The Identity Shift No One Talks About 

I remember stewing on a conversation for days.

Someone in my team had dropped the ball. It needed addressing. Pretty straightforward, except for one thing. That person was my friend. Had been long before I became their leader.

So I wrote it down. Revised it. Rewrote it again. Ran through how it might go in my head about a hundred times. Then finally had the conversation.

And it didn't go perfectly. Turns out I'd been unclear on a couple of things myself. I had to own that. We worked through it together and got to a good place. But what stayed with me wasn't the conversation itself. It was everything that came before it.

All that stewing. All that second-guessing. Not because the issue was complicated. But because I hadn't quite figured out who I was supposed to be in that moment.

Because something shifts when you move from being part of a team to leading one. And it's not what most people expect.

It's not the skills that catch you out. It's the identity.

One day you're a colleague. A friend. Someone who does the work alongside people. Then suddenly you're the one responsible for having the hard conversation when the work isn't good enough. And the friendship that used to make everything easier is now the thing making it harder.

That's the shift nobody really prepares you for. From doing to developing. From being one of the team to being responsible for the team. And it doesn't happen in a day. It's a slow recalibration of who you are in the room.

What I've come to understand is this. Letting go of the old identity isn't disloyalty to the friendships or the work you loved doing. It's what the role actually asks of you. Because what you hold onto, you limit. And what you release, you multiply.

The conversation I'd been dreading? It worked out. Not because I got it perfectly right. But because I showed up to it as a leader rather than a friend trying to avoid an awkward moment.

That's where it starts.

The Conversation

Think about the role you're in now. Is there a version of your old self you're still holding onto? A relationship, a habit, a way of showing up that used to serve you but might be getting in the way?

What is leadership asking you to release?

Arohanui
Mary-Anne 😊