The Nature of Leadership and Career

read time 5 minutes

The Nature of Leadership and Career, is a weekly newsletter where I provide 1 illustration and ~3 ideas to help you connect to your career, leadership, or work journey in a more natural way.

Today at a glance

• Illustration of the week

  - The shape and size of identity in career transitions

• The Nature of the Mind

  - Psychology and neuroscience of self-identity

• The Nature of Career

  - Self-identity in career transitions - Who am I? How do I fit in?

  - The power to redefine your identity

  - Buffering your social identity

  - 3 simple steps to get practical - worked example

Illustration of the Week

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The Nature of Career

During career transitions, redefining and re-prioritizing your self-identities brings clarity and calm.

But what is it about transitions that disrupt our sense of self, our composure, and our priorities?

To answer this question…

 🧠 Think about the most recent major change you made in your career, leadership, or your life.

e.g. career change, moving house, moving country, having a child.

This could also be a change that was made for you

e.g Redundancy, loss of a loved one.

Chances are you were directly, or indirectly reflecting on one or more of these questions during the transition:

• Who am I?

• How do I “fit” with others? e.g. family, friends, colleagues, my culture, etc?

The crux of these questions is based on our self-identity, our social identity, and our need to belong to part of a pack.

We will explore social identity and belonging next week!

Let’s get 🧠 nerdy and explore our self-identity.

The Nature of the Mind

Self identity – Who am I?

• Self-identity is the feeling of the ‘self’, the foundational continuity that makes us ‘us’. These “self schemas” are based on different conscious and unconscious inputs.

• We view our self-identity based on our different roles e.g. mother, professional, writer.

• Whilst we may adopt these different roles as part of our identity, there is a persistent ‘feeling of self’ beyond them.

• In Buddhist psychology and Eastern philosophies, the belief is that there is no self “Anatta”.

• Neuroscience and neuropsychology are now “catching up” with Eastern philosophies, and agree that there is actually no area of the brain, or specific patterns that relates to “ourselves as self”

If this fascinates you:

Read: No self, no problem. How neuropscyhology is catching up to Buddhism

Listen to: How (And Why) To Lose Yourself on the Ten Percent Happier Podcast

Other resources used to write this section:

Science Direct: Self Identity

Self-Identity Theory and Research Methods

You have the power to redefine yourself and buffer your role-identities

I got the power!

If we go with the latest neuropsychology + Eastern wisdom of “no self” that is,

↳ the self is not permanent

↳ we make up our sense of self from conscious and unconscious inputs

then during transitions, it’s not about searching for “who am I” but redefining our self-identity.

Buffering is key

Self-identity and social identity theories also suggest that the more “evenly” we identify with a few different identities, the more buffer we have if one of those identities is jeopardized.

This always reminds me of the 2000’s cheerleading Rom Com movie Bring it On.

Torrance the main character, is the lead cheerleader and her team’s competence, validity, and ability to compete have been called into question.

Cliff her love interest says “It’s just cheerleading” to which she responds “I am only cheerleading”

As a viewer you have a feeling of cringer and, “oh shit”.

Because if the only thing you “are” tumbles over with out any buffer than who are you?

Time travelling back to the present and a more career based example:

After redefining your role identities, “buffering” your role identities is crucial for quality life outcomes and mental wellbeing.

These two steps are key to taking the emotional sting out of career transitions.

Let’s get practical

Here is a simple but deep exercise to help you redefine your sense of self and to build an identity buffer.

Get some physical or virtual stickies. This works best.

1. Brainstorm as many of your role identities as you can.

2. Place the role identities in a formation that represents how you have prioritized them based on importance / time.

Reflect on what you observe about the placement of your stickies.

3. Reorder your role-identities in a formation that makes sense to you

Get creative with your placement. It doesn’t have to be a vertical stack rank.

What do you observe now? What changes do you have to make to rebalance and buffer your role identities?

Finally:

💡Given that self-identity research also suggests that your sense of self is made up of unconscious inputs. Pay attention to the digital information and social information that may be shaping your sense of who you are or who you should be.

Until the next issue when we discuss our social-identity!

If you need help with redefining your self-identities and career direction, let’s chat. I would love to help you.

Catch up on recent issues of The Nature of Leadership + Career

• Amplify or Unravel? The 3 types of leaders shaping your leadership

• How your scarcity mindset impacts your decision making and empathy + 3 ways to override it

• 3 career X-factors that most generalists ignore

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