This chapter focuses on the transition process, called the Expert Transition Cycle, which an individual goes through each time they make a transition. It reviews the more traditional models including vocational models, career anchors, psychometric models, work adjustment theories, and psychologically based models as well as ecologically and socially embedded models. It then reviews more contemporary transition process models, focusing on two models, working identity and identity status, which inform the study of identities in transition in the research. Finally, it presents the Expert Transition Cycle, which is the basis for determining how identity changes during a transition. This model includes five stages: Intention, Inquiry, Exploration, Commitment, and Integration.

The search for purpose and meaning is common to the work of many twentieth-century psychologists. It seems to operate as an overarching motivation or metamotivation for a career rather than as a specific motivation for a transition. Purpose tends to emerge and be discovered, whereas meaning is a constructed system of beliefs that is built over time around the search for purpose. Choices that lead to the discovery and construction of one’s “true nature” or “authentic self” or “essential identity” can give purpose and meaning to one’s life. The search for purpose and meaning in work is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter addresses how cognitive flexibility enables an individual to respond adaptively to new situations and respond appropriately to any situation. Interrupting automaticity avoids being trapped in mindsets that foreclose generating new options; avoiding reductive bias reduces the tendency to oversimplify and turn dynamic processes into fixed objects and make complex interactions linear; avoiding functional fixedness reduces the tendency to apply the same solution to different situations; and cognitive connectivity opens up to new approaches in which mental models can be transformed, schemata reorganized, and cognitive bridges built between previous expertise and new situations. This kind of cognitive flexibility enables individuals to respond and adapt to the new situation into which they are moving. This is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter focuses on three primary models for understanding motivation during transitions and addresses: (1) Expectancy × Value theory, (2) cognitive models for motivation and in particular attribution theory, locus of control, and taxonomy of perceived causes; and (3) intrinsic/extrinsic motivation theory and the self-determination model. We focus specifically on the ways in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence human behavior. Individuals who are repeatedly successful in making a transition will more often demonstrate motivation intrinsically in decisions to make a transition. We examine the role of achievement motivation, need for autonomy, need for competency, search for satisfaction, and need for affiliation and relatedness as motivators for career change. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Historically, most intelligence theories include the personal intelligences that encompass apprehension of one’s own experience, the ability to understand and manage people, and insight into the states of other people. Intrapersonal intelligence enables an individual to cultivate self-awareness, which operates during transitions at three progressive levels. Self-knowledge is produced by reflective thinking and is the basis for growth and development. The capacity for self-assessment follows and evaluates strengths and weaknesses during a transition. This supports self-development, which turns awareness into action. Interpersonal intelligence enables an individual to empathize with others, manage relationships in mutually beneficial ways, give and receive feedback, and build collaborative relationships that develop and ultimately lead others. The personal intelligences are investigated through retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter revisits the Expert Transition Cycle presented in Chapter 3 from the perspective of how identity changes. Five stages of the Expert Transition Cycle operate during transition. Intention orients and clarifies choices and provides drive. Inquiry holds open the transition process with criteria for choice and discrimination based upon intention. Exploration actively investigates the familiar and the new elements of identity, roles, social situations, work opportunities, beliefs, and performance. Commitment narrows and targets the choices made regarding those elements. Integration modifies and adapts the identity to include new elements, knowledge, experience, and beliefs. Each stage of the Expert Transition Cycle is reviewed in light of the operation of the transition experiences, such as cognitive flexibility and purpose. This is discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This concluding chapter revisits some of the main themes of the book. Transition expertise is discussed through the lenses of cognitive adaptability, personal intelligences, contextual intelligence, and motivation. Career transitions are discussed through the themes of self concept evolution and identity change. The methodological characteristics of the study are evaluated, including its limitations. The questions of control group, nontransitions, and failed transitions are addressed. Finally, avenues of future research are proposed, including self-efficacity and self-control, resiliency, and wisdom. The discussion is informed by the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter presents a brief theoretical overview of intelligence, cognition, and expertise and their theoretical basis for use in the subsequent chapters. It introduces the main models of intelligence including trait and factorial models, the triarchic mind, and multiple intelligence theories. It then reviews the approach of cognitive psychology based upon early computer modelling of human cognition, schemas and frames, production systems, and episodic and semantic memory. Finally, it reviews expert systems, expert knowledge acquisition and retrieval, practice, transfer of skill, flexibility of knowledge retrieval, and how all of these factors influence the ability of an individual to make transitions in their careers.

Most intelligence models include an array of processes and mechanisms that enable experts to generalize their knowledge and processes during career transitions and produce flexibility in cognitive structures that enable individuals to overcome limitations in applying expert knowledge and processes across domains and functional areas. These processes have been described variously as insightful thinking, induction, eduction, elaborating and mapping, novelty and metaphorical capacity, inductive inference, divergent production abilities, analogy, flexibility of use, and closure. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

This chapter presents an overview of the book and positions it in the context of the development of expertise and the pursuit of excellence. It presents the historical context of the development of expertise and the theoretical context of the study of expertise.