At a certain point in senior leaders’ careers they pause in chasing outcomes, and start considering who they are, widening and enhancing their perspective
By Lindsay Wittenberg
Who am I if I don’t have the answers?”
A deceptively simple question – and one which integrates the multitude of issues that so many of my clients tussle with, without necessarily expressing their quest for clarity and direction quite as succinctly as this client, a high-achieving executive in his 40s.
Most obviously, and in the context of career, it’s about identity: in my experience, at a certain point in leaders’ increasingly rapid and urgent dash to accomplish and achieve, they start to question who they are – and whether who they are is only about outcomes and achievement.
From the point of view of performance and effectiveness, it’s clear that they have to have the answers in order to be someone, to be recognised and validated. But is maintaining their position as they climb the greasy pole solely dependent on getting things right and producing the right outcomes without looking any more broadly?
Many organisational cultures – and leaders – are invested in a belief that it is. However, process, meaning and system underpin the achievement of outcomes, and substantial awareness of these elements is essential if outcomes are to be improved sustainably. In a world in which results are valued above all, clients of mine (including the most reflective and aware of them) find it a revelation to start to pay attention in depth to the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’.
As they begin to do this, some also begin to contemplate their identity. They discover that not only is their identity a question they feel an urgency to articulate, but that it is deeper and broader than, and critical to, the answers they create or achieve.
Whether they’re senior leaders in commercial organisations, GPs or NHS consultants, civil servants or inter-governmental professionals, they’ve proved themselves on the slippery slope, and some start to wonder what it’s all about. When they pause and step back from chasing outcomes to gain a perspective on how to get there, what it means, and where they fit, they give themselves a chance to explore new horizons.
The leader I’ve quoted expressed this journey as consciously leaving behind an old identity and transitioning to a new one. This can be a tough and temporarily destabilising journey if leaders don’t know where they’re going, but simply know that their expectations of their professional lives and the sources of their fulfilment are changing.
Of course we all have multiple identities. Herminia Ibarra, the Charles Handy professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, suggests, in her book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (2004), that it can be useful to “stop trying to find your one true self”, and to “focus your attention on which of your many possible selves you want to test and learn more about”.
The journey for the leader means beginning to look at their working lives through two new lenses: allowing themselves to be themselves, and allowing themselves self-care and self-compassion. This invariably leads to a different order of outcomes, but with less attachment to the ‘doing’ that can, at a certain point in their careers, become constraining, suffocating or impossibly pressurising.
I’m grateful to the high-achieving executive for enabling my learning around a key question I can bring to engaging other clients in broadening their perspective in order to enhance their focus.
- Lindsay Wittenberg is director of Lindsay Wittenberg Ltd. She is an executive coach who specialises in authentic leadership, career development and cross-cultural coaching