Do you ever feel that you’re one person at work and another elsewhere? Is there tension between what you have to do (or who you have to be) in your role and who you really are? Does work turn you into someone you don’t like?
Take, for example, the CFO of a large multinational organization who received feedback that he was resoundingly regarded as a bully. We were assigned to deliver this feedback and support him in making changes. While sitting outside his office waiting for the first meeting, we overheard him speaking fondly to a person we presumed was his wife, recounting a recent trip with their children. He sounded like a loving father and family man. We thought, what is it about this man that he can be such a nice guy at home, but he’s seen as a bully at work? When we shared his crushing feedback, he thought for a while and responded that his role required him to be this way – he held the company’s purse strings and, as a result, was always saying no. No to more advertising, no to more resources, no to working from home, and no to expensive experiments. He said he didn’t want to be a bully but was acting according to his role – someone had to be the bad guy.
The case highlights an important tension: the dynamic and sometimes painful relationship between the self and the role we perform at work. In our research and work with senior leaders globally, we’ve found that this relationship can trigger all sorts of mental and emotional turmoil – personally and professionally. How leaders understand and take up their role drastically shapes whether they thrive or struggle and ultimately defines their effectiveness.
Think of yourself as a bubble and your organization as another bubble – where they overlap is your role (see Figure 1 below). How you behave in this role is a function of your attributes and your environment. Social psychologist Kurt Lewin captured this interplay in the equation B = f(PE), which suggests that how you behave (B) is a function of who you are as a person (P) and the environment you find yourself in (E). Any role – whether that’s CFO, team leader, or project manager – is much more than a job title or set of responsibilities. Leaders step into roles that they co-create with the organization. A better understanding of this relationship will help you to effectively manage the role’s tensions and challenges.
How the environment shapes your role
The organization influences how a person can and does take up their leadership role. Consider this: How does your organization’s purpose and culture promote and reward certain values, decisions, and leadership styles? What legacy was left from the role’s previous occupant that you need to navigate as you take over – were they loved or feared? How do key stakeholders – customers, employees, the supervisory board – expect those who occupy leadership roles to behave? The collective perceptions, anxieties, and desires of these stakeholders influence the leader role. Those in leadership roles often become targets of projection – idealized as all-knowing super-humans or criticized as being out of touch. Parts of how you’re seen have nothing to do with you specifically – they are components of the role, no matter who is in it.
This wealth of environmental factors influences how a person will behave in their role. For example, a CEO might feel immense pressure to demonstrate decisiveness and expertise, sometimes at the cost of appearing vulnerable or reflective. Being successful requires understanding and navigating the influence of the environment – not only for the tasks and results you need to achieve but also the expectations in regard to how you should execute those tasks.
How you shape the role
Each person brings a wealth of work and life experience, knowledge, values, assumptions, and expectations to their role. These attributes influence how you interpret and decide to enact the role’s requirements. For example, the roles you took up as a child in your family system or in your first leadership position can influence your assumptions about what “successful” leaders do. Surfacing and balancing what you bring to the role with what the organization demands is an ongoing process and negotiation that requires constant reflection and adjustment.
This approach helps leaders unpack the tensions associated with their roles, helping them to separate “self” from “role” and have greater agency in drawing boundaries.
To help leaders manage their relationship to their role, we often draw on forms of Organizational Role Analysis. This approach helps leaders unpack the tensions associated with their roles, helping them to separate “self” from “role” and have greater agency in drawing boundaries.
1 – Reflect on how you take up your role. How you take up your role is not always obvious – a lot of it hides in our unconscious, and we rarely stop to reflect on what is driving us to take up our roles the way we do – until we are faced with making decisions or acting in ways that go against our values. Ask yourself: How do I show up in my role? What personal beliefs, values, and experiences influence my approach? Are there ways I might unconsciously over-identify with or disidentify from the role?
One way you might do this is by engaging in role-drawing. When working with executives, we give them a blank sheet of paper and ask them to draw themselves in their roles. They don’t have to be artists – stick figures are acceptable – and some will draw themselves on sinking ships or roller coasters. One client drew a guillotined head, and another a fire hydrant spurting water into their mouth. But what is prevalent in most drawings is some unconscious aspect of their perception of their role within the system that shapes it. Here’s an example:
2 – Understand the purpose and culture of your organization. Examine how your organization’s mission, values, and culture shape expectations for your leader role. What unspoken rules or norms might be influencing your behavior? What might be the spoken or unspoken rules of engagement for leaders in your environment?
3 – Consider stakeholder perspectives. Reflect on key stakeholder perceptions and expectations for your role and assess how you are managing these. In addition, consider – and separate yourself from – projections that others might unconsciously send your way. These projections are their concern, not yours. One CEO we coached said she felt she went from “being everyone’s friend to everyone’s punching bag” within a month of taking up her new role. The way she was seen from one day to the next belonged to the role, not her. To take up your role effectively, you must manage the perceptions and projections of others and serve as a “container” that can hold the anxieties and tensions of the organization. This requires the ability to acknowledge how others see you without internalizing their views about you or taking them personally.
4 – Discover your role relationship. Pay attention to the overlap between your “self” and your role and notice the intersections. Are there moments when the organization’s pressures feel at odds with your values or identity? Are there parts of your role where you truly feel you and in the flow? Taking up a role requires balancing who you are as a person with the role’s demands. Leaders who over-identify with their roles risk burnout or losing their authenticity, while those who dis-identify may become disengaged or ineffective. This balance demands self-awareness and a willingness to reflect on how your values and identity align with the organization’s purpose and culture.
5 – Take (more) agency – reframe and redefine. Sometimes, being successful in your role means redefining its boundaries by understanding what you are willing and unwilling to do. Think about what expectations or projections you can or cannot accept. Are there ways to align the two more intentionally or manage the discrepancies without losing yourself and being overwhelmed?
Take, for example, the CEO who was greatly admired. He was an accomplished engineer in the energy industry and ran a very profitable business that operated a bit like an extended family. When the business was taken over during an industry restructuring, he was forced to make many people redundant. As the third wave of redundancies loomed, he suddenly quit, saying that he wasn’t in the business of ruining people’s lives. He didn’t want to continue the role of the executioner on behalf of the new owners. His values – what he brought to the role – no longer aligned with the new role’s expectations.
This nuanced understanding of “taking up your role” empowers leaders to better navigate the complexities of modern organizational life.
This nuanced understanding of “taking up your role” empowers leaders to better navigate the complexities of modern organizational life. By examining the systemic nature of roles, managing the tension between self and role, and engaging in reflective practice to uncover the unconscious dynamics at play, leaders can move beyond turmoil to better understand and work with the challenges of their leadership role.
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