The Identity Trap: Who Are You When You're Not "The Googler" Anymore?

Three months after my Google career came to an end, someone asked me at a dinner event: "So, what do you do?"

I hesitated before I started answering.

It wasn't that I didn't have enough going on for me to be able to give a coherent answer. I was building my executive coaching business and working with a few exciting businesses as an advisor / consultant. 

I hesitated because none of them felt fully-baked yet. It all seemed too hand-wavy. 

For 11 years, the answer had been easy: "I work at Google." Those four words did all the heavy lifting. No need to say more. 

Instant credibility. 

Assumed competence. 

A shared reference point that made strangers lean in.

Without it, I felt like I was speaking a language no one quite understood (or wanted to listen to) 

This was - and still is (albeit to a much smaller extent) - probably the hardest thing about having left a company which had become so much of my identity. 

The intellectual transition is straightforward. 

Pack your laptop. 

Hand in your badge. 

Update LinkedIn. 

Done.

The identity crisis is, however, the real work. 

And it doesn't announce itself with clarity. 

It shows up in small, uncomfortable moments. 

When you hesitate before answering "what do you do?" 

When you realize you've been trying to check your old work email out of habit. 

When you find yourself starting sentences with "When I was at..."

The Borrowed Identity Problem

Most of us don't realize how much of our professional identity is on loan.

When you work at Google, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Amazon — you inherit a story. One that's been built over decades, refined through billions of dollars in marketing, and reinforced by thousands of people who came before you.

You don't have to prove yourself in the same way. The company's reputation does that for you.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing and certainly not a criticism as such. It is, however, an acknowledgment of how identity actually works in corporate environments. Your title becomes shorthand for capability. Your company becomes shorthand for credibility.

Dr. Meg Jay calls this "identity capital" — the borrowed credibility that comes from institutional affiliation. It's valuable. It opens doors. But it's also dangerous, because it's not yours. It's on loan. And loans get called in.

I hear versions of this every week in my coaching work.

“I know I’m good, but I don’t know if I’m good without the logo.” 

“I’m scared people will realize I’m not actually that impressive.” 

“I don’t know how to introduce myself anymore.” 

“I’ve always been ‘the Google person’ / ‘the McKinsey person’ / ‘the Amazon leader.’ Who am

I without that?”

These are senior professionals - Directors, VPs, partners, founders-in-waiting. People with real track records, real responsibility, real scars.

And yet, when the institutional wrapper is removed or about to be removed, something destabilizing happens.

The Moment It Cracks

The borrowed identity usually holds until one of three moments:

• You leave by choice and suddenly have to explain yourself without a brand doing the talking.

• You are exited, restructured, or sidelined and realize how fast the narrative moves on without you.

• You start building something of your own and discover that credibility resets to zero every morning.

This is where people panic.

Why This Feels So Unsettling

Inside strong institutions, identity is largely conferred. Outside, it has to be claimed.

That shift is deeply uncomfortable for high performers.

Because claiming identity requires judgment without applause. It requires choosing what you stand for without a company values slide backing you up. It requires deciding which parts of your story matter when no one else curates it for you.

Many clients tell me: “I thought leaving would feel freeing. It mostly feels exposing.”

That’s accurate.

Freedom removes scaffolding. Exposure forces clarity.

The Uncomfortable Gift of Building Something

When you build your own company, there's no buffer between you and reality.

You're exposed to forces you cannot manage through intelligence or effort alone.

• Market timing. 

• Client readiness. 

• Cash flow volatility. 

• Your own energy and capacity. 

• External events that make your plans irrelevant overnight.

• You can do everything "right" and still watch something not work.

That's the uncomfortable gift of entrepreneurship. It strips away the story that outcomes are primarily driven by control.

Inside large organizations, control feels tangible. You have a title. A remit. A budget. A calendar that fills months in advance. You can escalate. Delegate. Influence. Say no with justification. You learn how to work the system. Over time, competence creates predictability, and predictability feels like control.

But most of that control is conditional. It exists as long as the strategy holds. As long as leadership remains stable. As long as priorities don't shift. As long as you remain useful in the way the system currently defines usefulness.

When those conditions change, control evaporates quickly.

Most senior leaders know this intellectually. Few truly internalize it until they step outside the system altogether.

Control, Influence, Accept: The Framework That Changed How I Lead

This is where the CIA framework really helped me — and it's what I now use with every leader I coach who's navigating transitions, scaling teams, or leading through complexity they didn't create.

CIA stands for Control, Influence, Accept. 

Here's how to use it. 

Start by Sorting What You Actually Control

Control is what you actually own. Your decisions. Your boundaries. Your focus. Your energy and pacing. How you respond to situations. What you say yes and no to. Your integrity.

Stop trying to control things that are fundamentally outside your domain. Client behavior. Market timing. How others perceive you. Employee motivation. Organizational change.

You can influence these things. You cannot control them. And when you confuse the two, you exhaust yourself trying to dominate uncertainty instead of working with it.

Do this: Take the thing that's stressing you out most right now. Write it down. 

Then ask: Can I directly decide the outcome of this? 

If the answer is no, it doesn't belong in your control column. Move it.

Understand Where Your Real Leverage Lives

Influence is where leadership actually lives. You can influence team culture through how you show up daily. Stakeholder perception through clear, consistent communication. Decision-making by providing well-reasoned recommendations. Market positioning by refining your narrative. Organizational momentum by building coalitions and aligning incentives.

But influence requires patience. It requires letting go of the need for immediate results. It requires accepting that people will make decisions you don't agree with, even when you've made a compelling case.

This is where many senior leaders struggle. They're used to being rewarded for decisiveness. For taking action. For "making things happen." Influence doesn't work that way. Influence is subtler. Slower. Less directly attributable to your effort.

If you need to see immediate evidence that your input mattered, influence will feel frustrating. If you can sit with uncertainty and trust that well-placed effort compounds over time, influence becomes your greatest asset.

Do this: Identify one thing you're trying to force right now. A decision you're pushing for. A team dynamic you're trying to fix. An outcome you're working too hard to manufacture. 

Ask yourself: Am I trying to control this, or can I influence it and then let go? 

Then shift your energy accordingly. Make your case. Plant the seed. Step back.

Learn to Accept What You Cannot Change

Accept is not resignation. It's clarity. You accept market forces beyond your control. Other people's choices. Organizational constraints you didn't create. External events that disrupt your plans. Your own limits - energy, capacity, expertise.

Most of the suffering I see in leadership comes from refusing to accept what's true. Refusing to accept that a strategy isn't working. That a team member isn't going to change. That a market isn't ready for what you're offering. That you don't have the resources you wish you had.

Acceptance frees up energy for the things you can actually influence.

Do this: Write down one thing you've been resisting. Something you keep thinking "shouldn't" be true. A constraint that feels unfair. A reality that frustrates you. 

Now ask: What becomes possible if I stop fighting this and accept it as the current state? 

You'll be surprised how much energy gets unlocked when you stop pushing against immovable walls.

Malcolm Gladwell explores a version of this in Talking to Strangers. The book is ostensibly about how we misjudge people we don't know — why we default to truth when we should be skeptical, why transparency is rarer than we think. But the deeper insight is about epistemic humility. Knowing what you don't know. Accepting that certainty is rare and control is an illusion we project onto ambiguous situations. (I could nerd out on this notion and how Gladwell talks about it for a long time but I'll leave it here. Do give me a DM if you read the book and want to have a deep dive :) 

Once you internalize that, leadership becomes less about domination and more about discernment.

Why This Changes How You Lead Anywhere

Once you see how little control you truly have, you lead differently everywhere.

You stop over-identifying with roles. 

You stop mistaking busyness for impact. 

You stop confusing loyalty with self-erasure.

You become calmer. Not because things are easier, but because you no longer expect certainty where none exists.

Ironically, this makes you a better leader inside organizations too. Less reactive. More grounded. More willing to name trade-offs instead of pretending they don't exist.

Greg McKeown writes about this in Essentialism — The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Not because you're lazy or uncommitted, but because clarity about what actually matters allows you to direct energy where it compounds rather than disperses. That clarity comes from accepting what you can't control and focusing ruthlessly on what you can.

When I work with senior executives navigating complexity — whether inside corporates, scaling startups, or stepping into fractional roles — the work often starts here. Sorting what belongs in each category. 

Control. Influence. Accept.

It sounds simple. It's not easy.

Because accepting what you can't control requires letting go of the story that you should be able to. And for high performers who've been rewarded their entire careers for effort, responsiveness, and reliability, that story runs deep.

Diversify Your Identity Before You're Forced To

Tim Ferriss talks about identity diversification the way financial advisors talk about portfolio diversification. Don't put all your self-worth in one basket.

This doesn't mean you should half-ass multiple things. It means you should consciously invest in multiple sources of meaning, competence, and connection. So that when one falters — and it will — you don't collapse entirely.

Do this: List the roles and activities that currently define you. How you spend your time. What you talk about. What you think about when you're not working. If 80% or more comes from one source (work, usually), you're over-concentrated.

Then ask: where else could I invest? Not so much as a performance or an obligation but as a genuine interest or pursuit. 

Deep friendships. Physical practice (yoga, running, swimming — something embodied). Creative work that has nothing to do with your job. Volunteer work that connects you to something bigger. A skill you're learning purely because it interests you.

Redefining Yourself Without the Company

So, who are you when you're not "the (insert company name) person" anymore?

You're whoever you decide to be. But that decision requires doing the work most people avoid.

Start here: Stop using your title or company as the first answer when someone asks what you do. Practice introducing yourself by what you're building, what problems you solve, or what you're known for that has nothing to do with a logo.

It feels uncomfortable at first. That discomfort is the point.

That separation is uncomfortable. It means you stop using roles and titles as proof that you matter. You have to find that proof somewhere else. Preferably, somewhere internal.

Do this: Write down three things you want to be known for that have nothing to do with where you work. Not your title. Not your company. What you actually stand for. What you're building. What impact you're making. Read it out loud. Does it feel true? If not, keep refining until it does.

Closing Thoughts

One of my coachees went through this transition recently. She was a Director at a Fortune 500 company. 

When she started building her own business, she was unsettled by the loss of automatic recognition. She put it simply: “I’ve gone from being immediately legible to suddenly opaque.”

We didn’t rush to fix that. We focused on separating who she was from the role she’d held.

The judgment she brings. The problems she solves. The way she operates when there’s no institutional cover.

As that clarity emerged, she stopped trying to recreate corporate certainty. Her decisions got cleaner. Her confidence became quieter. And her business began to gain traction.

All because she took the time to separate what she can control, what she can influence, and what she is choosing to accept. 

That’s the real work that gives clarity underneath career transitions and entrepreneurship. Not replacing one title with another, but reclaiming authorship over your identity.

So if you find yourself hesitating when someone asks, “What do you do?” That pause isn’t a problem.

It’s the sound of borrowed identity giving way to what is yours. 

---

Hi, I'm Merve. I work with senior leaders, founders, and leadership teams who want clarity, alignment, and momentum — especially in complex, hybrid, or fast-growing environments.

Here are a few ways you can work with me:

📅 Book a 1:1 Coaching Session: High-trust, high-impact coaching for senior leaders and founders navigating complexity, growth, and change.

🏢 Bring Me Into Your Organization: Leadership offsites, workshops, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® sessions focused on strategy, alignment, decision-making, and team effectiveness.

🎓 Join the Momentum Leadership Digital Course: A structured leadership program combining practical frameworks, guided reflection, and real-world application — designed for leaders and business owners who want momentum without overwhelm.

📬 Subscribe to My Free Newsletter: Thoughtful, practical reflections on leadership, business, and decision-making — delivered monthly.

📊 Access Free Leadership Worksheets: Practical tools for reflection, clarity, and better conversations — available on my website.

You can also follow me on LinkedIn for regular insights, real client stories, and leadership perspectives drawn from my work across corporates, startups, and global teams.