Reviewed by Dr. Natalie Pickering
A director called me not long ago about a manager who’d been with him for years. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, “but the team is reaching out to me that he’s losing his temper and nitpicking everything.” The team, and the manager, were under real pressure from a large organizational pivot and a wave of new policies. The old norm of keeping your head down and plowing through had stopped working, and the manager’s stress was leaking out sideways, into how he was showing up with his team. It wasn’t a performance issue. It was a leadership identity issue
That’s usually where this work actually starts. Not with a framework, but with a leader whose stress is leaking out because something underneath the performance has come under pressure.
If you’ve read Leading Becomes You, you know my first question for leaders is not about performance. I ask, “Who are you becoming?”
This question begins with the individual leader, but it goes further than that.
Every leader belongs to a team, and every team is part of an organization. Once a leader gains self-clarity, the next question is: what changes when an entire team or organization pursues this work together?
Identity-first leadership
Identity-first leadership means leading with a clear sense of self. A leader’s story and values form the foundation beneath their role and actions. This foundation shifts leadership from performing to being present, and from constant striving to steady influence, extending to the team and the organization.
Most leadership development focuses on behavior—what to do and how to do it—but rarely considers who is doing it. Identity-first leadership goes deeper by examining what leaders believe about themselves, as these beliefs emerge when challenges arise, long after training ends.
I saw this recently with a coachee. She’d been spinning her wheels trying to make her program visible to the executive team. “I just want credit for all of this work,” she told me. As she recognized the connection between saying yes to every initiative and her approaching burnout, something shifted. “I’m learning that my limits, my contributions to the conversation, and my questions are valid because they’re mine,” she said. “It’s much more freeing to lead from my own perspective rather than trying to do and be who I think everyone wants me to be.”
That’s the gap between performing and becoming. Performing chases credit and approval. Becoming starts from what’s actually true about you.
Identity-first teaming
Identity-first teaming extends this foundation to the entire collective of people sharing work and unique stories group. It involves a shared commitment to awareness, acceptance, and leveraging each person’s strengths. It also means connecting through a shared story and purpose that go beyond roles and tasks.
Identity-first teaming builds trust, safety, and belonging from within. It enables genuine collaboration, rather than reliance on incomplete scripts or unclear expectations.
Most teams operate at the surface level, focusing meetings on roles and deliverables and managing conflicts through set processes. This approach works until unexpected challenges arise. Teams that rely solely on process often struggle due to a lack of deeper foundation and knowing. Identity-first teaming provides that foundation, offering sincere stability during difficult times.
Identity-first organizations
This foundation can shape the entire organization. When leaders and teams have clarity about who they are and who they aren’t, it influences how the organization operates and how people’s connection to the work translates to effectiveness. The goal is not to launch a new program, but to establish a strong base for new and real growth.
This is where individual work shapes more than self accumulates. A leader’s clarity influences their team, and that team’s clarity shapes organizational behavior under pressure, even in situations not addressed by values statements. Over time, one leader’s clarity can define the entire company.
Why this matters more than culture
Most organizations attempt to create culture through surface-level programs, competencies, and initiatives. However, culture is not the starting point; it emerges from deeper foundations.
When identity clarity spreads from leaders to teams and throughout the organization, culture develops naturally from these clear and authentic connections. Culture cannot be installed; it requires the right conditions, beginning with identity clarity and associated trust at every level.
This same foundation also informs coaching, which I will explore further in the future.
Where this is headed
An Operations Manager reached out to me recently with a similar gap, just wider. “There’s an us versus them mentality between our sales and developer teams and the administrative support staff,” she explained. “We need some ideas to help us remember we are on the same team, and how to get them to communicate directly instead of everything going through me.”
That’s not a team problem you fix with a new communication process. It’s an identity gap, at the level of the whole organization, and it’s the same gap the manager above was carrying, just spread across more people.
This shows up everywhere right now. Physicians describe feeling like a “widget” churning out RVUs for the organization. Newly consolidated leadership teams get pushed toward seamless collaboration with no regard for the culture friction underneath. In both cases, performance lags because nobody has addressed the foundation: who are we?
The question I’ve spent years telling leaders to ask is who am I becoming? The question I’m sitting with now is bigger: who are we becoming, together?
I will share more on this topic as my thinking develops. If you are interested in exploring identity-first leadership, teaming, or organizational work, please feel free to reach out.
