This essay explores organisation-external communications, how to engage the world out there to impact how your peers think and act, how this process shapes our identity and what we might become. It forms part of research into my next book on organisational and human sensemaking.
Read Part I, Part II, and Part III and a sidebar on ‘Luck’. Part V will announced via the Radar mailing list.
Part IV Contents
I. The evolution of the professional identity
In Part IV we will unpack how a professional identity evolves and develop a visual language that we can use to bind together the various threads in the next instalment of this essay.
The three identity layers
In Part I, we introduced the attributes of an identity model to consider how a professional identity is formed. We can simplify this model (Figure 1), to focus on the three identity layers and how they interrelate:
- Public layer, how others perceive someone based on their various public touchpoints,
- Personal layer, personal situational determinants and attributes,
- The core, private layer, how we perceive ourselves personally and professionally, our belief system, and the values we live by.
FIGURE 1. The public, personal and private layers of a professional identity.
Readers familiar with Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) will recognise the similarity to his front stage/back stage metaphor, which addresses the holistic, not just the professional identity. Similar to Goffman’s model, our characters perform a range of roles in public and private environments, and adhere to, subvert, or otherwise affect societal expectations and norms.
The first steps of a career
From conversations with Reflecting Forward fellows I’ve come to appreciate the diverse notions of a ‘career’ within our community—one facet of which is the distinction between an adoption of a broadly Directional or Correlative mental model for thinking about a career path. Whilst some of you follow a relatively easy-to-define traditional career path, others have struggled to describe their working life as a career, in part because correlations between experiences have yet to emerge, and even when they do emerge, a sense of progress can be difficult to gauge.
The maturity of a work-domain, with established communities, roles, language, culture, job titles and recognised progression also has a bearing on whether a role is considered as part of a career. For example, the difference between ascribing ‘career value’ to the nascent forming of a community hosting its first meet-up, versus attending the 21st edition of an annual conference.
From my own experience:
I didn’t feel comfortable describing my work-history as a career until my mid-thirties, a few years into my first corporate job, which I primarily applied for because I wanted to remain living in Japan, rather than a desire to work for a corporation (Nokia).
However, in retrospect the first steps of my career path were guided by far earlier events—a poor academic record that held up a harsh light to my capabilities as they are measured by society, a lot of international backpacking in my twenties, discovering that I had an aptitude for design whilst working for a university, reading a newspaper article about Genevieve Bell’s research at Intel and realising one could be paid to travel and learn about other cultures, and moving to Japan to maintain a personal relationship.
At whatever stage of life a career emerges, we can frame a person’s evolution (Figure 2) as:
- nascent, where many directions are possible, some of which show potential,
- emergent, where a theme starts emerge, and a way forward becomes more apparent,
- developed, where the career is more fully formed, recognised, and described,
- diminished, where that career is no longer practiced, or the commitment to the career lessens.
Using grey to denote ambiguity and red to denote a more fully developed professional identity, we can visualise this early career transition as follows:
FIGURE 2. From nascent to a diminished career identity
To demonstrate the evolution of a career, I’ll use an archetype drawn from research participants: career-focussed Anna who is an example of someone that (currently) follows a relatively traditional career path:
Whilst at school in London Anna has an aptitude for numbers, a curiosity in how systems work, and a desire to travel the world (Figure 2, A1). She takes a BA in Finance, during which time she interns at an accounting firm, which transitions into a junior position after she graduates (A2). During this time she studies a part time MBA.
Working in London’s financial district, she becomes exposed to a wider range of roles and lifestyles, and opts for a career in corporate finance. After switching companies she takes the role of financial analyst, also studies part-time and passes the Financial Risk Management Certification. By this point in her career, she’s fully invested in the corporate career ladder, understands the risk/reward of moving between companies in the industry to get ahead, and has wholly adopted the lifestyle her compensation and benefits afford (A3).
Thus far Anna follows a fairly traditional career path, with clear steps for advancement, and if she chooses, labour mobility within the finance industry.
As the professional reputation evolves
Another way of thinking about Anna’s evolution is in terms of her professional reputation, part of her pubic identity layer.
For example:
To her colleagues Anna is initially much like every other graduate hire (Figure 2, A1), but over time her skills, personality, strengths and weaknesses become apparent. Her relative strengths attract ever-more challenging requests, and she becomes the go-to person for her area of expertise (A2), to the point where her reputation extends beyond the organisation—publishing articles, contributing to professional bodies, and speaking at conferences (A3).
FIGURE 3. The relative strength of reputation, as part of her public identity layer
A professional reputation can strengthen and weaken over time, affected by many factors: the outcome of projects, organisational politics, whether she is present in the office and interacts in person with decision makers or works remotely, or her comfort level for being in the spotlight.
Whether to continue along the path or pivot?
We can visualise how her public and private identity might evolve in response to Anna’s partner’s overseas job opportunity(Figure 4):
Anna is now mid-career working in corporate banking, having built a strong internal professional reputation and identity (A1). Her working partner takes an overseas position in Rwanda, and they leave behind their lives in London.
On arrival in Rwanda (A1), Anna decides to provide consultancy services, initially for microfinance organisations where she can apply some of her prior domain knowledge. In this transitional period she continues to emphasise her professional experience in London, but starts to integrate more locally relevant experiences including agricultural loans and solar energy provision (A2).
Over time her identity still retains elements of her prior career in London, but it has become multifaceted to embrace new experiences, perspectives and her new areas of expertise (A3).
One of the more obvious ways through which a professional identity is curated is in people’s bios, and in particular which of their prior employers are highlighted e.g. ex-[company name] or [organisation] alum. As a side note, if you’re a few years into your career and applying for a role at Studio D using an alumni email address, you’re signalling the limitations of your personal evolution.
FIGURE 5. Evolving between unidimensional identities
Alternatively, using Figure 5, we can imagine a different scenario playing out, as one thematically dominant identity morphs into another:
After the overseas move, Anna uses her new-found time and access to resources in Rwanda to set up a woodworking workshop in her now-expansive yard to explore her love of wood carving (A2). It is a hobby she picked up in her twenties that provides a tangibly rewarding respite from staring at a computer screen. She considers woodworking meditative, and enjoys a developing her skills in a domain that has nothing to do with her profession.
When asked “what do you do?”, she talks about her previous career in London and her as well as her new passion area. After a number of years, as her skills grow, she starts a woodworking business, exporting carved household goods and furniture back to her home country (A3).
Today her response to the question “what do you do”, her response is “I’m a carpenter and entrepreneur”.
Thus far her identity layers are coherent, as in—what people see in her outer, public layer matches her inner professional identity layers. However, what if there is a mismatch between these layers?
II. Unpacking the 'true self'
The consistently incoherent identity
Using the same visual language we can explore the idea of coherence or incoherence between identity layers, by introducing two new characters.
FIGURE 6. Coherent and incoherent identity layers.
Figure 6 shows a strong coherence (intensities of the same colour) between Anna’s three identity layers (A1), whereas there is a strong incoherence between Bill’s (B1) and Christine’s (C1).
Bill (B1) maintains a consummate, consistent professional identity. However, in personal or private settings he is free to express himself more freely and reveal other facets of his personality that are different or contradictory to his public self.
Christine’s (C1) private self is incoherent with her public identity and what most people experience when interacting with her in a social setting. More on this later.
Code-switching as an adaptation mechanism
We all adapt our spoken language with different audiences—a phenomena sociologists refer to as code-switching (Haugen, 1953; Gumperz, 1982). We can extend the idea of code switching to encompass a range of social interactions, behaviours, dress code, and so on. According to the concept of code-switching, we present different versions of ourselves at home versus in a professional setting, in conversation with a parent versus with an infant, with a client, lover or stranger.
We all code-switch. In many situations and at a young age we are likely to do so unconsciously. However, as we grow to understand the nuances of our interactions on others, code-switching is likely to become a more intentional act. The ability to code-switch is a core skill for anyone who wants to effectively interact with and affect others, as it lowers barriers to communication and demonstrates a willingness and ability to adapt to contextual norms. Done well, in the eyes of an audience it can nudge a person from out-group, to in-group, with the social opportunities this implies.
Does code-switching mean that Anna's example of a coherent identity (Figure 6, A1) is unrealistic? Not necessarily. If she is skilled at code switching she understands the value of adapting herself consistently across different situations, in-essence maintaining a coherent identity, which includes which aspects of her identity to share or keep hidden.
For Bill (Figure 6, B1) however, there is more to manage, and potentially more at stake, for example if his compartmentalisation of his public and private selves collapses onto one another (Marwick and boyd, 2011).
Christine (C1) also manages to present a coherent professional identity—even to colleagues that have worked alongside her for years. However, she compartmentalises aspects of her core identity from closest friends and even her partner.
Motivations to maintain heavily compartmentalised identity layers vary considerably. For example Christine (C1) may have a strong desire to maintain privacy whilst maintaining a highly public professional identity, or she may wish to hide non-normative facets of her personality in a conservative environment. This might encompass anything from her ethnic origins, addictions, or that she was fired from her previous job for reasons that she is unwilling to share.
Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations
Returning to motivational intent, a person can be motivated by internal and external stimuli, some of which relate directly to identity.
FIGURE 7. The impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on identity
For example, using Figure 7:
-
Intrinsic motivations that affect identity (A1) include maintaining privacy, the ability to turn down overseas travel to maintain a healthier home life, or a desire for personal growth.
- Extrinsic motivations (A2) might include job title, a corner office, an elevated status within a professional community, or the opportunity to share their overseas work travel on social media.
We can recognise that most of us respond to both internal and external stimuli (A3), but orient more to one or the other.
To overgeneralise, people driven by intrinsic motivations are generally more content than those driven by responding to extrinsic stimuli (Ryan & Deci, 1985), partly because outcomes are more likely to align with values and because they maintain a greater sense of autonomy i.e. control over the rate by which their identity evolves.
The value of incoherent identity layers
There are many reasons why a person might prefer to maintain high levels of incoherence between their identity layers, such as to:
- Compartmentalise professional and personal selves, and be comfortable in each context as long as they can be kept apart,
- Adhere to public expectations and norms, whilst still being ‘true to oneself’ in personal and private settings, for example hiding one’s non-normative sexual orientation in a conservative society, but revealing it to close colleagues in a professional setting,
- Avoid revealing personal things that undermine their credibility in a professional setting.
Additionally, a person’s identity evolves but they feel social pressure to present the ‘old’ version of themselves to maintain important relationships.
Incoherence as a human fundamental
A degree of incoherence between identity layers is healthy—it is a sign that a person is evolving. Consider the initial awkwardness as someone adapts to a new company’s culture, or moves from being a corporate executive with a generous expense account to becoming the founder of a cash-strapped start-up. Both the before and after have value, but it is the after that provides perspective on what came before.
However, when there is a strong incoherence between layers it can be challenging to manage, especially when the values presented in the outer layer are at odds with actions that reveal the inner layers. For example:
- Being an abrasive, selfish sales person at work, but warm and generous in personal settings, or vice versa,
- The ‘fake it until you make it’ mentality that enables someone to land a job, project or client, but where the knowledge and skills gap becomes apparent after working alongside colleagues,
- Presenting a rational, moderate self in public, but being a radical conspiracy theorist in apparently anonymised, private online settings,
- Being religiously devout in public, but engaging in acts that go against the tenets of their faith in private settings.
Exploring alternative versions of what we might become —and a degree of identity incoherence is, I would argue, a human fundamental. Consider the mainstream role of stories and storytelling in societies over millennia—a well made movie, theatre production or book allows us to suspend our commitment to a current identity and provides permission to imagine how a different version of ourselves would react in different, often-dramatic situations (Haven, 2007). There are many platforms and experiences that actively support identity exploration, including a wide range of creative acts, cosplay, BDSM role play, or online gaming communities.
Shielding the ‘true self’ in professional contexts
The inner layers of identity shape the outer layer, but are usually curated when we interact in a professional setting. The inner layers can reveal themselves, for example through:
- Long term interactions with team members over a wide range of professional and personal contexts, where the public persona, personal and private selves are shared and can be contrasted by others,
- Going for drinks with colleagues after work and reciprocally sharing details of their personal life,
- Entering into an intimate relationship with a colleague,
- High stress situations, where intentional coherence management is challenging and a person’s ‘mask’ slips, to reveal otherwise hidden facets of their personality,
- When someone is impaired, e.g. fatigued, drunk, high, and they momentarily reveal their ‘true intent’.
If character traits that are considered anti-social reveal themselves it takes considerable, persistent effort to rebuild their reputation. The performative aspect of this rebuilding process often starts with a mea culpa to acknowledge and distance the ‘offender’ from the offending acts is initiated with “this was completely out of character”, or “this is not who I am, or aspire to be”.
Selectively revealing the ‘true self’
To return to Anna, after three years working for the accounting firm, she takes a job interview with another corporation where the interviewer evaluates the various carefully curated touchpoints of her professional identity, alongside an assessment of her character, that attempts to gauge her authenticity, consistency and distinctiveness versus other candidates.
The desire to present a ‘good first impression’ (Figure 8, A) is based on the inherent assumption by the interviewer (or any audience) that the public, professional outer layer will—in the absence of contradictory information—be coherent with the inner layers (B).
FIGURE 8. First impressions: what others see, what we want them to assume
However, as a wider range of interactions and outcomes are experienced and reflected upon, there is a greater appreciation of how a public identity can differ from the personal and private self. The question for Anna’s interviewers is whether her inner identity layers are incoherent in ways that undermine her role as a colleague.
Obviously not everything about an interviewee will become apparent from a job interview. Organisations manage these unknowns and potentially contradictory incoherence with background checks, references, rounds of interviews, a probationary period for new hires and so on.
In those first few months in Anna’s new role, the organisation is mindful of examples of incoherence between her identity public and inner identity layers that might make her an incompatible hire—for example abrasive interactions with colleagues, a disrespectful attitude to local subordinates, or a significant delta between what is communicated on her resume and actual skills.
We can visualise these unknowns by removing what the audience does not yet know from the inner layers (Figure 9, A1), and what is revealed over time (A2-A4).
FIGURE 9. Facets of an identity revealed over time
Coherence between identity layers is valued by an organisation because there are less unknown variables to manage, whereby a person is perceived as a lower-risk hire.
III. Mutual incrimination and the glow of celebrity or notoriety
The power of mutual incrimination
An interesting exception to this preference of ‘high-coherence, low-risk’ is where the interviewee (Figure 10, A1) and the interviewer (B1) are managing similar issues between their public persona and personal/private selves. For example, by the standards of the hiring organisation this could include bonding over non-normative (by the standards of that organisation) lifestyle choices, sexual orientation, or upbringing.
I use the term ‘incriminating’ carefully, not as a value judgement, but rather because both parties recognise that knowledge of this incoherence might be wielded as a weapon against them. As a side note, for an interesting example of how to neutralise incriminating information read No thank you, Mr. Pecker.
FIGURE 10. Bonding over incoherent public and personal/private identity layers.
As an example of how this might play out in a wider professional network:
In 2018 An Xiao Mina and I conducted a study on the Shenzhen technology ecosystem, which includes thousands of workshops, factories, design and engineering firms churning out often-copied, sometimes original products at an astounding pace. Local manufacturers have a matter of weeks to harvest profits from successful products before copies appear on the market, eroding their margins. It’s a relatively high-pressure, low trust business environment.
One of our interviewees, a technology entrepreneur on a six-week cycle to develop a then new product category, shared the evolving relationship between with new business contacts. The first meeting was in a formal setting, the second was in a relaxed setting, which involved a lot of alcohol and the sharing of personal information, and was followed by engaging in a professionally taboo and a widespread but illegal act together—enabling mutual incrimination.
In this example, the shared incoherences between both their public and private selves was a way to build trust through their shared secret (Mina & Chipchase, 2018).
We can now use this model to consider other facets of professional identity.
The ‘glow’ of celebrity and notoriety
Previously I’ve discussed the notion of celebrity, using a deliberately modest definition of “being celebrated by one’s peers when one is not present”. We can visualise Anna’s degrees of celebrity by adding a glow to the outer identity (Figure 11, A1-A3).
FIGURE 11. Degrees of a celebrity, coherent with their professional identity
The “when one is not present” part of the definition is important. In-person interactions are highly influenced by power dynamics, social norms and ritualistic behaviours rather than revealing the underlying intent of either party. When someone is not present, we can choose whether to make them the topic of the conversation, and there is wider scope to express both positive and negative intent.
We can also visualise a broadly negative reputation—notoriety, or its more intense cousin, infamy, through a grey glow, shown in Figure 12.
FIGURE 12. Degrees of notoriety, incoherent with their professional identity
Both celebrity and notoriety generate pressures on identity that can be difficult to manage. They are often accompanied by a loss of privacy, a prolonged feeling of public judgement, a pressure to perform to the standards set by others, isolation, and trust issues.
The more widespread someone is celebrated, for example where it extends well beyond their immediate professional community, the less likely the audience understands or cares about the nuances of their character and the impact that sharing has on their wellbeing. This often leads the audience to make binary categorisations such as good/bad, friend/foe or genius/dumb, which are at odds with the nuances of anyone’s character. For the person being talked about, it is difficult to challenge.
In essence, more intense versions of celebrity or notoriety supercharge a person’s identity, to the point that it challenges that person’s self-narrative—leading to a loss of control over.
Interestingly, many current social media algorithms make outrage, and the notoriety that comes with it a viable, if dubious career strategy for someone to pursue. When it invariably comes crashing down, and after a period of ostracisation, there may be the opportunity to shape a new narrative, of repentance, or being reborn.
One strategy for coping with growing celebrity or notoriety—to be at peace with negative commentary or contradictory counter narratives about oneself—is threefold:
- To recognise that anyone with a growing reputation will inherently garner different types of audiences, with a range of positive and negative intents and assumptions.
- When the glow of celebrity is unrealistically positive—for example from a hyperbolic article that focuses on a single person at the expense of other team members (a common occurrence in the media), we can recognise that internalising this as part of our identity is a choice. During my heady media-exposure days, my personal mantra of “don’t believe the hype, least of all your own” served me well.
- Surround yourself with a few trusted people with whom criticism and counter narratives can be explored, internalise where these narratives might be valid and adjust behaviours accordingly.
Over-defensiveness of one’s identity and its position within a self-narrative is a precursor to a bumpy transition. One of the things I love most about expeditions is witnessing the evolution of myself and my teammates, where our assumptions of who we are and what we stand for are challenged as the expedition progresses. The range of situations we find ourselves in, the challenges we have to overcome, the need to work effectively as a team reveal inner identity layers over a relatively short time span. From experience, team members (myself included) that have built up and bought into a reputation are the ones that have the hardest time ‘letting go’, to give themselves permission to evolve, and have the bumpiest ride.
IV. What’s next
We now have the foundational concepts in place to think about how sharing affects who we are, and what we might become. In Part V of this essay I’ll pull these various threads together into a newly developed Taishido Career Path Framework
References
- Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.
- Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. American Psychologist 55, no. 1 : 68–78.
- Haven, Kendall (2007). Story proof: the science behind the startling power of story. Libraries Unlimited.
Photos: Tokyo x 3, Beirut.