Define Yourself Before Your Title Does

Ask a leader who they are, and too many will answer with a title, a company name and a headcount. When uncertainty rises, self-doubt tends to rise with it, and many leaders start searching for something to tell them who they are.

Too often, they find the answer in their title, their company and the size of their team. Those things feel stable until they aren't. I've lost count of how many times someone has told me, "oh my God, Glenn, I can't believe I was furloughed."

The question I put back to them is simple: "When's the last time you asked yourself if your skills are transferable? Because when you get furloughed, it's very clear that you've been defined by the role. They don't need the role. So you're done. Now, if you're defining the role, that means you have the opportunity to define or transfer your skills and capacities in other roles."

What they need is self-definition: a clear set of values, purposes and strengths that give them meaning and worth independent of the role they hold at any given moment. Self-definition is what allows a leader to stay focused, confident and composed when everything around them is shifting.

What Happens When the Title Does the Defining

A predictable pattern sets in when leaders lose self-definition. They start acting like frontline managers instead of staying a few steps ahead. They feel they must get closer to the daily work just to be noticed. All leaders must touch the business as much as they lead it, but when that becomes a substitute for vision, they lose their competitive edge.

Relationships change, too. Leaders begin pursuing transactional connections that validate their own worth instead of investing in relationships for what they can build over time. Everything becomes about the now. Potential is undervalued. Some leaders stop leading altogether and become sellers of their own title, holding on to it because it defines them and because it helps them network toward the next opportunity.

That is what it looks like when a leader is being defined rather than defining.

Three signs tell you it is time to define yourself again.

1. You Don't Fully Trust Yourself

When you trust yourself to lead in purposeful ways, people follow quickly. That trust starts with good intentions and a clear position. Effective leaders stand for something positive, stick to it and get on with it. Stop complicating leadership.

If your sense of confidence rises and falls with your title, your standing in the last meeting or your most recent performance review, your identity is borrowed. Ask yourself what you would still stand for if your role disappeared tomorrow. The answer is the foundation of your self-definition.

2. You Are Avoiding New Knowledge and New Ground Rules

This is more common than most leaders admit. Many are uneasy with new ways of working and don't want to accept the new rules of competition. It often looks like handing new technology entirely to others instead of understanding how it changes the business.

Leaders get paid to think more than they get paid to execute. Read widely. Rebuild your leadership network. Consider an executive coach you pay for yourself, so the relationship serves your growth rather than your employer's agenda. Deliberately acquire knowledge outside your comfort zone.

If you feel lost, try a simple discipline. Keep a journal. Connect the dots. Identify the patterns that are making you uncomfortable as a leader. Then course correct quickly, before gaps in your competence or consistency are exposed.

3. A Changing Marketplace Makes You Feel Vulnerable

The people you lead and the customers you serve are more individual than ever. They expect to be understood as they are, not as a segment or a stereotype. Many leaders find that unsettling because it requires them to lead differently, with curiosity and cultural fluency rather than a single playbook.

Don't run from it. Engage with it. Spend time with the customers and employees whose experiences differ most from your own. Learn what matters to them. That understanding will define the requirements of the next chapter of your leadership, and it is at the heart of leading in the age of personalization.

Write Your Definition Before Someone Else Does

• What do I stand for that has nothing to do with my title or employer?
• Which of my strengths would transfer to any organization, in any industry?
• What have I been avoiding learning because it makes me uncomfortable?
• Whom do I serve, and how do they experience me?
• If my role were eliminated next month, how would I describe myself?

Your answers are your self-definition. Write them down and revisit them each quarter. Your decisions will reveal who you are either way, so make sure they come from the identity you have chosen, not the one your title has assigned.

Face these realities and define yourself again. Leadership that is focused, defined and continually refining itself will outlast any title. Everyone is in some form of reinvention right now. The leaders who come through it stronger are the ones who decided who they are before their circumstances decided for them.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.