I’ve been reflecting on a challenge I observe amongst my clients – maybe it’s one with which you, too, are familiar.  Some of the most successful people I know are also those who are most flexible and able to adapt. These are people who are able to read a situation and to know what’s required in that situation in order to achieve their desired outcome.  These are people who choose their behaviours carefully in order to move towards their end goal.  These are not the people who behave, repeatedly, in particular ways and say “people can like it or lump it – it’s just who I am”.  No, these are the people who know that they are far more than the sum of their behaviours.  Confident in their sense of self, they adapt easily to change and maintain steady progress towards end goals.

At the same time, I meet people who have flexed so far that they have lost touch with who they are.  These are the people who have pursued end goals and may even have succeeded and yet, they have done so at the cost of their sense of connection with who they really are.  Perhaps they never knew who they are – busy pleasing their parents or their employer they have drifted further and further away from any sense of who they are.  Sometimes the disparity sits right under their nose, if only they were open to seeing it.  Sometimes it is so well hidden that they have no sense of it – just a vague sense of unease.

For this second group (do you belong in this group?) there is a paradox.  The more alienated we are from our true sense of self the more challenging it becomes to change and adapt at a behavioural level.  It goes like this:  I think I am what I do – so any change to what I do threatens my sense of who I am.  Maintaining behavioural habits becomes a proxy for being ourselves.  This presents many challenges.  If I am what I do, how will I experience any feedback about my behaviour?  Of course, I shall try hard to dismiss it or the person who gives it.  If I am what I do, how will I manage in situations in which old behaviours are ineffective?  It’s likely that I will chose to be ineffective over changing my behaviour because this gives me some sense of preserving my sense of identity.  If I am what I do, how will I experience failure in a particular task or even in my job as a whole?  It’s hard not to take it personally.

So just how much can you flex in the workplace and still be yourself?  I wonder if this question opens up an ongoing journey rather than a once-for-all-time answer.  It requires us to be curious – on an ongoing basis – about how much of what we think of as “me” really is me.  The newly promoted leader, for example, may find him- or herself looking over his shoulder for weeks until he realises that yes, I can do this job and it’s OK to do this job.  Sometimes it can take feedback to reinforce this new sense of workplace identity.  At the same time, part of this ongoing journey is to become increasingly aware of times when an action does not sit comfortably with essential motivations and values.  Yes, I can lead my team in a certain direction and still, every day I find myself struggling to get out of bed or simply forcing myself to do what I need to do to deliver in this job.

Often, I have found that the instinct for change – for a move towards a life which is more congruent with who we are – is barely hidden beneath the surface.  The right question will open up the need to reconnect with our sense of self and to identify, quite quickly, that the life we are leading lies outside what is normal and natural for us.  Sometimes we have the joy of discovering that we are in the right place at the right time:  learning to bring ourselves more fully to our life and career can open up much greater ease as well as higher levels of achievement.  Sometimes the realisation is that, by continuing to strive to succeed in this situation, we are flexing too far from our essential selves.

I wonder how much you are flexing in your life and career?  And with what results?