| Contacts: | Kerry Parke, kparke@hbs.edu, (617) 495-6931 |
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Harvard Business School Expert Offers Escape Routes from Life’s Dead Ends
Dr. Timothy Butler’s New Book Provides a Six-Phase Plan
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| Getting Unstuck Harvard Business School Press |
BOSTON - Stuck in a job you don’t like? You’re not alone. At one time or another, just about everyone experiences psychological impasse – periods of uncertainty about the next move in one’s career, relationships, or simply life in general. According to Dr. Timothy Butler, Senior Fellow and Director of Career Development Programs at Harvard Business School, this feeling of being “stuck” can be brought on by a number of predictable or unpredictable moments – the loss of a loved one or when the career of a lifetime somehow loses its juice. But this experience is, in fact, a necessary step towards finding new vision and opportunity.
A psychologist, psychotherapist, teacher, and career development counselor for more than twenty-five years, Butler examines in his research how people find their way to meaningful work. His latest book, Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths (Harvard Business School Press), leads readers through a six-step process for effectively moving from a state of impasse to a state of action.
In a recent interview with HBS Working Knowledge, Butler says, “The meaning of an impasse, although it’s usually first expressed as a failure or in an internalized notion of inadequacy, is a request for us to change our way of thinking about ourselves and our place in the world.”
In keeping with that premise, Getting Unstuck leads readers through a six-phase plan for recognizing impasse that includes:
- the arrival of the crisis
- the deepening of the crisis
- letting go of your current mental model
- making a crucial shift to a new perspective
- recognizing the deep patterns of your personality
- taking action for meaningful change
About the Author
Dr. Timothy Butler is a Senior Fellow and Director of Career Development Programs at Harvard Business School. He is also a principal and co-founder of Peregrine Partners, a consulting company in Brookline, Massachusetts, that focuses on career development, life transition counseling, and using career development for competitive advantage within organizations. Butler’s research on the relationship between personality structure and business career satisfaction has led to the development of three psychometric instruments, The Business Career Interest Inventory, The Management and Professional Rewards Profile, and the Management and Professional Abilities Profile. These three inventories have been presented with interactive interpretive tools as an integrated Internet-based business career self-assessment program known as CareerLeader™, which is used for business career assessment and development by over 300 business schools and corporations around the world.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.