Balance & Beyond Podcast
Episode Summary
#141: If You're Not This Job, Who Are You?
If your identity is glued to your job title, the future of work can feel like a personal threat.
We are moving fast towards portfolio careers, multiple income streams, and roles that shift or disappear, and that change exposes a deeper question: if you are not the title, who are you? That is why visibility is not just a career strategy. It is identity work.
We talk about why so many high performing women were taught to stay heads down, be brilliant, and let the work speak, then wonder why networking and “put yourself out there” advice feels so wrong. When visibility gets tangled with tall poppy syndrome, it can feel like bragging, performing competence, or asking for validation. Yet we are living in an attention economy where reputation is currency, relationships matter, and waiting to be shoulder tapped is a risky plan, especially with automation and AI reshaping what “safe” work looks like.
We also unpack the generational contrast of people who post freely because their identity is more fluid, and what we can learn from that without losing professionalism. The takeaway is practical and human: start separating who you are from what you do, build relationships before you need them, and practise being seen without over preparing. Start small. Renovate one room at a time.
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Episode Transcript
INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. I honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in!
Changes are coming. Not just restructures or budget cuts. They're already here. A different model entirely. Multiple jobs, portfolio careers, parallel income streams. And if your identity is entangled with your title, your profession, or your level, that future feels terrifying. Because if you're not this job, who are you?
This episode, we need to unpack why becoming more visible isn't just a career strategy, it's an identity unlock. So many women I speak to have their identity wrapped around their job. It's not just what they do, it's who they are. I'm a lawyer, I'm a CFO, I'm a senior leader. It is so ingrained. It comes with language, it comes with a tribe, it comes with a way of dressing, it comes with the house you buy, the suburb you live in. And that worked for a long time.
But the future most people and experts agree is coming, where you have multiple jobs, careers become portfolios, not ladders. That future is even more terrifying if your identity is this entangled. Because if you're not this job, if you're not this title or this level, who are you? That's not a career question. That's an identity one. And this is why all the advice out there about be more visible, network doesn't land.
Because visibility requires you to separate who you are from what you do. And most women haven't done that work yet. You were taught to put your head down, work hard, be brilliant, that you're capable, the work will speak for itself, and that visibility, putting yourself out there, is showing off. Tall poppy syndrome runs really, really deep.
I still had a client say to me recently that if she was going to post on LinkedIn, she was saying, "Look at me, I'm so good!" And she actually felt gross doing it. She wasn't celebrating herself. She felt like she was performing competence because her identity was so tied to being seen as capable that visibility felt like either bragging and having a big head, or it felt like looking for gold stars and begging for validation from others.
But this is the double bind we are finding ourselves in. You need to be visible to future-proof your career. But visibility feels at odds with how you think you need to show up in the world. And if your identity is already shaky because it's all tied to a job or a title or profession that might not exist in five years, well, that visibility feels like a threat, not a strategy.
There is such a unique contrast between us in our 30s, 40s, and 50s and our kids. I don't know about yours, but mine send photos of their nostril hair to each other of all kinds of angles that I think, my God, what are you doing? They don't agonize over whether it's insightful enough, whether people will judge them, how does it make them look, do they look good enough or not? They just post. They just say the thing.
Meanwhile, we hide behind our teams. We make sure that we're putting them out there and it was a team effort. We worry about what people think. We're afraid of our own success and we tell ourselves that everything has to be strategic. I have to add value. I have to get this big report and spend a lot of time on it. I have to make sure it's worth people's time.
But this generation aren't afraid to be visible because their identity isn't wrapped around one thing. And I know you say, "Sure, Jo, they're not in the workforce yet, but they are so fluid." They've been brought up with multiple versions of themselves. They've got themselves that's in this era, and then they're in that era, and they can be in this era at the same time. They don't have to be one thing.
We've spent 20, 30 years, decades building an identity around a thing. One thing, because it means everything to us. But now we're gonna have to untangle that before we can actually be seen. Because this is the work that you have to do if you want to be successful in the future. It's not about learning how to post on LinkedIn.
You're competent, you can do that yourself. It's learning how to be you, the you that's separate from your title, from your role, from what level you're at in an organization. Because you don't have to believe in portfolio careers or the future of work for this to matter. Because even if you stay in the same job doing the same thing for the next 10 years, which I would say is as likely as a unicorn is going to dance with a mermaid over the rainbow, the game has changed.
Being brilliant isn't enough. Putting your head down and just doing the work and doing it faster and better than everyone is not going to keep you safe. Robots can do a far better job than you on many, many things. Visibility is the new currency. We're in an attention economy. And so the way to participate in that is to be seen in it. But this is going to require you to know who you are outside your job title.
You're going to have to be comfortable being seen without the need to prepare or to prove or to check who liked it. You're going to need to build relationships before you need them. You have to manage and curate your reputation intentionally rather than let your supposed experience just speak for itself. This isn't fluffy. This is strategic. Because the reason most women aren't doing it isn't because they don't know how.
Besides, I don't really know what I want yet. So let me sort all that out first. I don't know what I want my role to be next. So I'm going to spend three years gazing at my navel thinking that if I think hard enough in circles by myself at 3 a.m., "I'm going to work out what I actually want." Oh my God, no. You are going to continue to be replaced by someone less capable, but possibly more flexible, and possibly not a human.
Because that robot or that other human, or that human with a robot, can pivot. They can become someone new. They've got this fluidity. Okay, well, I was this, but now I'm that. Okay, well, my job was this, but it's now that. And we've all had to be fluid over the last couple of years.
If there's one thing COVID taught us anything, was it that jobs in the world can just change overnight? Good old pivot becomes a word that is just used to death. But if your identity is so entrenched to your career, you're going to have no ability to pivot.
You will continue to wait for permission from someone outside of you to say, "Okay, here's this new thing", or wait to be shoulder tapped by someone else, instead of proactively right now saying, "I am going to be the seer of my life". "I am going to intentionally decide how I want others to perceive me". "It's not perfect and it's not judgmental". "And I am a human". "I am not going to keep waiting for permission from someone else outside of me to change, to evolve, to untangle my identity".
And before you freak out, it's not going to make you a worse lawyer or a worse executive or a worse manager if you untangle your identity. Ironically, you're actually going to bring more of yourself to the role. You're going to stop contorting. You're going to stop performing. You will hold better boundaries. You're going to show up with more to give because you've put yourself in this box that is suffocating. And whether you're feeling the symptoms of that box shrinking or not, it's happening to you.
I'm seeing so many women just grip on for dear life. "I'm going to hold on". "I'm going to resist change". "And if I don't resist the change, then I'm going to think, fuck it, I'm going to blow it all up and move to the country and just become a teacher". "I'm going to go do something like that. I'm going to become an antiques dealer". Okay, great. Love thinking outside the box. However, is that really what you want?
That's just called an avoidance strategy and an escape hatch. But this is where you have to ensure that you are on the front foot. So this is the work that you have to do right now. Don't wait another six months. Don't wait until that project's over because that time is not coming. You have to start separating who you are from what you do. You are the person underneath all of that. Go find her again. You have to start being visible - whatever that means - appropriately for you.
I'm encouraging you to start that again. I'm encouraging everyone I know to start posting on LinkedIn if that is your profession. Less than 1% of people post on LinkedIn. Everybody else lurks. This is how your name is put in rooms. As portfolio careers open, as people start thinking, "Oh, I remember so-and-so!" "She thought about this and she ran this project!" But if they haven't seen or heard "boo" from you in 12 years, well, then your name is not going to be front of mind.
You have to do the work to be able to show up messy, human, because you have something to say. And the people who need to hear it are waiting. But you need to be able to step into that. And then finally, you have to stop waiting to feel ready. You will not. This work does not get easier.
If you are waiting until the very end when your profession is in the midst of being disrupted and who knows what else is going on in the world to do this work, man, that's like blowing the entire house up at once. How about we start by renovating one room at a time? The work doesn't get easier.
You have to stop the white knuckling and you learn to get braver. Because changes are coming, whether you like it or not. You can keep your identity wrapped around your title and hope nothing shifts, hope you make it through. Or you can do what smart women are doing and start untangling now. So when the future arrives, however it looks, you are not scrambling to figure out who you are. You're already her.
OUTRO: Thanks for joining me today. If this episode resonated, share it with a woman who needs to hear it. And if you want to be part of the Ripple Effect, leaving a review helps it reach the women it's meant for. I'll see you next time.
