The 3 Identity Barriers Holding High-Performers Back (Ep. 304)

 the biggest thing holding leaders back is not a skill gap. It’s not even effort.and 

it’s not opportunity. It is who they think they are. The identity that made you successful, the thing you built your reputation on that identity may be the exact reason you’ve hit a ceiling

and you will not see it because it does not feel like a problem. It feels like your strength. It feels like the very thing people praise you for, because it’s what got you here to this already successful place, but it’s exactly that thing.

What got you here is now quietly keeping you stuck. Research out of Stanford shows that people under pressure default to their core strength, even when the situation demands a completely different approach. We often over-index on what’s worked before, long after it stops working. And by the way, this is even true for people who intellectually understand that this success strategy, this identity that they used to have, they see that it’s no longer working.

They get that on an intellectual level, but again, under stress, under pressure, when stakes seem high. We default right back into this, and at that moment we don’t see it at all. They’re actually thinking we are doubling down on our strength on the thing we can and have been relying on for so long.

So in this episode, I’m gonna walk you through the three identity barriers that show up constantly in high performers. For each one we’ll talk about what it looks like, why it helped early on, and how it now may be getting in your way. Then we’ll talk about the research, but why these patterns are so stubborn, a method for coaching yourself or someone on your team through it. And then lastly, a practice. You can start this week.

My name is Ramona Shah and I’m the host of the Manager Track podcast.

Here is what most people miss. Identity is not personality. Personality is relatively stable. Identity is a story that you tell yourself about who you need to be

in any given context. These stories, not personality, these stories can be rewritten and many people do multiple times over throughout their lives. But most of them do it after they’re hitting their limits. And I also beg to venture that many, if not all of them, have some kind of outside support 

this could be a mentor, a support group, a community. It could be an executive coach or leadership coach. It could be some kind of life coach. It could be a therapist, or it could be a trusted friend, but someone who is able to see the blind spots to call out when they’re falling back into their old identities and is able to quickly detect the identity of this story in the way that the person speaks to.

Then interject and reframe. because most leaders, including myself, do not realize on our own that our identity is running the ship. Most of us think that we are making rational really good decisions,

but an old self concept is filtering every situation in steering us towards behavior that feels safe, but are not strategic. So if you think, no, no, no, that’s not me. My issue is behavioral. I need to just be more on time.

I need to just, uh, be more diligent, more in more strategic. I need to be more detail oriented. I need to learn how to be more analytical. You try to fix that behavior, but it will not stick because the behaviors are symptoms, the identity underneath. Is the actual root cause. so let’s talk about a quick example to kind of bring this to light

let’s think about a director at a tech company. This director could not stop inserting herself into her team’s work. Every deliverable crossed her desk. She rewrote emails. She stayed online until midnight catching things before they went out.

Her boss, gave her the classic feedback. You are too in the weeds. You need to learn how to trust your team. Okay? You might have heard that before. You might have even given that advice to other people. Not too uncommon, right? but the behavior of inserting herself into things was not the problem.

Her identity was the thing, the root cause of all of these behaviors. She had spent her entire career being the person who catches things, the reliable one, the one who would never let anything slip, the one who gets praised for, oh my gosh, thanks so much for avoiding that thing going out.

I can’t believe you noticed that. She gets rewarded for it over and over and over again. So telling her to stop checking the work was like telling her to stop. Being herself, that version of herself who’s being recognized and who’s being successful, at least until now. 

So imagine that scenario now as a coach, I would say, Hey, if you were not allowed to be the person who catches things, who would you be instead? And just put yourself in the shoes of this director right now. She would probably say, I don’t know. ’cause that is my superpower.

That is who I’ve always been. Even in school when I was young, I was the one who would catch things. The one who was reliable. The one people were like, when it gets complicated, it gets tricky. Let her take a look at this. She will catch something if we’re off. And that exact thing is the locked in identity.

And you cannot just outperform an identity, you have not outgrown.

so as a coach, you detect that in clients. We have to then take a step back and. Create a new identity. We have to tell a new story about this next chapter, this next version of ourselves, like replacing or upleveling the software to create that new identity in any situation.

In any situation that then happens from here on out. We have to pause and say, hold on. What would this next level version of you or for this director do in this situation? What part of your approach right now is about the role and being effective, and what part is about protecting your old identity and how you see yourself or.

If this strength were no longer available to you, this being reliable, this being to catch things, what else would you bring to the table? What else do you think you need to bring to the table to be successful in that next version, in that next role, that bigger responsibility,

Those are all the questions that someone who’s hitting a ceiling needs to answer over and over again as they find themselves confronted with situations that would typically redirect them to the behaviors that they’re no longer supposed to be doing according to feedback or according to what would actually be effective in that situation, like being too in the weeds, not delegating, not rewriting emails, no longer double checking everything and working until midnight.

because the number one behavior that actually kills that growth, it like throttles it right away. There is when we don’t see that and we keep defending the old identity, the moment we keep saying like, yes, but that’s just who I am. Right? Or I, I don’t see it. That’s what I need to do. I know you’re saying to let go, but in this situation, I really need to double check it.

So to recap this, the sentence, ” Well that is just who I am” is the most expensive thing a leader can say if that thing that they’re defending, is not effective in what they’re trying to accomplish or the role they’re trying to be successful in.

So what I wanna talk about next are the three main identity barriers and for each barrier, pay attention to the four things here. What it looks like on the surface, why it helped early on, how it becomes a barrier at higher levels and the fear underneath it. The fear is where the real lock is that connects our current behavior to the identity.

The first barrier and limitation is the identity of the hard worker. This person’s self-worth is tied to. Effort, responsiveness, and being the most reliable person in the room. Now, early on it worked. It gets them noticed, it helps ’em build credibility. And in IC roles, individual contributor roles, this effort is directly rewarded because they become the go-to person, but.

In leadership, it confuses effort with value. It leads to over-functioning and undereating. It keeps leaders way too operational and overall sends out that message that trust is low. Plus, over time, if this identity and this story isn’t being retold changed. But their role keeps expanding.

Then what typically happens, and if yet to see an exception to this role, is they’re either burning out, they’re starting to feel resentful, or they’re becoming a huge bottleneck to the team, and performance starts to decrease. Now, in this scenario with being the hard worker, the fear is that if I’m not the hardest worker in the room, then what makes me valuable?

The shift is now from proving value through effort, which is what they’ve been doing, to now create value through judgment, clarity, and leverage of other people, leverage of the team 

because At higher levels, leadership is no longer about how much you can carry, but about how much capacity you can create around you. now I talk about this first barrier. In third person, but personally, that is exactly my block and it’s one that I keep pushing against.

Every time I move into a new role, into a different role, or there’s something new around me, I default right back into being the hard worker right back into thinking that if I’m not the hardest worker, then I’m not providing enough value. 

Work more, do more, Take additional actions. And because I love the work that I do and I love my job, this comes so easy to me, but I would be completely unaware if I didn’t realize that. The reason why I think that is not just because I love the work that I do.

It’s also because I think there’s huge value in working hard, and it’s helped me a lot in building my success so far. But I also realized that to go from where I’m at, to go to the next level, working harder won’t be it. And even though I have the awareness, it’s this constant reflection that I have to do on myself, with my own coach, with the people around me who hold me accountable to this.

To question and challenge when I default, back into, into finding reasons to work more or giving excuses to why I’m working more. This is kind of that level of awareness. And so I’m saying this because the awareness in itself doesn’t solve it, right?

Awareness is just the first step. Then implementing it once and making a change once is also not solving it. It’s just the first step in entire process. We have to go through this over and over and over again, and sometimes multiple times throughout our careers. We might do pretty well in changing the story only to then find ourselves yet again in a new room, new role.

Uncomfortable high pressure situations to default right back into this old identity. The identity that we picked up probably in our childhood. Somewhere along the way, we connected, working hard in my case or whatever else, asked the strategy to be successful from maybe our parents from this, the people around us, the messages that we heard be this in school from teachers or be this from societal norms or culture norms more broadly speaking. So the process starts with self-awareness, then starting to implement behavioral changes. Whenever we notice we are falling back into all patterns to now based on behaviors on this, a newer identity, the upgraded identity, and then having to do this over and over again.

So recapping barrier number one was working hard. Barrier number two is the survival identity. this always bracing, this hypervigilant, controlling, second guessing type of behavior rooted in this identity of always having to survive being a survivor, it’s leading from defense rather than from intention.

and early on, for most survivors, that was an asset. Really sharp awareness, strong problem detection, fast adaptation in sort of chaotic environments. And often it’s like. Staying composed and being able to even help other people get through a chaotic time, and lead them.

That comes from this deeper pattern of, I’m a survival. I know what exactly what to do when chaos hits. Now in leadership, it can create reactivity instead of steadiness, right? It makes this long-term thinking a bit harder because we feel more comfortable or familiar maybe. In micromanagement, in sort of pessimism, always being on the lookout, right?

Or even our emotional volatility of feeling stressed or frustrated and seeing things around us as challenges that we have to face and we have to survive and fight. And teams can feel that tension even when their leader thinks they’re just being prepared.

They’re like always prepared or even over prepared. The fear underneath all this is that if I let my guard down, something will go wrong, and anyone who’s at ease seems suspicious 

You being unprepared, You not thinking about. What could go wrong? You’re not doing life right, like you, you don’t yet know what’s coming around the corner. That seems like a dumb idea. The shift for the survival is to go from surviving the environment to actually wanting to shape it.

And I don’t mean to be prepared for everything that’s going to happen, but to shape it, not from a place of fear, but from a place of intentionally creating. More and better and stable and peaceful and non chaotic situations. And to be able to thrive in that environment when you, because you cannot lead expansively when your nervous system is still organized around protection and hunkering down right, 

So we had a hard worker. The second identity was the survivor, and now the third one is the expert. This is when confidence is tied to having the answer.

People with this identity of being the expert will hesitate. When they don’t have enough data, they’re over reliant on being the smartest person in the room. And early on, this built credibility really fast and was often actually the primary engine. Of career advancement, right? They always knew exactly what was going on.

Were pulled into meetings and conversations because they were seen as the expert. And if there was something that they were unsure about, you bet that did the research and it went down the rabbit hole until that they fully understood it. They had all the data. They were very diligent before making decisions.

But in leadership now, it can make people defensive when they do not know what’s going on or what data is even available. It can also reduce curiosity. ‘Cause we’d rather go figure that ourselves than ask a question to learn more in a public setting.

It can also block decisive action in times of uncertainty or ambiguity because you, you need to know for sure before you can make it make an action. But decisive action comes with incomplete information. It can also keep leaders in this expert mode when the role that they’re actually in depends a lot more on entrepreneurial thinking, no longer on their actual expertise.

And so the fear driving this particular identity is that if I do not know, I lose credibility and not having the answer therefore means that I’m totally exposed, it can be very uncomfortable to have to say, I actually don’t know I’m going to find out

the shift for someone who’s in the expert identity is The shift from being the source of answers to being the source of direction, perspectives, and actually asking better questions, not having better answers. The two are not the same. When someone is seen as the expert, they’re gonna have a hard time asking better questions without being judgmental between the lines are very directly, and for other people that can then be really hard for them to fully express their own perspective or to fully own their plans and their ideas, even if you already know it’s wrong.

You are gonna deprive them of opportunities to learn really important lessons. ’cause you will interject and direct way too soon. Leadership maturity then shows up when you no longer need your own intelligence to constantly defend your identity. So that expert is the third identity barrier alongside hard worker.

And the survivor. Which, by the way, I picked the three most common ones that I see in my work with leaders. 

but there are more than those three so if you couldn’t relate to any of those, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Okay? Now, none of these are actual weaknesses, right?

Remember this? Those identities we adopted for a reason. But leadership now and leadership elevation, right? So climbing the ranks and increasing our scope of responsibility requires us to lose in our hold on identities that are now too small for the next level.

So the issue is not that you are hardworking or very resilient in chaotic times. Or that you are very intelligent. The issue is when that becomes who you must be at all times and who you think will also give you the success you’re looking for. As you continue to climb the ranks that skill or that identity will still help in certain situations. I personally still have moments when I need to work really hard, and that is exactly what’s supposed to happen, but then it’s a chosen behavior, not a behavior driven by my identity that the, the hard work is the solution to everything, all situations, and at all costs.

Okay. Quick pause here. So if this is resonating and you wanna take it further, then check out the link in the show note to schedule a leadership strategy call.

In those calls, we get to know each other a little bit more and we get to identify what are your goals and what’s the path to achieve those goals, including what might be the identities that are getting in your way 

if you, then at the end of that conversation, wanna know how we at our cova support leaders in situations just like yours, then we can tell you more about our programs. But there’s no pressure at all.

 So check out the link in the show notes to schedule a leadership strategy call.

Now let’s talk about the research. Here is the research that explains why these barriers are so hard to break. Let’s start. Let’s start with the first one, the self concept clarity. Researchers at the University of Churchill found that leaders with high self concept clarity are rated as more effective.

But when that clarity turns rigid, those same leaders scored lower on adaptability, and were more likely to resist feedback. So yes, knowing yourself is a strength, but being locked into yourself that then is a liability. Study number two is Dweck’s Identity Layer carol Twe, who you might know from the growth mindset found that when self worth is fused with a particular ability, people become threat sensitive. So any challenge to that ability feels like a challenge to their identity.

The expert who gets asked a question they cannot answer, does not just feel uncertain. They actually feel attacked, and that is why the expert identity is so dangerous at senior levels, right? The environment demands, ambiguity, and yet the identity can literally not tolerate it. Okay. I have a third study I wanna share with you.

This is the identity threat in organizations. Research in the Academy of Management Review showed that people experiencing identity threat respond predictably. They actually double down. They even avoid triggering situations or reframe the threat as irrelevant. All three look like Leadership weaknesses from the outside, the manager who cannot stop doing the work.

The director who avoids strategy, the VP who dismisses feedback, not skill problems, but identity protection strategies.

So knowing all this and understanding the research behind why identities matter and why they’re hard to let go With that in mind, let’s talk about how to redirect behavior. Think about it this way.

If you were to help someone work through an identity barrier, you are almost like negotiating between two different movies. The one where the old identity is the hero, the hard worker, the survival, the, you know, very intelligent one that identity has taken the lead. 

We can reflect back what they are experiencing without any judgment, right? The goal is for for them is to feel seen before we ask them to step outside of it. The same is true for yourself. People who are aware and they’re able to overcome these identities, they recognize what is happening usually while it’s happening. And then with compassion, they can have the self-talk as to, this is the old version of you, this is who you used to be, and it’s okay.

Like it makes sense that this would be the first go to move right now ’cause it made you successful so far. Right? So this is the internal dialogue. That’s compassionate and not judgmental. But then we can offer internally or to someone else an alternative interpretation as a second perspective. The moment we can then see, hey, there are actually multiple movies here on the on the table, and there are definitely two we can consider.

We can continue with this one movie where that old strategy sort of running the show and it’s the hero. Or hold on a second, what would be a different movie? That we could watch where a new identity would and a new behavior would be what’s driving the storyline.

And so at any given point in the movie, we could say like, okay, what would the hero in the old movie do right now? Versus what is this new movie? The movie that we find aspirations like, wow. This would be the new version of the protagonist.

What would that be like? And we’re playing this in our heads as well.

So let’s pause here for a second. Imagine you have an engineer on your team.

His name is Marcus, and he was just promoted to be the technical lead of this engineering team,

and now you were kind of hoping that he would step up or become a leader, but you notice that in every meeting he continues to dominate the technical discussion and actually gets frustrated when someone proposes a solution.

He did not think of himself. And so. He’s thinking in his own, moving his own head. I am the smartest person here. My job is to protect quality and I know best on how to do this. Now you on the outside, you might identify that.

He’s seeing himself as the expert and that this perception, this identity, is actually blocking his team’s development and he’s not gaining their respect from the team members. So in this situation, you could say, Marcus, I know you care deeply about technical quality. The standard is one of the reasons why you were promoted.

and I noticed that you seemed frustrated in the last few meetings, so I fully acknowledge actually his identity. I see that. I don’t pretend it wasn’t there. And then we can play that next movie by saying something along the lines of, here is what I’m also noticing when you jump in to correct.

The best ideas that they have stop surfacing. Not because they do not have them, but because their safest play is to let you lead. And so the quality standard you are protecting is actually creating the exact dependency that you are frustrated by.

The more you direct, the more they’re going to lean on your direction. Whether they like that or not, they’re just gonna sort of abdicate some of their own thinking, critical thinking, and innovative thinking because there’s really no point if you are always right and you’re always

setting the tone because you seem the expert in the room. So we are clearly calling out the behavior now that we’re seeing and where it hits the limit. And again, I’m saying this as if this was someone else on the team that’s currently the example, 

But for yourself, this is the inner dialogue for me. It’s like, I know you want to work hard here ’cause you think that’s the solution, but take a step back and think about what would actually move the needle. is it a new partnership? Is it visibility? 

Talking to some former clients or current clients about it not because that’s hard work, but because those would be smart decisions, strategic decisions to make. And so it’s pausing and reflecting and noticing like, hold on a second. They’re like two different things going on.

And then we can decide, okay, what are we going to do next? If we were to go back to Marcus, we could say, Hey, in this next Sprint review. What would it look like to hold back your solution for the first 10 minutes and just let the team problem solve without you stepping in and steering the conversation?

So, okay, what would that next thing now look like? And for the other person, if you get the buy-in, just let them experience it, even if they’re hesitant at first. So give it a shot. Look, after 10 minutes, you can go back and be the expert, but give it a shot. Get more comfortable with being adaptable in those situations.

a quick mental hook that might help is to consider this a plot twist, like you notice. Oh, okay. You’re in a situation where your identity, the one that is hitting the limit is showing up. And now you tell yourself, watch out Alarm bell, we gotta do a plot twist. And that plot twist is.

You know when you wanna be the expert, you are now stepping back and you are asking better questions when you wanna be the hard worker to step back and say like, what actually would be valuable here? That has nothing to do with effort. So what are those questions you need to ask yourself to create one of those plot twist. example, let’s say a team member presents a solution that you disagree with. And you feel the pull to kind of take over and say, okay, thanks for that, but no, we’re gonna do it differently and here’s how. Then it’s, hold on a second. Plot twist in your head and you might redirect and say, okay, walk me through your thinking on this.

I wanna understand what you considered before I weigh in. Giving them more time to express themselves. And then you keep going with those questions versus just taking over

now, letting go of an old identity can feel like a loss. You might feel like you’re grieving a version of yourself that worked, that was praised, that kept you safe, and the cause of refusing to grieve it is that you may stay small. Like that’s a true worry, not because you lack talent, but because you keep performing at a version of yourself that next level can no longer actually beneficial in most scenarios.

So what leaders to break through this actually do is that they separate their strength from their self-worth. Yes, I’m a hard worker and that’s a strength, and my value is not contingent on being the hardest worker that is no longer holding true. That used to be true, no longer holding true, or I am resilient and I do not need survival mode to prove it.

Or I’m intelligent and I can lead without being the smartest person in the room. It might actually be so much more fun if I was not at all the smartest person in the room. I would hire people who are smarter than me. And can you create an identity of yourself as a leader who’s surrounded by people smarter than you?

So it’s separating your strength from your self worth. That is where truly your breakthrough lifts now align for you. When you feel yourself that old identity. I am choosing clarity over comfort right now where I am choosing effectiveness over familiarity.

Right in this moment the old version of me who wants to step in is not the version that this moment, this situation actually needs. Keep remembering that. Now, here’s another quick practice.

On a regular basis, and maybe this is a reminder on your calendar or your phone, am I leading from who I was or who I am becoming? Like individual contributors. They get rewarded for performing a consistent identity. Right? Leaders get rewarded for evolving theirs to match the scope of the role.

So the question specific with which identity are you still performing that the current level of your leadership no longer requires incident? What are you afraid will happen if you let go of it? And then who would you need to become to lead at the level you actually want to reach? Now if this hits home, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast, subscribe on YouTube, share it with a fellow leader, a colleague who might be stuck in these patterns or who would appreciate better understanding why they might be hitting a limit or why some of their team members are hitting limits and yet changing a behavior just doesn’t seem to stick.

In short, growth in leadership, asks you to stop performing who you have been so you can actually step into who the role now demands. And with that I’m gonna wrap up this episode of Dementia Track Podcast. We’ll be back 

next week. Bye for now.

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@ourcova.org forward slash masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at our cova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there.