What Do You Do?

Someone told me once that the first question Americans ask each other when they meet is, “what do you do? And I’ve noticed that this is true for the most part. Whether our first encounter with someone is at a cocktail party, a networking event, or the gym, people seem to want to know what we do more than anything else. Perhaps we ask this question because we think it’s the best way to find out more about someone with whom we want to connect. But is it also based on the assumption that once we know what someone does for a living, we know a lot about them?

This is an interesting blog post for me because my coaching work helps people answer this question and the advice I give about positioning yourself and communicating your value to others is the focus of many of my workshops. This post, however, is not about how you answer the question relative to your career. This post is about the importance of identifying and connecting with who we are as individuals because, quite simply, our profession has become our identity to a large extent.

Case in point: say you have decided to leave the work force to become a stay-at-home mom. You don’t have a “job” to speak of. When asked this question, your response may be more about what you used to do rather than what you are currently doing. In this situation, we can be defensive and even apologetic because we don’t place value on ourselves outside of a job.

Now I will ask a question that I often ask my clients relative to positioning themselves in the workplace, but with a new twist. Put your resume aside for a minute. What are you all about? What are your values? What are your strengths? Who are you today? What is unique about you? What have been your accomplishments as a person not an employee?

The answers to these questions help you define yourself as an individual. These are the unique core qualities that stay with you no matter where you work or what you do.

As much as I coach my clients to stay connected to their value proposition and understand what they bring to the table, I think it is also extremely important for us to realize that this is just a part of who we are. Our jobs do not define us. Our unique value proposition is who we are as individuals and that includes what we do, but what we do does not define our identity.