Who You Are Was Never Supposed to Be Worth Less Than What You Have

My father was 50 when I was born. By the time I was 12, he had already lived several lives: a quartet leader who met my mother, a dancer, at the Tropicana; a Cornell-trained chemist; an immigrant from Cuba building a new life. One evening he told me something he would go on to repeat for years.

“This is the greatest country in the world,” he said. “Its capitalist system is incredible. But here is my biggest fear. We will become a society that places greater value on what you have than on who you are.”

I didn’t grasp the weight of that until my late twenties. I understand it completely now.

The warning came true

Look at how most of us were taught to measure a life. The title on the business card. The size of the house. The brand on the résumé. The number of followers. Each one describes something a person has. Very few describe who that person is.

None of those things are wrong to want. My father admired ambition. His fear was about the order of things. When what you have becomes the measure of who you are, you start building your identity out of possessions and positions that can be taken away in a single afternoon. A layoff, a reorganization or a market swing, and the person underneath has nothing to stand on.

I see this every week in my work with executives. Some of the most accomplished leaders I meet cannot describe themselves without their title. Ask who they are and you get a job description. Ask what they would do if the job disappeared tomorrow, and the room goes quiet.

Titles matter less than they used to

Something has shifted in the last few years, and many leaders felt it before they could name it. A title no longer guarantees influence. Years of experience no longer guarantee relevance. I deeply respect people with 20, 30 or 40 years in their field, but what we have all learned is that what matters most now is what you are capable of contributing today.

That change exposes anyone whose identity was built on what they had. If your sense of worth was tied to the corner office and the corner office loses its meaning, you feel unmoored. If your worth was rooted in who you are, how you think and what you naturally solve for, you can carry that into any room, any role and any economy.

I wrote about where that kind of steadiness comes from in The Journey to Conviction and Earning the Courage to Lead From It. My father reinvented himself many times. What never changed was that he knew who he was.

What it means to know who you are

My father taught me one fundamental thing, and he taught it through how he lived more than through what he said: never forget who you are, how you are built and how that gives you the ability to impact other people.

There are three parts to that sentence, and each one matters.

Who you are. Your values, your point of view and the experiences that shaped you. Not your title or your net worth.

How you are built. The way you naturally think, the problems you are drawn to and the strengths you bring without trying.

How that lets you impact others. Identity was never meant to be self-absorbed. Knowing who you are is what allows you to be useful to the people around you in a way no one else can.

When you hold onto those three, what you have becomes a tool rather than a definition. You can gain it, lose it and gain it again without losing yourself.

Questions worth asking this week

If you want to test where your identity lives, try answering these honestly.

• If someone described you without mentioning your job, your company or anything you own, what would they say?
• What would you still bring to a team if your title disappeared tomorrow?
• Which of your decisions in the last year were made to protect what you have, and which were made to express who you are?

Parents can ask a version of the same questions about the messages they send at home. When we praise a child for the grade, the trophy or the acceptance letter, we teach them what to have. When we praise how they think, how they treat people and what they care about, we teach them who to be.

My father’s fear was never about money. It was about forgetting. The good news is that remembering is a choice, and it is one we can make every day.

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