The research behind the Skills Mirror

Herminia Ibarra (2003). Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career. Harvard Business School Press.

Test a new direction with small experiments instead of planning it all in your head first. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

William Bridges (1980). Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. Addison-Wesley.

The in-between stage of a change is expected, not a sign you chose wrong. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Nigel Nicholson (1984). A Theory of Work Role Transitions. Administrative Science Quarterly.

Every new role runs through preparation, encounter, adjustment and stabilisation. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Nancy K. Schlossberg (1981). A Model for Analyzing Human Adaptation to Transition. The Counseling Psychologist.

Situation, self, support and strategies: what makes a transition easier to cope with. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Donald E. Super (1980). A life-span, life-space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior.

Careers recycle through stages and share your life with other roles. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Douglas T. Hall (2004). The protean career: A quarter-century journey. Journal of Vocational Behavior.

Success judged by your own values, and the adaptability to act on them. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Michael B. Arthur and Denise M. Rousseau (eds.) (1996). The Boundaryless Career. Oxford University Press.

Describing your value in terms that travel beyond one employer.

Robert W. Lent, Steven D. Brown and Gail Hackett (1994). Toward a Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and Academic Interest, Choice, and Performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior.

Spotting options you rule out from low confidence rather than low interest. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Kathleen E. Mitchell, Al S. Levin and John D. Krumboltz (1999). Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities. Journal of Counseling & Development.

Creating more chances for useful surprises instead of forcing one answer early. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Thomas W. H. Ng, Lillian T. Eby, Kelly L. Sorensen and Daniel C. Feldman (2005). Predictors of objective and subjective career success: a meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology.

Pay and promotion are predicted by different things than career satisfaction. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Mark L. Savickas (2012). Life Design: A Paradigm for Career Intervention in the 21st Century. Journal of Counseling & Development.

Building the conversation around the story of your own career. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Edgar H. Schein (1978). Career Dynamics: Matching Individual and Organizational Needs (career anchors). Addison-Wesley.

The motivations that make a role fit or chafe. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

John L. Holland (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology.

Matching the kind of work you are drawn to with the kind of work a role involves. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

International Personality Item Pool (Lewis R. Goldberg and colleagues) (1999). The Big Five personality traits. Oregon Research Institute.

An evidence-based way to talk about working style. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.

The moments you lose track of time point to work that suits you.

Laura Morgan Roberts, Jane E. Dutton, Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Emily D. Heaphy and Robert E. Quinn (2005). Composing the Reflected Best-Self Portrait. Academy of Management Review.

Your strengths as other people see them. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Arnold B. Bakker and Evangelia Demerouti (2007). The Job Demands-Resources model: state of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Telling too many demands apart from too few resources when energy is low. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Shalom H. Schwartz (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

Naming the two values pulling against each other in a career dilemma. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Kelly G. Wilson, Emily K. Sandoz, Jennifer Kitchens and Miguel Roberts (2010). The Valued Living Questionnaire: Defining and Measuring Valued Action within a Behavioral Framework. The Psychological Record.

The gap between what you value and how you have actually been living. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Goals that fit your own values are the ones people keep and reach. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist.

Checking each option for autonomy, competence and connection. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Steven C. Hayes, Kirk D. Strosahl and Kelly G. Wilson (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Guilford Press.

Acting on your values even when fear comes along. Pirouette uses these ideas for coaching, not as therapy. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Frank W. Bond and David Bunce (2000). Mediators of change in emotion-focused and problem-focused worksite stress management interventions. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

Evidence that these ideas help people at work. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Paul E. Flaxman, Frank W. Bond and Fredrik Livheim (2013). The Mindful and Effective Employee. New Harbinger.

How the approach is used in workplace training rather than therapy. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Jacqueline G. L. A-Tjak and colleagues (2015). A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Clinically Relevant Mental and Physical Health Problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

The overall evidence base behind the approach. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (2016). Designing Your Life. Stanford Life Design Lab.

Sketching several possible futures and prototyping them. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton (2001). Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work. Academy of Management Review.

Reshaping the role you have as an alternative to leaving it. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Michael D. Watkins (2003). The First 90 Days. Harvard Business School Press.

Reading the situation you are walking into in a new role. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Charles Handy (1990). The Age of Unreason. Harvard Business School Press.

Portfolio careers: combining several strands of work.

McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. Women in the Workplace. McKinsey & Company, published annually.

Where women's careers stall, and why. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Sylvia Ann Hewlett and colleagues (2010). The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling. Harvard Business Review Research Report.

Why sponsors matter more than mentors for the next step up. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003). Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton University Press.

Negotiating pay and scope at the point of a move.

Claudia Goldin (2021). Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity. Princeton University Press (Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, 2023).

How roles that reward always-on hours shape pay and progression after children. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam (2005). The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions. British Journal of Management.

Checking the conditions of a senior role before saying yes. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Lisa A. Mainiero and Sherry E. Sullivan (2005). Kaleidoscope careers: An alternate explanation for the opt-out revolution. Academy of Management Perspectives.

Authenticity, balance and challenge, and which one is loudest right now. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Kerr Inkson, Michael B. Arthur, Judith Pringle and Sean Barry (1997). Expatriate assignment versus overseas experience: Contrasting models of international human resource development. Journal of World Business.

The difference between being sent abroad and going on your own. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Vesa Suutari and Chris Brewster (2000). Making their own way: international experience through self-initiated foreign assignments. Journal of World Business.

What happens to careers when people move abroad without an employer behind them. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

J. Stewart Black, Mark Mendenhall and Gary Oddou (1991). Toward a Comprehensive Model of International Adjustment. Academy of Management Review.

Adjusting to work, to people and to daily life, including a partner's adjustment. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

John W. Berry (1997). Immigration, Acculturation, and Adaptation. Applied Psychology.

Keeping your international identity while building local ties. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Akram Al Ariss (2010). Modes of engagement: migration, self-initiated expatriation, and career development. Career Development International.

The routes skilled people take when their experience is not recognised in a new country. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

Mila Lazarova and Jean-Luc Cerdin (2007). Revisiting repatriation concerns: organizational support versus career and contextual influences. Journal of International Business Studies.

Treating a move back home as a new transition, not a return. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

European Union (2005). Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications, and the EURES job mobility portal. Official Journal of the European Union; European Commission.

Whether your profession is regulated in the country you are moving to. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Mieko Kamiya (1966). Ikigai ni tsuite (On ikigai). Japan.

The original Japanese work on what makes life worth living.

Gordon Mathews (1996). What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds. University of California Press.

Where people find meaning, and how that shifts over a life. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

Toshimasa Sone and colleagues (2008). Sense of Life Worth Living (Ikigai) and Mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study. Psychosomatic Medicine.

Why a sense of purpose matters to well-being. Read the paper (opens in a new tab)

World Economic Forum (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025. World Economic Forum.

Which roles and skills employers expect to grow and shrink. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

European Commission. ESCO: European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations. European Commission.

A shared European vocabulary for skills and occupations. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. O*NET OnLine. National Center for O*NET Development.

What occupations involve, and which interests and skills they draw on. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

European Union (2023). Pay Transparency Directive (EU) 2023/970. Official Journal of the European Union.

New rights to pay information that strengthen a negotiation. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

European Union (2022). Women on Boards Directive (EU) 2022/2381. Official Journal of the European Union.

The target for women on listed company boards, and what it opens up. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

John Whitmore (1992). Coaching for Performance (the GROW model). Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Goal, reality, options, will: the shape of a coaching conversation. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick (1991). Motivational Interviewing. Guilford Press.

Drawing out your own reasons for change rather than telling you what to do. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

International Coaching Federation (2025). ICF Core Competencies. International Coaching Federation.

The professional standard for effective coaching. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)

International Coaching Federation (2025). ICF Code of Ethics. International Coaching Federation.

Confidentiality, clear boundaries and referring people on when something goes beyond coaching. Visit the source (opens in a new tab)