Your Career Has Outgrown Your Identity (And You Haven't Noticed Yet)

Sometimes your career isn't stuck because you need a new skill. It's stuck because you're still operating from an old identity. You're now a VP — but you still derive your value from being the person with the most detailed answer in the room. You're managing twenty people — but you're still doing things personally you should be developing others to do. You've become successful by any external measure — but you're still making decisions from the psychology of someone who has to prove they belong. Your circumstances have evolved. Your self-concept hasn't caught up. And the gap between who you've actually become and the story you're still telling yourself about who you are creates a specific, invisible kind of friction that no new skill can fix. In this episode of Leader on the Rise, executive coach and leadership strategist Mim Abbey explores identity lag — what it is, why it happens to high performers specifically, and what research says about how professional identity actually changes (hint: it's almost never a single decisive moment of reinvention). Mim draws on Herminia Ibarra's research on provisional selves — her landmark finding that professionals navigating significant transitions don't think their way into a new identity and then start behaving differently. They behave their way in. And she shares the story of Indra Nooyi, who describes in her own words the deliberate work of expanding her identity — not abandoning what made her successful, but building past the version of herself that got her to the CEO role toward the one capable of the role itself. In this episode, you'll learn: — The Identity Lag™ — what it looks like in practice, how it creates career friction without looking like a performance problem, and three specific patterns to watch for — Three types of professional identity most commonly carried too long: the one that made you safe, the one that made you successful, and the one other people gave you — Why the identities built on real success are the hardest to release — and why that's exactly what makes them worth examining — Herminia Ibarra's provisional self research and why "authenticity" is often used as a reason not to grow — The Keep / Release / Become framework and how to apply it to where you are right now If you've ever felt like you're operating at a level below what you're actually capable of — and couldn't quite figure out why — this episode is going to name it. 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. 📩 Subscribe to The Leadership List at mimabbey.com