Outsmart Chaos 132: Knowing Who You Are
And the Danger of Borrowed Identity
Earlier in my career, I spent most of my energy trying to become exactly what the company I worked for wanted me to be.
At the time, that felt right.
The company articulated values I genuinely believed in. Integrity. Craft. Responsibility. Long-term thinking. I wasn’t compromising myself; I was aligning. I wanted to work at a place that shared my values, and this place did.
That alignment became the foundation of my identity at work.
And that’s where the problem started.
Over time, the company changed. Not visibly. The values on the wall stayed the same. The language didn’t shift. The decks still said the right things.
But the decisions did.
Short-term wins were rewarded over long-term stewardship. Optics mattered more than outcomes. Speed replaced discernment. What was written never changed, but what was practiced did.
I felt torn.
I wanted the company to live by the values it claimed to uphold. I kept waiting for a correction, a return, a realignment. I pushed back in meetings. I framed decisions in the language of the stated values, assuming that was enough.
It wasn’t.
What I failed to recognize was that I had fused my identity with the organization’s declared values rather than anchoring it in my own.
The moment the company’s practiced values drifted, I drifted with it, not because I agreed, but because I hadn’t drawn a clear line between who I was and where I worked.
That confusion is subtle, and it’s dangerous.
Unless you are the owner, the company’s values are not yours.
They may overlap. They may align. They may even reinforce each other for a season.
But they are not interchangeable.
Borrowed identity is fragile. It depends on the consistency you do not control.
This is the trap many capable leaders fall into. They search for alignment, which is wise. But they outsource identity, which is costly. When the organization shifts, they experience it not as disagreement, but as a personal fracture.
The result is exhaustion, resentment, and quiet erosion of clarity.
The discipline is learning to hold both truths at once:
Seek shared values.
Never surrender your own.
Your values must be portable. They must outlive roles, titles, and employers. They must be stable enough to withstand organizational drift without requiring you to drift with it.
Organizations change direction.
People change incentives.
Markets apply pressure.
If your sense of self is embedded in the company, every change becomes destabilizing.
Knowing who you are means this:
You can stay engaged without being absorbed.
You can contribute without contorting.
You can disagree without losing footing.
Identity precedes alignment. Always.
When you anchor there, you gain something rare: the ability to remain resolute even when the organization is not.
And that clarity is what allows you to choose your next step deliberately, rather than reactively.
RZLTE | Strength under pressure. Clarity through chaos.
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