“That’s just not who I am.” It sounds like self-knowledge. Sometimes it is.
“That’s just not who I am.”
It sounds like self-knowledge. Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it is a memory.
A few years ago, my wife and I moved across Vancouver. The apartment we left had been base camp for a version of me who measured a good week by how full the calendar was. Networking events, dinners, launches. Being everywhere was not something I did. It felt like who I was.
Then life changed. Marriage. Family. Different priorities.
Why This Matters for Leaders
For a while, part of me resisted with a sentence that felt like integrity: that is just not who I am.
But the sentence was describing someone I had been.
Loyalty to an outgrown identity looks like integrity from the inside.
This is a leadership problem too. Organizations become attached to identities created by previous success. “We are a relationship business.” “We are not a technology company.” “We move carefully.” The statement may have been true and useful. The world it was built in may be gone.
Adaptive identity does not mean abandoning values.
Separate anchors from variables.
A Practical Way to Apply the Idea
Values, standards, and how you treat people can travel with you.
Titles, tools, processes, business models, and old descriptions of “who we are” may need to change.
Ask: Is this an anchor—or a variable wearing an anchor’s uniform?
The future may require you to become someone your previous chapter could not yet imagine.
That is not betrayal.
It may be the work.
A SIMPLE LEADERSHIP PRACTICE
Use the question or framework in the next real decision, team conversation, or planning session. The objective is not to admire the idea. It is to create information about the work while the cost of learning is still small.
COMMON MISTAKES
- Turning the idea into a slogan without changing a behaviour, meeting, decision rule, or feedback loop.
- Scaling a solution before the team has learned whether it addresses the root friction.
- Confusing adaptability with a lack of standards. Values, safety, ethics, and other true anchors still require clarity.
- Waiting for complete certainty when the next responsible action is reversible and can create better information.
What does adaptive identity leadership change mean for leaders?
It means creating enough direction to move while staying responsive to information that changes the plan.
How should leaders start?
Name the direction, identify the most important source of friction or uncertainty, and choose the smallest responsible next move that can create useful information.
What is the common mistake?
Waiting for certainty or applying a rigid planning system to conditions that are still changing.
RELATED RESOURCES
- Plans Are Hypotheses, Not Promises: A Better Approach to Strategic Planning
- Why Trust Matters More During Change and Uncertainty
- How to Lead Through Uncertainty: A Practical Guide for Leaders