How managers can avoid identity crisis when roles change

Jimmy: You don't have to be the hero. You don't have to be the one who is leading the charge all the time. You did that previously in your career. Now, it's time to lead. Now, it's time to step up and be the boss, who is able to think, and organise, and motivate, and develop, and retain your team.
Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments, to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out and to help you build a high performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes. And if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.
Hello and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. I am thrilled to be able to do these solo episodes as you know. And thank you so much for all the messages of support and encouragement as we have been growing this channel. If you are not one of our 2,500-ish subscribers, please do take a moment to hit the subscribe, or follow, or like button on whichever platform you're listening on, so we can make sure you don't miss any episodes and the value we offer on The High Performance Leader.
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Anyway, without further ado, let us get into today's episode, where we're going to be talking all about the idea of your identity, and sometimes how your identity can get a little bit mixed up, or you may be even having an identity crisis. Now, I don't proclaim to be a psychologist, but what I can share with you is some stories and some occasions in my own career and the careers of those who we work with that can potentially sound a little bit familiar to you. And also offer some mindset shifts and some action tips that might help you overcome these circumstances.
So, let's start then with our question of when you go to a social event, or you turn up to a new job, or you turn up to a meeting, one of the first questions that normally gets asked is: "What do you do?" And for most of us, we answer with our job title, whatever that might be. We tend to let our jobs define us. If I was to ask you: "Who are you?", that's a very different question to "What do you do?"
But actually, if you had a strong identity of something else other than your job, then maybe your identity would be, "What do I do? Well, I do family stuff, I do sports, I do enjoyment." And occasionally, 9 to 5, I spend time at work.
But the reality for most of us is that we are defined by the role that we do. And I can certainly remember when I left being in the military, I was, "Hi, Jimmy. I'm an ex-army officer," for quite a while. And then when I left the corporate world, I was an ex-corporate GM for a while when I introduced myself. And potentially, it's because we gain recognition, and strength, and we believe credibility from our job, or from the seniority, or from the status that we have in a certain career. That can be the case for many people, as they've fought to get up through the ranks, they've been recognized and rewarded for their ability to deliver. They've been recognized and rewarded, and they get a bigger job title, a fancier office, a bigger team, and it starts to encroach on to their identity.
Now, we use in our practice a four-layered model called the purpose pyramid. And the bottom two layers are where we're going to talk about today. The bottom two layers are my individual purpose, and my role purpose. And what we want to do is get very, very, very clear on what both those two things are. Because where we start to get a little bit too much overlap, that's where we start to see some issues with our identity.
We need to have a very clear personal purpose of what is my reason for being on this planet. If you're interested in that exercise, go to chapter one of Beat Burnout, there's a whole chapter on how to identify your personal purpose. The second one is our role purpose. What is the purpose of my role? And that's where I want to play today, because that second layer of the pyramid is often where we are a little bit uncertain, and with good reason. Most of us, when we get our job, we don't get a comprehensive briefing on the purpose of our role. We don't get very- a great clarity on the expectations upon us, so we're kind of left to work it out for ourselves.
For many of us, on our job title or our job description when we get it, at the very top of the page, there's a thing that says, "job title", or "a job purpose", or "role purpose". And it's a couple of lines, and normally that's been written by somebody who doesn't really know what your role does. Maybe they worked in HR, or they're a consultant who was helping, so they just need to get something down. Or it was written by a manager who was really busy and had lots of other things to do, and they didn't give it that great depth of thought that's enough to define your 40 to 60 hours a week in that role. So, it's up to you to get very clear on your role purpose.
And one of the mistakes that I see many, many leaders making is when they aren't clear on their role purpose, and so they do some of the things that are not their job. Some examples, maybe you were the best sales guy, or the best accountant in your team, and you were recognised for smashing it out of the park, you always hit all your targets, and you solved all the problems, and you did all the things, and you got all the results. You were the superstar, you knew the most, you were the expert. And if anything went wrong, you came in and you saved the day.
And then you got promoted because of that to being the manager or the leader of the team. And perhaps you haven't let go of being the best salesperson or being the best accountant, so you're still trying to outperform all your team, you're still trying to be the expert, you're still trying to be the superhero and save the day. When now your role purpose is different. Your role purpose is to lead those superstars, is to encourage, and grow, and develop, and retain those superstars, not to be one yourself.
But because you've invested a lot of your self-worth in that purpose that you had as an individual contributor, with the value you brought, and the recognition you got, it's very hard to let go of that sometimes, and that is where our identity crisis can sometimes start to happen.
Another example is where we have it at the other end of our career. The other end of our career, I was working with the chair of a board a couple of days ago, and she was transitioning out of role at the end of her career, has had 40 plus years as a high performer, a leader, an executive, and- and now on- on a board of directors for an organisation. And she felt that her role was being a leader. She felt that her role was being in charge, being important. That was her identity, and she was very, very worried about what was going to happen when she stopped doing that, when she was no longer the chair, she was the past chair of the board of directors and was now a retired person. And she felt that people look down on retired people. People felt- look down on people who're at the end of their careers, or had stepped out of the rat race, or had gone off and done something different. She felt that she wasn't going to have as much personal worth, and that was causing her some stress and some issues.
So, two different examples there, but where we can end up in this identity crisis. Let's go back to our leadership example though, where we have a leadership crisis because we're continuing to do our team's job whilst leading the team. And no wonder we start to experience burnout, tiredness, anxiety, stress, it's because you're trying to do two jobs at the same time.
Maybe also there's an impact on your team. Maybe they're not 100% clear on what does Jimmy actually do? Like, what's- what's his job versus what's my job? Because every time I start doing something, Jimmy steps in and organises it for me, or takes over for me, or as soon as something started to go wrong, Jimmy just takes it off us. That can be a real challenge for your team. It can lead to confusion, it can lead to frustration.
And for you, it might feel like, "Oh, God. I'm just being dragged down into all of these other things that I don't really want to do. Like, I've did all those years ago, and now I'm trying to be the next level of leadership rank. Maybe I want to be- get my boss's job, or I want to get that promotion. But I'm so busy doing all these other things that I have to do because nobody else can do them." Well, who's created that situation? You have. You've created that situation by not letting your team grow around you and step into their role purpose, because your identity is so wrapped up in doing your old job. Maybe the thing that got you promoted, maybe the thing that got you recognised, maybe the thing that got you rewarded previously, but it's not serving you now.
This can become a real maze. And as I say, the team can often start to feel negative. They'll just let you get on with it. Eventually, they'll become disengaged, they'll step back because they know you're going to do it anyway and you get even more exhausted. They'll then start bringing you all the problems because they stop thinking, making you even more exhausted. And finally, you end up at the point where you're carrying everything. And you're alone, and your identity then starts to suffer because you're worrying about failing, and poor decision making, and not being able to do everything you've committed to doing, all because you haven't got clear on your role purpose.
So, what can you do to solve this? Well, I recommend really thinking about, why are you put on this planet, first of all. Instead of being wrapped up in that, "I'm here to be a accountant, or a sales person, or an accounting manager, or a sales manager." Start thinking about what other things in your life define you. Move away from what you do, and move to more- more towards who you are. And write down on a list, what are the five or six things that really define me as a person, my purpose on this planet, the value I bring? That help me create my identity around that, not just your job.
Start to think about your values, and your goals, and how they fit into the job that you do. And have a conversation with your team, with your boss, with your peers around, what do you think is the purpose of my role? You know, what are the two or three things that my job is responsible for delivering that add the most value? And focus your energy there. And the other things that are not told you by the- all those other people, start thinking about, can I delegate those? Can I give them away? Can I automate them? Can I- or can I offer them up in a different way to other people? Maybe they could be a development opportunity for somebody else.
You don't have to be the hero. You don't have to be the one who is leading the charge all the time. You did that previously in your career. Now, is time to lead. Now, is time to step up and be the boss, who is able to think, and organise, and motivate, develop, and retain your team.
So, are you having an identity crisis? Are you stuck in the past? Are you defined by your job? If any of those is true for you, it's time to start thinking a little bit differently.
I hope that helped. I'll speak to you soon, and if you enjoyed this episode, please do remember to share it with somebody else. We really appreciate it.
That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest bestseller, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high performance culture and is packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.