (aid worker A41) or “who just don’t take the Gospel seriously” (pastor C6). Mastery was more than being good at one’s work; it was seen as the right way to live out one’s calling.

Conferrals of respect by beneficiaries

The endorsements of credible others were necessary for achieving professional legitimacy. Among the most important were conferrals of respect from the beneficiaries participants were serving. The quote above from the teacher (T9) about how her students responded to the way she established her authority is an example. A pastor shared this story of how a conferral of respect from a member of her congregation shaped her identity: “I visited with them, and I celebrated communion with them, and I got ready to leave and he grabbed my hands and he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘You are my pastor, you are our church.’ And it was so humbling and profound to me. . . . At that moment, I knew I really was a pastor” (C4). Conferrals of respect by beneficiaries were especially important during the early stages of role enactment when participants were especially sensitive to whether they were fulfilling their roles adequately and appropriately. When beneficiaries conveyed that they regarded a participant as a genuine professional, it affirmed that the participant’s role behaviors and role enactment met the expectations of the people they were called to serve. They appeared to be a “real” pastor, teacher, physician, or aid worker to these people. Participants’ narratives portray that conferrals of respect strengthened their sense that they were truly becoming called professionals.

How does someone find a calling, and how does that finding shape their identity as a called professional?

By being among the first researchers to study how a calling emerges, we contribute in several ways to the small but growing literature on antecedents of a calling. First, our model theorizes more than one calling experience. In the callings literature there has been a debate about the core, defining elements of a calling, and as a result, multiple conceptualizations of callings and pathways into callings have been proposed (Wrzesniewski, 2012; Duffy and Dik, 2013; Thompson and Bunderson, 2019). The neoclassical view of callings suggests that a calling emerges from an external source that creates a sense of destiny and duty, what Thompson and Bunderson (2019) refer to as “outer requiredness,” while the modern view suggests callings arise from internal sources or “inner requiredness,” leveraging passions and providing a sense of personal fulfillment. Rather than supporting one clear winner, our model suggests that there are different kinds of calling experiences, and it leaves open the possibility that there may be more than the two we theorize. The process that discerners followed seemed to propel and guide them toward what they narrated as their destined callings, while explorers’ more experiential pathway seemed to lead them to callings when they found work they loved. By theorizing different kinds of calling experiences we, like Schabram and Maitlis (2017), suggest that callings research should move away from attempts to develop a single overarching conceptualization of callings. Our findings attest that a more fruitful approach is to study variation across calling experiences, what causes that variation, and what outcomes are associated with different calling experiences.

For example, discerners feel they have one true calling while explorers are open to the possibility that more than one could exist. Focusing on this distinction points to several avenues for future research, such as whether there are differences between discerners and explorers in their propensity to fall from their call, miss a calling, or change their call. Our model suggests that if you believe your calling is your destiny, falling from it would be devastating and changing it would be impossible. It may thus be more likely for individuals who follow the discernment path to have problematic experiences such as premature identity foreclosure, which occurs when someone commits to a self without sufficient identity development (cf. Erikson, 1978; Petriglieri and Obodaru, 2019). Our model suggests the exploration path may lead to more flexible called identities, and so missing one calling would be less of a concern because, as an explorer, one would be open to finding a new one. Moreover, changing a calling might be just one more identity transition in a long history of job and identity changes. But there may be costs to this flexibility: perhaps some explorers’ identities are less robust in the face of challenges—one may need the assurance of destiny as a bulwark against strong identity threats. In contrast, when a person follows the discernment path to an integrated called identity, our model suggests that it can lead to a feeling of assurance that one has found work that is meaningful beyond one’s own assessment of its meaningfulness—work that one can claim, as Bunderson and Thompson (2009) posited, to be truly noble. This may be particularly important when a calling requires significant identity and lifestyle changes, such as becoming a religious ascetic or a physician whose medical practice requires spending long periods of time without family in remote and harsh conditions. Rather than suggesting there is one “best” path, we propose there is value in determining when different pathways into a calling lead to more positive or negative outcomes for individuals.

Second, our model proposes that understanding the experiences people have as they enter callings is of central importance. Existing theories often start with a particular definition of what a calling is and then seek to explain how a person would find and enter such a calling (e.g., Hall and Chandler, 2005; Duffy et al., 2011; Dobrow, 2013; Duffy et al., 2013). Our model instead theorizes that the pathway by which a person enters their calling shapes how they experience it—the particular milestones that discerners and explorers experience give rise to their experience of callings as destiny or good fortune, respectively. For our participants, early (often childhood) experiences of true self-knowledge seemed to create a sense among discerners that their unique capabilities and characteristics somehow pointed to their future; we suggest such experiences are the early roots of destiny for discerners. In contrast, the changing, adapting, and experimenting that characterized explorers’ search for work they love seemed to help them learn the value of being open to new callings. Following the plot line of these milestones yielded insights into why people experience their callings the ways that they do. Other pathways have been proposed in research, including a personal passion pathway (Dobrow, 2013) and identity-oriented, contribution-oriented, and practice-oriented pathways (Schabram and Maitlis, 2017); our model suggests those pathways might lead to additional kinds of calling experiences. Studying the specific milestones and plot lines of those pathways into callings would be important for understanding how and why they lead to their resultant calling experiences.

Third, current callings research often suggests that callings are either neoclassical or modern, but our model offers a contrast to this idea. While the callings found by discerners do have strong overlap with the neoclassical emphasis and its “outer requiredness” (cf. Thompson and Bunderson, 2019) orientation, and the callings found by explorers are more characteristic of the modern view, which emphasizes “inner requiredness,” the callings portrayed in our participants’ narratives were not pure examples of either view. For example, through introspection and mapping exemplars, discerners seemed to identify external needs that they were uniquely suited to fulfill and that were also fulfilling to them, leading to callings that also reflected “inner requiredness.” Similarly, explorers described their callings as work that mattered because they had the opportunity to contribute to society in ways that reflect “outer requiredness.” Thus our model asserts that rather than searching for pure types, future research should seek to understand the different ways inner and outer requiredness are manifest in calling experiences, how different paths into a calling lead to different ways of blending inner and outer, and how this blending shapes the way a calling is experienced and lived out. Our model resonates with Thompson and Bunderson’s (2019: 431) assertion that authoring “a compelling personal narrative that sensibly marries the two” is of central importance for a calling, and we provide greater theoretical clarity as to how that marriage takes place.

Finally, while our findings about the role of possible selves are somewhat consistent with prior research on identity construction (e.g., Markus and Nurius, 1986; Ibarra, 1999), it is notable that our model includes a threshold at which a person commits to a single possible self. In this way our model suggests that, even early on, someone can merge self and work clearly enough that they are willing to declare they have found a calling. This idea contrasts with the consultants and investment bankers studied by Ibarra (1999) who experimented with different provisional selves during role transition within a specific profession. Importantly, those professionals did not describe themselves as called. Our model asserts that people who feel called do commit to a single possible self—what we refer to as a nascent called identity—and feel compelled to become that self by crafting an integrated called identity. To author their integrated called identities, our participants did not appear to experiment with different provisional selves; rather they built on, strengthened, refined, and adapted their nascent called identities. It is possible, however, that explorers do adopt a provisional identity during the early period of their role engagement, as did Ibarra’s (1999) professionals. Our model suggests that coming to love that work would cause this provisional identity to shift into a nascent called identity, at which point they would no longer experiment with other provisional selves. The key changes instantiated by a nascent called identity are commitment to a single possible self and a willingness to engage in the identity work required to achieve professional legitimacy and personal authenticity.

Commitment to a single possible self may be necessary because callings require such a strong fusion between self and work. It would likely be difficult to achieve an intimate connection between self and work if one was regularly adopting a new possible self. Especially for discerners, this possible self is seen as their destiny, which may preclude experimentation with a range of provisional selves. And even explorers, who leave open the possibility that they can find an alternative calling, commit to a nascent called identity. Unlike identity foreclosure, which precludes identity change, our model theorizes that nascent called identities do change. But our model also leaves open the possibility that some discerners may be resistant to too much change in their nascent called identity, a form of premature identity foreclosure, which could preclude the work required to author an integrated called identity. In contrast, some explorers may not commit fully enough to their nascent called identity, which could also preclude the work required to author an integrated called identity. Future research might explore what over- and under-commitment to a nascent called identity look like and how differences in commitment are related to both more-immediate outcomes, such as missed or postponed callings (i.e., callings people sense earlier in life but pursue later in life), and long-term outcomes, such as the problems Schabram and Maitlis (2017) studied. Furthermore, research might explore the potential downsides of committing to a single nascent identity, such as misguided callings (i.e., when one is unable to establish proficiency, legitimacy, or authenticity) or thwarted callings (i.e., when external factors or life circumstances prevent one from pursuing a calling).

How does someone live into a calling, and how does this process shape their identity as a called professional?

Much of the calling literature has been built on the idea that becoming a called professional is simply a matter of finding “that place in the occupational division of labor and society that one feels destined to fill by virtue of particular gifts, talents, and/or idiosyncratic life opportunities” (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009: 38). Our model contests this idea. First, our study highlights that as Duffy, Douglass, and Autin (2015) proposed, there seems to be an important difference between sensing a calling and living a calling. Our model explains how this difference might be experienced by people and why it matters. The idea that identities are constructed over time has been well established by extant professional identity research (Ibarra, 1999; Kreiner, Hollensbe, and Sheep, 2006; Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann, 2006). But it has been largely neglected by callings researchers to this point, which has obscured theory about how callings are experienced. Our study leverages the narrative identity lens to articulate the specific process by which a sense of calling (nascent called identity) can be crafted into a fully lived calling (integrated called identity). By studying the stories participants told about how they lived into their callings, we contribute to theory about how someone authors an identity as a called professional. Our model asserts that enacting the role is pivotal to a person’s ability to author a called identity. Our participants’ stories indicate they expected that living into their calling would be an immersive experience, which reveals the deep level of commitment they brought to this identity work: Becoming a called professional appears to be neither a fast nor easy process.

In these ways our model highlights the need to study callings over time to better understand when and how they form, change, and end. Discernment, exploration, and integration stories took place over long periods of time, and taking that time into account was important in our model. For example, the unfolding of discerners’ narratives over time was essential for the sense of destiny they experienced. Future research could explore how stories that compose a called identity change over time and whether these changes matter for called identity work. We wonder, for example, how the narratives of individuals who fall from their call change over time. And past experiences might have mattered for participants’ identities at the time of their occurrence, which begs the question of what stories mattered for a time, say during discernment or exploration, but were later forgotten. How might forgotten stories matter for a called identity?

Second, in building theory about how people live into a calling, our research provides a rich illustration and extension of the understudied narrative identity perspective. Our findings provide evidence of Ibarra and Barbulescu’s (2010: 141) proposal that identity authoring arises by forming a “coherent self-narrative [that] depicts a career as a series of unfolding events that make sense sequentially.” Fundamentally, our model suggests that calling stories have to make sense both to others, through achieving professional legitimacy, and to the called professional, through personal authenticity. This underscores the importance of examining the types of stories people tell, and it serves as a foundation for future research that follows people over time to reveal how stories change and how those changes might relate to whether people find a calling and the kind of calling they experience if they do find one. In addition, our model resonates with the assertion that self-narratives can be powerful “transition bridges” (Ashforth, 2000; Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010). Our participants seemed to need a nascent called identity to be a bridge between finding and living into a calling. Committing to this one possible self, we argue, formed the basis for the integrated called identity they eventually authored. Future research might look for the existence or absence of such transition bridges, and the structure of bridges when they are used, to explore important questions in callings research like falling from, missing, and ending a calling. Presumably, “good” transition bridges are temporary, or perhaps more in keeping with the metaphor, they are left behind as one journeys forward in one’s identity work. Over-commitment to a nascent called identity may create a bridge that leads to a dead end, where one is no longer motivated or able to continue one’s identity work. In contrast, an underdeveloped nascent called identity may create a bridge that is too weak to facilitate ongoing identity authoring, and when the bridge collapses, the person moves on to yet another job.

Third, our theory raises an important implication about the role that institutional context plays in living into a calling. We have theorized that professional roles had to offer both certain constraints that ensured participants could properly enact the roles (i.e., the core role features, essential aspects of being a called professional) and also enough flexibility for personalizing role enactment in order to achieve authenticity. Thus our model implies that the nature of the role itself may influence the identity construction process for a called professional. This points to the need for callings research to address how institutional identity templates (i.e., the various institutionalized values, goals, and expectations that are associated with a profession; Ashforth, 2000; Chreim, Williams, and Hinings, 2007) might shape calling-related identity work. Some professions have dominant institutional templates that create strong constraints on the identity work professionals can and must do (Chreim, Williams, and Hinings, 2007). A conjecture that arises from our model is that authoring a called identity may be more difficult in such contexts because professionals are not able to engage in sufficient personalizing and are thereby precluded from developing a sense of personal authenticity. An interesting contrast to our study is Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann’s (2006: 239) study of professional identity construction among resident physicians; they refer to the medical school they studied as “Boot Camp” and report that insiders “characterized it as demanding, high quality, and somewhat militant.” Our theorizing brings into focus why such environments may be less amenable to fusing self and work and instead require that professionals tailor their identities to fit the work they are doing. The dominant identity template of such contexts may constrain identity work too much for personal authenticity to be crafted. One wonders if a reason the physicians in our study were able to author a called identity is because they were trained in medical systems with more munificent and flexible institutional templates, which allowed sufficient space for these physicians to craft personal authenticity.

Though it is speculative, we also suggest how our model can guide future research into potential “dark side” experiences of living into a calling (Thompson and Bunderson, 2019). Professionals may struggle to create an adequate fusion between self and work if they hold rigid preconceptions about their work that prevent them from sufficiently revising their actual and possible selves. As an illustration, Schabram and Maitlis (2017) found that “identity-oriented” professionals, in particular, entered their callings having strong, idealistic expectations of what living out their callings would be like. Based on our model, we hypothesize that these workers entered their professions with foreclosed identities that were “frozen” around their idealized possible selves. They may have clung to idealized possible selves rather than being willing to revise them, preventing them from engaging in sufficient personalization and thus precluding them from achieving personal authenticity. In addition, the idealized possible selves may have made it difficult for them to find proficiency experiences that were sufficient to close the gap between their actual and possible selves, undermining legitimacy.

How does a called professional achieve an intimate connection between self and work and author an integrated called identity?

Our model emphasizes that authoring an intimate connection is uniquely complicated for called professionals, and this complication highlights a notable exception to a prominent idea in the professional identity literature. Forming a deep fusion of self and work did seem to require being professionally legitimate, but our participants’ narratives also expressed the importance of being personally authentic. We argue that authoring an integration of both authentic and legitimate identities was of central importance for authoring a called identity. These findings challenge conventional wisdom in the professional identity literature, which suggests that the only way to negotiate the interplay between personal and social identities is through the “quasi-stationary equilibrium” of an optimal balance (Brewer, 2003; Kreiner, Hollensbe, and Sheep, 2006: 1048). Rather than trying to balance differentiation and inclusion, the narratives of the called professionals in our study indicate they were able to author identities that were both true-to-self and true-to-the-profession, and their narratives did not portray competition between the two motives. And rather than maintaining the tension between authenticity and legitimacy, our participants seemed to resolve the tension through receiving membership. Our findings provide evidence of how individuals can “simultaneously instantiate both social and personal identities” and “mesh them smoothly,” thereby creating the basis for more complex thought and action (Ashforth and Schinoff, 2016: 115, 116). Our study thus points to the need for more research into other ways people integrate different levels of identity, as well as the value of using narrative inquiry to understand how they achieve that integration.

In addition, our model theorizes that this fusion was socially embedded, foregrounding the importance of studying how social processes shape identity work among called professionals, something that has not been a part of most callings research. To craft a called identity, our participants needed exemplars, role models, wise guides, and beneficiaries. And importantly, receiving membership is a novel aspect of social embeddedness. This experience involves more than the kinds of feedback from other professionals that previous research has highlighted (e.g., Ibarra, 1999; Pratt, Rockmann, and Kaufmann, 2006) and more than the confirmation of individuals’ global self-views that is expected by self-affirmation (Cohen and Sherman, 2014) and self-verification (Swann and Bosson, 2010) theories. Receiving membership from called professionals comprises both a deeper affirmation of one’s personally authentic called identity (the unique way they embody their calling) by other called professionals and full inclusion in fellowship and solidarity with other called professionals. The concept of receiving membership, along with stories of the other supporting characters in our participants’ narratives, attests to the importance of moving beyond treating callings as an individual-level phenomenon. Some of the pressing issues such as falling from, missing, changing, and ending callings would likely benefit from studying the social factors that are present or absent. For example, explorers in our study lacked exemplars and wise guides. The fact that we studied only explorers who found work they loved begs the question of how the absence of these social relationships might have affected explorers who did not find callings.

Our theorizing around the integration of personal authenticity and professional legitimacy is consonant with Swann et al.’s (2012: 442) concept of identity fusion in which “the boundaries that ordinarily demarcate the personal and social self become highly permeable . . . [and] aspects of both the personal and social self can readily flow into the other.” Importantly, they propose that identity fusion does “not undermine—and may actually increase—the strength and viability of both constructs” (Swann et al., 2012: 442). Our model extends this work by theorizing one way individuals might achieve identity fusion is through the process of living into a called identity—and more particularly achieving this fusion of personal and social identities through receiving membership. Further research into the outcomes of identity permeability may advance callings research by, for example, determining additional identity processes that lead to permeable versus optimally balanced identities. In addition, studying the integration process and the identity fusion it creates might shed light on called professionals’ capacity to adapt to changes in their professions and still retain a fusion of self and work. Given recent changes in medicine and education, and the dramatic shifts in religious landscape in Western countries, more research into how physicians, teachers, pastors, and other called professionals navigate professional changes while maintaining intimate connections between self and work is needed.

Finally, our theoretical insights about integration also contribute to theories of how individuals experience meaning in their work. Rosso, Dekas, and Wrzesniewski (2010: 114) proposed that one important aspect of how individuals experience meaning is whether meaning is achieved through expressing personal agency (“drive to differentiate, separate, assert, expand, master, and create”) or communion (“drive to contact, attach, connect, and unite”). Our model suggests that rather than meaning arising from either agency or communion, it was through experiencing both “fundamental modalities of human existence” (cf. Bakan, 1966: 14–15) that our participants experienced meaning. Through the kinds of identity work our analysis revealed, our theorizing proposes that professionals can achieve a powerful sense of uniqueness and similarity, of agency and communion, and that both experiences can give rise to a sense of meaning in work. Each participant’s calling was meaningful because they could express their true self through it and because that unique expression was also deemed faithful to the ideals and values shared by called professionals. Here again, our model foregrounds the social embeddedness of callings and thereby highlights the need to better understand the social processes that underlie finding and experiencing meaning in work.