Leadership & Workplace Culture · Identity & Reinvention
A Title Doesn't Tell You What Someone Holds Up
Status can obscure contribution. A reflection on respect, the work that goes unseen, and leadership as stewardship beyond titles and hierarchy.
A title tells you where someone sits.
It doesn't tell you what they hold up.
Over my career, I led corporate functions that included data, HR, technology and research, and I held leadership roles in research operations, analytics and office services.
Some of that work was visible from the executive floor. A lot of it wasn't.
In Reinvention Outside the Realm of Expectation, there's a chapter called Why Every Job Matters, and another called Leadership, Ego, and the Need to Matter. Both ask an uncomfortable question:
How much of the respect we give is connected to the work people do, and how much to their proximity to power?
Status can distort how we understand contribution. It's easy to notice who presents the results and miss who made them possible.
The book also draws on my encounters outside that familiar world after I left executive life. During my sabbatical, I took a physically demanding job. The environment stripped away titles, status, corporate hierarchy, and expectation. People simply showed up and worked.
Leadership as stewardship starts with noticing the people your world isn't organized around.
Whose work does your organization depend on but rarely see?
Book 2 is dedicated to Gregory Stebbins, Ed.D.
#leadership #workplaceculture #respect #employeeexperience #musingsofarecoveringexecutive
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Personal reflections by Lynn Cirillo. About this writing.