If You Don't Define Yourself, You Will Be Defined
“If you don't know what you stand for, you'll fall for anything.”
- Peter Marshall
Every organization believes it knows who it is.
Ask a company about its values, and there is usually an immediate answer. Look at the website, and you will find words describing integrity, innovation, inclusion, service, excellence, accountability, or people. Walk through the lobby, and some version of those same ideas may be framed on the wall. Ask leaders what their organization stands for, and most can quickly repeat the mission statement.
But defining yourself requires much more than choosing the right words.
A definition establishes boundaries. It explains not only what something is, but also what it is not. It tells people what belongs inside the organization, what behaviors will be rewarded, what decisions will be defended, and what principles will remain when maintaining them becomes difficult.
Researchers studying organizational identity have described it in terms of the characteristics that are central, distinctive, and enduring about an organization. That is important because identity is not simply the image an organization wants to project. It becomes a reference point for decisions, particularly when organizations encounter difficult circumstances.
The same principle applies to each of us.
If you do not take the time to define who you are, what you believe, and what you are willing to stand for, eventually someone else will do it for you. Their definition may be based on your silence, your inconsistency, your last decision, or simply what they need you to be at that particular moment.
You may not like the definition they choose.
Know What Your Words Mean
Words are easy when everyone agrees.
Integrity sounds wonderful until telling the truth costs you a customer. Accountability is popular until your best performer is the person who needs to be held accountable. Excellence sounds impressive until achieving it requires telling someone that their performance is not good enough. Loyalty is easy to celebrate until loyalty to an individual conflicts with loyalty to the organization.
That is when a word becomes a principle.
During my coaching career, I learned very quickly that you cannot tell athletes that everyone will be treated exactly the same because they won't be. Different people require different types of coaching. Some need encouragement. Others need to be challenged. One athlete may need more repetitions while another needs additional recovery. Treating everyone identically would have prevented us from giving each athlete what they needed to improve.
What we could promise was that everyone would be held accountable to the same purpose.
That idea was non-negotiable.
Leaders sometimes choose words because they sound good without spending enough time considering what those words require. They announce that everyone has a voice without deciding what happens when those voices disagree. They promise unlimited opportunity without defining how opportunity is earned. They say people come first without determining what happens when one person's needs begin to damage everyone else's.
Eventually, two good ideas will collide.
That is when the definition matters most.
Leadership requires thinking beyond the appeal of the word and understanding the responsibility that comes with using it. If you cannot explain what one of your principles means when it becomes inconvenient, you probably haven't defined it yet.
A Position You Cannot Defend Is Only an Opinion
We all remember running for something when we were young.
Student council elections were always entertaining because the promises were incredible. Better lunches. Longer breaks. Fewer rules. More activities. Maybe even shorter school days if someone became ambitious enough.
Everybody wanted to hear what the candidate was going to give them.
Very few people asked the most important question.
How?
That question becomes considerably more important when the person making the promises is leading a company, department, team, or community.
There is nothing wrong with having strong opinions. Leaders should have them. Experience should teach us something, and eventually those lessons should influence the way we see the world. The problem begins when conviction becomes a substitute for understanding.
If you are going to take a stand, understand the stand you are taking.
Study the issue. Understand its history. Listen to people who disagree with you. Examine the information supporting your position and, just as importantly, the information challenging it. Consider the financial consequences, the human consequences, and the unintended consequences that may not appear until much later.
Then be prepared to answer the questions that follow.
Why do you believe this?
What information supports your position?
What will this cost?
Who will be affected?
How will it actually work?
What happens if you are wrong?
Strong leadership does not require having an immediate answer to every question. It requires enough intellectual discipline to know the difference between something you have studied and something you have simply repeated.
Judgment becomes stronger when leaders combine knowledge and experience, examine risk, seek different perspectives, and challenge their own assumptions rather than simply searching for information that confirms what they already believe.
You should never be afraid to defend your position.
You should be afraid of discovering you never understood it.
Being Open-Minded Does Not Mean Being Undefined
Somewhere along the way, we began confusing an open mind with the absence of a position.
They are completely different.
An open-minded leader can tell you what they believe today and explain the experiences, information, and reasoning that brought them there. They can also sit across the table from someone who disagrees and listen without feeling threatened. If better information exposes a weakness in their thinking, they are secure enough to adjust their position.
That is growth.
Being undefined is different. Undefined leaders continually move because there was never a foundation beneath the original position. Their beliefs change depending upon the audience, the pressure, or the popularity of the moment. Instead of evaluating new information against established principles, they adjust the principles to accommodate whatever situation has arrived.
Eventually, people stop knowing what the leader stands for.
Organizations can experience the same problem. In an effort to become everything to everyone, they gradually lose the characteristics that made them distinctive in the first place. Organizational identity research has spent decades examining what is central and distinctive about an organization and how that identity provides continuity over time.
Being defined does not mean refusing to change.
It means knowing why you are changing.
I have changed countless beliefs during my career. Some training methods I once defended I would never use today. Experience taught me more. Research improved. Athletes changed. Technology gave us information we didn't previously possess. Holding onto an old idea simply because I once believed it would not have demonstrated strength. It would have demonstrated stubbornness.
But there is an enormous difference between changing because you learned something and changing because you never knew why you believed it in the first place.
One is evolution.
The other is building a foundation.
Your Decisions Will Eventually Define You
Years ago, I learned that athletes paid considerably less attention to what coaches said than coaches sometimes believed.
They watched what we did.
If I talked about accountability and allowed a great player to repeatedly break the rules, they understood my real definition of accountability. If I talked about development but only spent time coaching the most talented athletes, they understood who I actually believed deserved to be developed. If I told them character mattered but ignored poor behavior because someone could help us win, no speech afterward could repair the contradiction.
My decisions had defined me.
The same thing happens in every organization.
A company can claim that employees are its greatest asset, but people will watch what happens when business becomes difficult. A leader can encourage honest disagreement, but employees will watch what happens to the first person who challenges an important decision. An organization can talk endlessly about its values, but customers and employees will eventually judge those values by the choices leadership makes when honoring them becomes expensive.
That is why defining yourself cannot be a branding exercise.
Your definition has to survive contact with reality.
There will always be pressure to move. A valuable employee threatens to leave. A customer demands an exception. Public opinion changes. Revenue declines. A competitor does something unexpected. A new idea becomes popular, and everyone suddenly wants to be associated with it.
Those moments don't create your identity.
They reveal it.
CoachC Insight
You do not need to defend every position you have ever taken. If you are still thinking exactly the same way you did twenty years ago, you probably haven't learned enough during those twenty years.
Growth should change some of your beliefs.
But growth should not prevent you from having beliefs.
Know who you are. Know what you stand for. Understand the ideas you are willing to defend and take the time to learn enough about them that your conviction is supported by something stronger than emotion. Listen to opposing ideas without surrendering your own simply because disagreement makes the conversation difficult.
And when better information proves you wrong, have enough confidence to change.
The world will always attempt to define people and organizations that leave the definition unfinished.
If you don't define yourself, you will be defined.
Teachable Reminders
Definition requires boundaries, not simply attractive words.
A principle becomes meaningful when maintaining it costs you something.
Never take a position you are unwilling to study.
Strong convictions should be supported by information, experience, and reason.
Open-minded leaders can change their position without abandoning their identity.
Your decisions will eventually communicate your values more accurately than your mission statement.
Application Questions
· Could the people you lead clearly explain what you stand for?
· Which principle do you claim to value that has never truly been tested?
· Are your strongest positions supported by information or primarily by emotion?
· When was the last time opposing information caused you to reconsider something you believed?
· Do your decisions reinforce the identity you communicate?
· If you stopped defining yourself today, how would others define you tomorrow?
