When Your Job Is Your Identity, Professional Failure Hurts More

When we can’t distinguish between the role and the self, we can take life’s inevitable kicks too personally. Consider: As an analyst, Kate worked hard to organize complex sales data in a way that her colleagues could quickly understand. To do the job right, analysts must sometimes share unpleasant information; disappointing colleagues is inevitable in the role. When Kate’s colleagues didn’t like her findings, they often pushed back and questioned her methodology. Their resistance often left Kate feeling angry and insecure. Kate needed to remind herself that her colleagues’ rejection had everything to do with her role and nothing to do with her personally. When teams are confronted with their poor results they feel embarrassed in front of their supervisor, get defensive, and scapegoat the analyst and her work. Their feedback to Kate said more about them than it did about Kate. But that was hard for her to see when she couldn’t distinguish herself from her role.