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The Identity Layer of Work: Who Are We Without Job Titles?
In boardrooms and coffee shops alike, the question arises like clockwork:
“So, what do you do?”And just like that, we answer with a label—efficient, familiar, and strangely reductive.
“I’m a strategist.”
“A consultant.”
“A designer.”
A title. A badge. A proxy for worth.But beneath the polished job descriptions and curated LinkedIn summaries lies a deeper, more vulnerable truth: our professional titles often serve as scaffolding for our sense of self. Strip them away, and the question becomes less about careers and more about identity.
Who are we when we’re not “head of,” “manager of,” or “founder of”?
Who remains when the title is gone?This isn’t just theoretical. It’s real. In transitions—whether by choice or by force—we confront the uncomfortable silence left in the absence of role-based identity. Retirement, sabbaticals, layoffs, or even deliberate detachment from hustle culture all unveil the same existential pause.
And yet, within that pause lies possibility.
Without the armor of a job title, we return to our raw human self:
a storyteller, a listener, a seeker, a builder, a thinker, a healer.
A mosaic of roles, none of which require a business card.Maybe identity isn’t meant to be branded or summarized. Maybe it’s meant to be lived—in quiet moments, in unseen gestures, in how we show up for others when no one’s watching.
So next time someone asks, “What do you do?”, consider answering with who you are.
It might just be the most radical thing you say all day.