By Chally Kacelnik
The podcast episode: “You May Not Be Who You Think You Are,” If/Then by Stanford Business.
I had this podcast sitting in my open tabs for a while, until I could set aside enough quiet time to focus on it deeply. I’m glad I made the time. In it, Brian Lowery, the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, argues something I think about a lot: that identity is not entirely inherent in a person, but rather is constituted in social terms. That is, identity is heavily influenced by one’s social environment and interaction.
How does that idea sound to you? To me, it feels destabilising, but also energising. It might be easier to approach it at a distance, whether thinking about how people in the past would have experienced self (and community, emotion, society, any number of things) in a different way to how we might now, or whether thinking about how different contemporary cultures tend towards individualism, collectivism, or prioritise different family structures or social units.
Professor Lowery has some practical ideas for how to apply this in terms of organisation behaviour. The podcast is well worth a listen – he’s got to be one of the more capable thinkers and speakers I’ve heard in some time. Here are some of his ideas:
- When you think of people and their experiences as subject to influence rather than as closed systems, it becomes easier to understand how to influence and engage with others in a compelling way
- Focusing on certainty about your own behaviour and individuals’ attributes rather than circumstances you’re facing can stop you shifting the circumstances
- Commitment to helping people succeed is much more powerful than fully understanding their identity and experience within the social categories they inhabit (a crucial point, and not understanding it sees diversity initiatives ring false)
There’s lots more in there about tribalism, power asymmetry, and more. Mostly, sitting with the uncertainty that this kind of thinking about the self opens up can be really productive. If you’re not stuck in a narrow set of ideas about yourself and are open to the idea that you’re malleable, the path is laid for you to shape your own life and interactions with others in more intentional, powerful ways.
Like Professor Lowery encourages, I’m going to keep getting curious and sitting with the tricky questions about self, social interactions, and how we work together in organisations. The most fruitful and satisfying arenas are ones in which there are no easy answers.
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