I sometimes reflect on my professional life as BC and AC (before Covid and after Covid). “AC” kicked off by getting laid off from an enviable and high-paying corporate job. The layoff experience was a first for me after 25-plus years in the workplace with zero employment gaps.
At the time—my identity was enmeshed entirely with what I did for a living, and there were a lot of good reasons for it. I had a high profile within the company I called home for nearly eleven years. When I would visit one of our many offices in the network, I was treated like royalty and welcomed warmly. My work was exciting and diversified: one day, I’d be working with a client on a thorny issue; another day, I’d be helping the firm modernize teams, processes or output; and another, I’d represent the firm through publishing thought leadership. In a lot of ways—It felt like I had it all. Even recently, I re-connected with a former colleague who told me that a peer once pointed to me as I walked by their conference room and said: “You see David? He is what an Edelman person looks like”. My career and identity were nearly the same thing, or at minimum, intertwined.
All of this seems like an eternity ago…
Fast forward to 2023, and I no longer view my corporate identity as who I am—or even the majority of what makes me… me. In fairness, getting laid off was the wake-up call. Still, it was also a silver lining because I had never had to “decouple” from my professional identity—until that point. So, it was a forcing function of sorts. Also, it was not easy, rather it was a long, gradual, and challenging process. Just because my role with a company suddenly stopped didn’t mean that my brain and heart would immediately switch gears as if to say, “OK, I am no longer this person… cool”.
I was still very much that person—I was just that person without the formal trappings that come with being employed with the identity you’ve come to embody. A common phrase we used when I was employed under my former corporate identity was that we “bled blue”—a nod to the corporate color for which the firm is well known. I now look back at all of this with a hint of naivity. I had bought into the corporate folklore that so many of us do… that we are our career and, by extension, our place of employment.
We are not.
I made a common mistake in co-mingling my identity with my career because I over-indexed on it being such a huge part of my purpose. Also, the perks were good. Health benefits, financial security, travel, interesting people to work with, interesting problems to solve, a parking stipend, equity… and on and on. There are many reasons for mistaking our corporate identity for our true identity. But divesting your more complex identity from your simplified corporate version is something everyone who qualifies should reconcile because it’s a better way to live—for ourselves and the people who care about us. Honestly, it’s probably even better for our employer because what helps our well-being also makes us better at our jobs.
Is separating your career from your identity a form of quiet quitting? I don’t think it is at all. I currently work full-time for an AI software company, and my job gets the majority of my time and resources, as most full-time jobs do, and I work hard at it. I enjoy working in the AI software space and feel like it’s taking a masterclass daily as the space is so fluid and dynamic. What it doesn’t get, however, is my identity. That’s because my identity isn’t a single thing rather it’s a spectrum of many different things from father to husband, to mentor, to music lover to writer, etc., etc—being an employee is one of many of these.
Not one of these single things defines me, but their aggregate does.
Maybe you’ve already reached this conclusion a long time ago, but I can tell you that when I was in the middle of it all—I disproportionately viewed the corporate part of my life as my primary identity. Decoupling from my professional identity and putting it in its proper place has been liberating in many ways. It helps me to remain focused on the truly important things in life. And of course, career is absolutely one of these things. It’s just that career alone no longer defines me.
If you had gone out on your own 25 years ago -- with 100% skin in the game as to whether you’d be successful and receiving enough money to pay your mortgage and your kids’ orthodontist bills -- I wonder what your current take would be.
I always got a kick out of listening to those guys who worked at the fancy agencies who would deliver their “takes” at SXSW and other venues, but who were sheltered from the basic realities of week-to-week financial survival because of their corporate employers.
Love this perspective. That is what I have come to know from my work designing strategic narratives for companies and executives. Like you, I lived through my title and the borrowed equity of the brand name on my card for decades. Going solopreneur has definitely shifted the meaning of identity and pathway forward. I find that I am now creating mosaics (be it digital or physical) for companies and humans, each with a history, a present and vision for a future they have yet to accomplish.