Your Role Can Grow Faster Than Your Identity

The promotion usually happens before you feel ready for it.

That’s the part people miss.

A guy I work with had been put in charge of about twenty-five salespeople.

A few months earlier, his job was to sell.

Now people were asking him what they should do.

They gave him an assistant.

One night she asked him if she should stay until seven.

His first reaction was basically: Why are you asking me?

So he sent her to his boss.

His boss sent her right back.

This is his shit.

Which is funny.

And also the entire problem.

Externally, the role had already changed.

Internally, he was still waiting for somebody else to authorize him.

That happens more than people admit.

Reality gives you responsibility.

Then your identity takes its sweet time catching up.

You’re in the meeting.

People are looking to you.

You have the authority.

But some part of you is still operating from the older version of yourself.

The version that asked permission.

The version that waited to be picked.

The version that thought leadership would feel different once it arrived.

It usually doesn’t.

You don’t become confident and then take the responsibility.

Most of the time, the responsibility comes first.

Then you find out whether there’s something in you capable of carrying it.

He said the new role was building a piece of his character he had never met before.

That’s exactly right.

Responsibility does that.

It reveals capacities that had no reason to exist until reality demanded them.

But there’s a second danger.

Authority feels good.

Recognition feels good.

Being trusted feels good.

Having people ask you what to do feels good.

And if you aren’t careful, the role doesn’t just become something you carry.

It becomes the thing you use to tell yourself you matter.

That’s where leadership starts to rot.

You have to own the authority without deriving your worth from it.

Because if you don’t own it, people don’t get the leadership they need.

But if you become psychologically dependent on it, leadership stops being about them.

It becomes about maintaining your own importance.

That’s the narrow road.

You’re the leader.

Own it.

But don’t confuse becoming the leader with becoming the point.

Before, he served people directly.

Now he serves the people who serve people.

The radius got bigger.

That’s all.

You’re still serving.

You’re just two steps away.