The quiet and art-filled
office space overlooking majestic oak trees, the joy of working with Mike Mace, the significant source
of income for our family. These were things I thought of when I thought of what
I was losing when shutting down
Rubicon. What I didn’t think of until it happened was this: when you are
between things, how do you answer the question of “who are you”?
During this transition, I
went to a party to celebrate
Nancy Duarte’s latest book, Resonate.
I was standing in a group when I was introduced to “Todd, from Apple“.
And around the circle, we continued: Glen
Lubbert, CEO of Mojo Interactive. Harry Max, advisor at Google.
When it came to my turn, because I lacked a title or a “place” on which to
anchor, I answered “I am not doing anything right now” to the question of “who I
am?”.
(image source: Computer History Museum website)
Because having a title or
not does not define someone. The truth is more this: none of us are easily
definable. I am not my title. I am not what I do on any given day. And I am not
who I am affiliated with. I am none of those things; there are roles I play but
they are not me. The lack of my title or easy handle on which to explain myself
does not reflect my truth, nor does any outsiders’ validation of it. No amount
of titles would make it clear my unique gifts in the world, or
yours. (Yet, actually paying attention to what matters to people might actually
let us connect with each other.) Titles are simply false standards by which we
come to define who we are. But, because they are so pervasive, we believe in
them as a truth.
To accept the simple
truth of “I AM” changes things. The stance of “I am”, independent of anything,
provides a certain freedom. Paul
Buchheit describes this by using the phrase “I am Nothing”:
I am nothing. It’s simple. If I were smart, I might be afraid of looking stupid. If I were successful, I might be afraid of failure. If I were a man, I might be afraid of being weak. If I were a Christian, I might be afraid of losing faith. If I were an atheist, I might be afraid of believing. If I were rational, I might be afraid of my emotions. If I were introverted, I might be afraid of meeting new people. If I were respectable, I might be afraid of looking foolish. If I were an expert, I might be afraid of being wrong. But I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself.I would add: If I had a title and I lose it, I have lost myself. If I define myself without title, then I am able to create regardless of any specific role I have at the time.
Our titles are illusions and not reflective of one’s truth. This works both ways. I am not a grand pooh-bah if I have a fancy set of titles. And I am not a lowly piece of shit if I have a junior role within the organizational structure. And we don’t need to have our mobile voicemail message say I am so-and-so-of-such-and-such.
We are each more than our titles; we are each own unique selves. Letting go of these false exterior identities can be difficult and takes time, possibly our entire lifetime. But it starts with us realizing the falsity first, and then moving in the right direction of action. The point is not the title, the point is to do good value-creating, life-affirming, purpose-filled work. You are not nothing, you are endless possibility. How we manifest that endless possibility is our life’s work.
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52 Responses to And, Who Are You?
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- - August 31, 2011 [...] that everyone is talking about this concept these days from Nilofer Merchant to Mark Merrill. What is your identity? 44.627845 -87.472437 Rate this: Please share!Like [...]
- - August 31, 2011 [...] Merchant wrote an interesting blog post last week that told a story about when she was at a rather high-powered networking event a few [...]
- - September 9, 2011 [...] Read the full post at Nilofer Merchant’s blog. [...]
- - May 2, 2012 [...] Our culture also honors fancy titles and brand affiliations, as visibly celebrated by the first question most Westerners ask on meeting someone new: “And who are you?” [...]
- - July 17, 2012 [...] on And, Who are you? by Nilofer Merchant Rate this:Share this:TwitterFacebookLinkedInLike this:LikeBe the first to like [...]
Great post, reminds me of another of your great posts: “Normalcy is a Unicorn.” When I left my last position (semi-voluntarily) nearly 4-months ago I had that same empty feeling whenever I was asked to fill in the proverbial blank. Sad to say that this is how we are generally assessed by others when in a social situation.
I’ve always strived to be as genuine as possible–the person I am around family and friends is the same person you get at work. And yet, despite my attempts to not live behind any superficial veneers, there it was: I had become the title in front of the person. I have to say that once the initial shock of NOT having a title began to wear off, I began to see the truth in what was possible when no longer tethered to a title.
The great John Wooden used to say that ability may get you to the top but it takes character to stay there. I would add your words “you are not nothing, you are endless possibilities.”
Thank you for another uplifting post. I’m glad I was able to meet you during your swing in the Boston area.
Best,
Peter S.
Also, as @curt suggests, I’ve always led with the kinds of problems I deal with vs. my title; or, in the case of consulting, the vertical space where I play …
Thanks again for a thought-provoking and uplifting post.
If I may stalk you in this post also
You once asked me a question in one of my replies to your posts about my dream of getting PHD! You said this is not a goal by itself, it is a means to reach a goal and you were correct!
My aim, though I felt embaressed to say it by then, is the title!
In our culture, the family name plays a big role in promotions and the way people defines YOU
The first thing when you meet someone is to ask about your name and then wait for your family name. And guess what, I don’t have a family name (removed by my grand father for some reasons) so I get that face of not knowing what to say.
I’m sure you might not imagine how embarrassing this is in the place where I live but it does
I myself don’t care much about that until I face such moments
This is one reason of course apart of my ampecious to KNOW more and escalate my way of thinking but I had to mention this in relaion to your nice post.
Regards,
Khalid
On a related note, I’ve noticed that the VP’s I work with rarely mention their titles. Instead, they say “I run the X product line”, which is a bit ambiguous, but at least it says “I do this” rather than “I am that”. With that in mind, perhaps I could say “I handle architectural issues” or something. That answers “what do you do?” rather than “who are you?” Beyond that, I still have to be sure that I don’t equate “what I do” with “who I am.”
It was easy to fill in and say what value you bring during that introduction at Nancy’s party. As a source of inspiration, it’s a joy to talk endlessly about all the things that result from someone who gives you that much fuel.
I’m fascinated by identity as social media asks us to define and categorize who we are. It asks us to consider how we are viewed by different groups. Facebook and Google are debating that with their dueling Circles “privacy” features.
I see a culture shift occurring in how we perceive identity. When you can see so much more of one’s life, you see people for more than just their job. It’s much harder to be a work title you and a home you. You are you. Authenticity becomes the easiest course of action.
My friend John Miles who runs a great values driven organization Integritive allows his team to make up their own creative titles and runs under the name Chief of What’s Next. I had been considering changing my title to Chief Imaginaut for some time, and when I met John a few years ago and saw his title. I was inspired to immediately change mine. I like both titles since they inspire. They are titles that encompass the work you and personal you. Authentic to the whole person. And best of all, they don’t have to be attached to a company or job!
Endless possibilities, indeed.
Thank you Nilofer.
Thanks for the mention and sharing a little of our mojo.
BTW – we also have a technostalgist, chief manifestation officer, air traffic controller and visual ninja on staff too.
Starting working in the US I asked my colleagues why biz titles were handled like old Austrian and British titles of nobility. Still wondering, but learned that a title on a profile or business card defines of being Non-ruling member of the Imperial family or in the circle of “Higher Nobility”
I still have no title but love my job.
Marita
http://xeeme.com/maritar
I have since kept this in mind. At first it was difficult, but over time it has become easier. Now I find it interesting how many people I meet start off with introducing themselves with a title and have little else to say. This is telling.
Just be.
Thanks for the way you share your heart here! If I weren’t already your friend, your posts would make me want to be…
Who we are is so different than what we do. Our lives are filled with verbs yet we try to encapsulate our identity in nouns. I write, I facilitate, I innovate, I speak, but I bristle if labeled alone as a facilitator, innovator, speaker or writer because they feel like limiting containers and reduce me to the mime inside the box from which I cannot escape.
Hope we meet in person; we can feel small and out of place with each other.
But as I continue to think about it, I wonder if the title thing is a Yin to a Yang we haven’t articulated yet. To say I’m a Vice President puts me out there. It distinguishes me. It separates me from others. That’s why it feels mechanical, i guess. It comes from that power, separateness energy. And of course, it is incomplete. It doesn’t capture the more human element, the way we are connected to each other, or what I might share with you (love energy, as opposed to power energy). Maybe there’s a way we can introduce ourselves that captures both sides of the coin?
You both have me reflecting on this at a deeper level so let me just think aloud here for a second with the promise that it’s “not right” but it’s not meant to be… it’s meant to be conversational.
The journey:
- First, we hope a title proves we CAN do something. (I think I can, I think I can).
– Then we think or perhaps hope that our title makes us impressive to others, perhaps shows us and others we ARE something special. (I AM distinguished)
– As we develop, we understand we are constrained by any particular title. (I do not want to fit in a box.)
- When we can understand/identify to our own passions we can start to work from that flow. (There is no box. Or maybe, I define the box.)
(and then to Jamie’s larger point about how language can separate or connect us, we need to find a way to accept ourselves where ever we are on the journey so we accept others on the journey and therefore can see one another as they are…)
thoughts?
“Titles seem most important when you’re going to look for your next job. So what title will
get you to that position and then let’s have you use that.”
As Jamie noted, title can reflect how we see ourselves fitting into an existing order and/or how others see us doing so. That’s why I think some people get so attached to whether they are a director or a manager, etc.
It comes back to identify: mine, yours, ours.
I love this post! I’ll be sharing this with friends in job transitions as it will surely help with perspective. As to your question, I’d say I’m the outlook I have, the intents I bring, the efforts I make, and the outcomes I affect for the betterment of the world. If I’m making the needle move in the right direction on those things, you can call me whatever you like!
Thank you,
Chris
I really like the way you speak openly about our pathetic need to impress others with titles and “etiquettes”.
I am not convinced French people are more tolerant about it, though.
This could be a total new discussion and post. Business etiquettes across cultures and how you present yourself.
In anglo-saxon cultures, it’s common to present yourself with your professional title and a quick pitch about what you do, what you sell.
For French people, it’s much more insidious. It’s indirect and implicit. You may not be asked, in your face, who you are and what you do, but it would be immediately “decoded” by the way you dress, you speak, your accent, your signs of “distinction”, your taste in music, in books, etc… and eventually through the conversation with the education you received, the social class you belong to, the right people you may know, the elite circles of influence you may belong to. Or not.
A wonderful book has been written about it. Pierre Bourdieu : “Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste”
There is also another thread of discussion there, regarding women and the multiplicity of different ROLES.
How do you define yourself, as a business woman, as a spouse, as a mom, etc…?
All the hats we are wearing, all the time and how silly we would look if we had to put them alltogether on our head! Just imagine! (it reminds me of a fabulous children book I used to read to my children…Oh, I MUST find it and scan that picture!)
The times in our life when we stop “working” and choose to go full time or half time into stay at home moms. Then you face the famous delicate question “and you, what do you do?”
I loved reading your post as much as I enjoyed the brilliant comments there.
A post to be shared with all of us in turbulent waters, in transition and in search of our selves.
Identity, self-discovery, confidence, purpose…It’s all about becoming the hero or the heroine of your own Journey. The first day of the rest of your life starts NOW.
It’s ours to invent it.
Thanks, Nilofer.
But @Marion, I was 18 and naive. Little did I know they were sizing me up just in a different way! I wouldn’t trade the perception it gave me, even if it was wrong.
Thanks for reminding me that this question doesn’t go away, even if you have some big organization’s name to put on your nametag.
Having traded my corporate career for a low-key admin job some 6 years ago whilst I found out ‘what I wanted to do’, I found my ego kicking in big time whilst having to admit I had left my much better paid role where I was at least in some ways acknowledged for my skills, for a relatively low paid admin role (even though doing that gave me breathing space, and a stress free job/time in which to focus on other things in my life like getting pregnant and having a child). Going through this process has forced me to develop a much stronger sense of my own worth and value, rather than looking for external validation through pay and job titles.
Ironically, having now ditched that job I am now trying to find a label to describe what I do so that other people can understand what I bring to the table, aside from everything else I might do in my life, but I’m feeling uplifted by the validation (ironic isn’t it) that I could just make my own job title up (and I’ve just created an profile on zerply which being quite free/open/creative allowed me to open up to that idea too)
PS in the UK, it is fairly standard for the second question to be asked of you, after your name, is ‘and what do you do?’ – not quite the same question as ‘who are you’ but the aim is the same i.e. identify where others fit in relation to you in the hierarchy, at least financially.
Being intentional seems to be a skill that Americans will want to put into practice more often.
When people introduce I also notice if they say things like…
I am ____(Name)
No you are not your name.
My Name is Michele, I am a deep and curious thinker who loves to see who you are and how we can learn to enjoy this moment together.
Does this mean I need to move to France? chuckle
I do an exercise sometimes which I call “Cutting to the Core” in which I /we peel off our titles, job descriptions, nicknames, affiliations, and masks in order to uncover what shines, moves, sings, or rests in stillness underneath it all. Our essence.
When we move from the inside out, rather than the outside in, we can be so much more than we – or our culture – thinks.
“If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.” – bell hooks
The questions people are asking about ‘what are you passionate about’ seem included in her definition of being on the path of love.
Thanks for getting us thinking.
To refer to a couple of the above comments, the French have a stock phrase “culture generale.” The closest American analogue would be a “well-rounded education.” Marion and June show its application can be more global than just taking a variety of subjects in school. Our character is shaped and our minds are informed by the books we’ve read, the places we’ve been — and those we haven’t.
[St. Augustine: The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.]
In true “you’re having twins” spirit, I’d like to separate a couple of ideas that got blended together:
1) An indictment of superficiality, which I think we all can agree on. (Superficial people exist; they’re just not your readers!)
2) Denying reality. It is human to rely on categories to help us understand people and the world.
The concept of thin-slicing, first articulated by Ambady and Rosenthal in 1992 and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, states that accurate judgments can be made in just a few minutes or on the basis of not very much information (and more information doesn’t necessarily improve the accuracy). With time as our most valuable resource in life, anything we can do to maximize our efficiency is desirable. The process of sorting and sizing people is something we all do. You yourself have acknowledged your low tolerance for BS, and share evidence when you encounter it from time to time
Subpoint: People are uneasy when they can’t make sense of you. (That’s what happened, and was ameliorated, at the party.) People don’t want to engage or collaborate when they feel uneasy. When people have a label, what they have is a degree of clarity, which isn’t all bad. I know from personal experience that people are uneasy around me sometimes ’cause they haven’t quite got me figured out.
Glen pointed out that as more of our interactions are not in person, defining ourselves online (=connecting to those categories) becomes ever more important, but conversely, should you choose to share personal things, that social media can reveal more than a person’s business identity, rather, we can get a glimpse of the whole person. That ties in with the “culture generale” concept above: what books are you reading? Where did you just check in? Who are you having coffee with?
3)Labels have power. They can affect our own behavior and can change how others respond to us.
This isn’t all bad. I’m with Curt on “Let’s acknowledge that there is an upside and a down side here, use labels constructively, and minimize the negative consequences.”
Now, on seeing past labels, I agree wholeheatedly that it is inadequate to sum up a human with a title. Studs Terkel, who spent a life making observations of his own akin to yours, wrote “Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.”
Under this point of labeling, I don’t know what the Hell I would put on a name tag at a TED conference. I’ve never fit easily into anybody’s boxes. When I read in your comment above, “There is no box,” it was riveting. I thought: This is genius! What a powerful paradigm shift.
Regarding the self-defined box, I found the best identity check is walking down the street in a big city, particularly New York. When faced with the homeless needing handouts, the slick businessmen in suits, exuding status, the hip-hop crowd in oversized clothes with oversized branding, all walks of life intermingling cheek by jowl on the streets, it really made me ponder who I am, clarifying the roles and the values.
Our greeting titles are actually a replacement to an old defense mechanism. We nolonger have to size up our carnivorous neighbors and determine if we need to run away or stay to eat.
Because we are natural competitors of survival I need to know if you can “kill me” or “i can kill you” professionally speaking. So we need to size each other up. Titles do just that.
We’ve been doing this since man learned how to write. We know that Abraham was a sheep herder, Jesus was a Carpenter and Paul was a tax collector. Titles are the best thing we have to quickly size each other up.
Becoming civilized has yet to change some of our natural instincts.
Thanks for contributing.
Thank-you for your brave words. We spend our childhood not worrying about titles and the rest of our lives trying to fit in. We put ourselves in a box because we feel others can digest things in a box. We begin to pay closer attention to the nagging feeling we want more purpose and people around us react in strange ways.
Some admire our freedom and guts, others become unsure of how to define us. And despite being smart or talented or experience, we are human and we have an inherent need to belong. This can often cause imbalance because it manifests in arrogance or self-doubt and all the while we suffer in silence with a broad smile on our visage.
Thank-you for this, your timing is impeccable as always.
With regards to that one comment about VPs not using titles, i believe that there are distinct principles applicable to this – (i) Often times, people with distinct names do not feel the need to use their title and (ii) Per my thoughts expressed intially in this comment, titles are used best when they are used in a functional capacity to achieve something; Like an arrow that once shot seeks to find its aim.
Psychology is an important part of this discussion and hence bound to differ from one to another. It reminds me of this experiment done at Harvard or berkley with prison guards. If one goes by the conclusions apparent from the above mentioned research, then there is a far stronger link between the tile one wears and the identity that one decides to wear.