OK OK I know that's a REALLY judgemental title, and we all know that being non-judgemental is a crucial part of the ethical career coach. But I think many of us would agree that a career in the the armed forces is like no other, and that it's one of those career options that polarises people: those drawn to it can't imagine doing anything else, and those not, can't imagine doing anything worse.
Anyway, regardless of anyone's personal views, I did some research this week on what factors make people join the armed forces, and thought you might find it interesting.
There are a number of research papers that have looked at this over the last couple of decades, all coming up with pretty similar findings. The paper I most enjoyed was one by Woodward and Jenkins (reference below) who used a research method called photo-eliciation. This isn't a research method I know much about, but I really liked the way it was used in this study. The researchers asked a range of military folk to bring in 10 or so photos that for them summed up their time in the forces. They were then asked to talk about the photos, why they'd chosen them, what happened, what it meant to them etc..
Their research whittled it down to three key aspects of people's identity in the forces. Linking this with Ibarra's theories on career identities, these three points may well have a significant role to play in the career decisions and job satisfaction of those who are contemplating a career in the forces.
So the first one is professional expertise, and in particular, professional expertise that has a military dimension - so things like expert marksmanship, or being able to manoeuvre a vehicle under intense pressure on difficult terraine. A key element of this is the idea of physical endurance and survivial - the photos that the subjects brought often involved images of the subjects exhausted and dirty after an exercise.
The second is something the researchers refer to as fictive kinship. The concept here is that the military becomes a new and often better family. The subjects talked often about the idea that the relationships with their colleagues were as close as brothers, and that it was this that could motivate them to fight on the front line in a way that nothing else could.
The final aspect of military indentity is the notion of participation in a military event, and in particular a military event that means something to the rest of the nation. For example the subjects talked with great pride about being part of events such as the Falklands, which people outside their professional circles knew about and followed.
One further issue that interested me was the importance, or as it turns out, the lack of importance that the military subjects put on the idea of patriotism. The idea of fighting for one's country seemed to be something that is accepted as being there for all those who sign up, but it wasn't something that was overtly mentioned, and doesn't seem to be a major motivating force for those who join the forces. There were suggestions in the data that one of the issues here is that a link has been established in the non-military world between patriotism and racism, and the subjects interviewed were very keen to down play the "Queen and country" element of the role, not because it wasn't important to them, but becuase they were anxious about the inference that others may draw from an overt show of patriotism.
This sparked a few questions off for me. Do all professional areas have equally specific and widely shared career identities? And are there any other fields whose professional identity is at all similar to the forces? What other fields would suit someone who for some reason can't pursue a military career - what other industries or roles could also fulfill the identites above? And given how challenging so many people find the process of leaving the forces and reintegrating themselves in to "civvy street", what extra support can this understanding of military identities and motivation allow us to give to our ex-forces clients?
Woodward, R. and Jenkins, K.N (2011) "Military Identities in the Situated Accounts of British Military Personnel" Sociology 45 (2) 252 - 268
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