You are not your job title....

By Joanne Stein

About 20 years ago, I learned a valuable lesson – "I am not my job title." I had been an award-winning teacher at a prestigious California school, the assistant to the controller of a multi-million dollar real estate company and the district trainer for a Houston-based telecommunications company. In the later position, I took a plane to my job rather than a car and I was in a different city almost every week, only home on weekends to do laundry and prepare for the next business trip. I thought I was pretty cool. Then there were financial problems in the telecommunications company I was working for and I was laid off – without any warning nor a "golden parachute". All of a sudden, I no longer had a title or a quick answer when people asked me what I did for a living. It was a very stressful time for me, but in retrospect, I see what a gift that situation was!

For a variety of reasons, I started to work as a "temp." One week I might be answering phones, another week I might be giving employment tests and the following week I might be planning an employee recognition event. I was treated differently based upon what job I was doing. It was eye-opening to see how I was treated as a receptionist rather than as a teacher, an assitant to the controller or a district trainer. Yet they were all me. I was the same person…with the same skills, intelligence and personality. The way I was treated was determined by the slot I was occupying on an org chart.


From my experience working as a temp, I learned the importance of treating everybody with respect. I also learned that in some ways it's harder the lower down you are in the pecking order. You have less freedom to choose when and what you do; it's assumed that you're not as smart or as ambitious as the person a little farther up the corporate ladder; you earn less money and have to be more creative with your household budgeting and you're usually on the front line when dealing with customers.

Having worked as a temp, I now look at the person behind the job title and relate to him/her as an individual. I don't judge people based upon an artificial label. Whether you’re the president of a company or part of the cleaning crew, we're all the same. We're all human with the same wants and desires.

We all want to be loved and appreciated. How we earn our living is just one way we get those things. Whether we're in the office, bowling with friends or doing an errand, it's what we do in our interactions with others that determines our true value. As a quote I read someplace states it, "The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra." That extra can take the form of smiling at a stranger, holding the elevator door open for somebody whose hands are full, volunteering at a nursing home, babysitting for the neighbors, etc., etc.

It's now 20 years later and once again I find myself without a predefined role in an organization. The company that I was working for down-sized and I was one of the people impacted by the restructuring. I'm glad I had those experiences years ago because I am handling my lack of full-time employment so much differently. I now don't determine my self-worth by the number of people who report to me, the size of the office I have nor where my name appears on an organization chart. I know I make a difference in people's lives and I have less stress and more joy in my life than I did when I had a job description and the salary attached to that title. Sure I would love the security of a steady income but I'm grateful that I have the time off to get reacquainted with myself, my passions, skills and abilities. I enjoy having the time to relax, rejuvenate, re-awaken talents and re-evaluate what's really important in my life.

The more "inner work" I do, the clearer my focus is on what's important to me and those things are really quite simple. I want to love myself, to love others and to allow others to love me. None of those things are determined by my job title but they are determined by my attititude and my actions. In some ways, I feel richer now than I did when I was the Director of Training for a Fortune 250 service company, had benefits, a good salary and recieved bonuses. I now look forward to new and enjoyable opportunities rather than dreading that yet another item would be added to my "to do" list or another problem would have to be quickly solved.

My corporate experiences helped to define some of my personality charateristics and my coaching, consulting and work-free days let a different set of qualites emerge. I like both sets and can truly say that I'm happier now than when "money was no object." I wouldn't change any of my life because it made me who I am today and that's a very compassionate, helpful, creative, caring, nurturing, bright, humourous, spiritual, intuitive, non-judgmental and happier person. If I didn't learn that I wasn't my job title, I would be measuring my worth using somebody else's yardstick and I would feel like I never "measured up."




It's what you choose to do that determines the legacy that you'll leave. It's your actions rather than your job title that defines your true essence. What do you want to be remembered for? What are you going to do about it?

Copyright 2006, Joanne Stein. All rights reserved. jps_and_associates@yahoo.com

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