Who are you when nobody’s watching?

The gap between your LinkedIn bio and your Sunday evening is worth studying.

One tells the story of impact, influence and momentum in your life. The other tells you something quieter and more subtle.

It says something about who you actually are when the performance stops.

Many senior leaders I meet are extraordinary at the public version of themselves. They’re deliver the confident keynote. They take a stand in the SLT meeting. They’re trusted as the leader who always seems to have the answer.

But the private version often tells a different story. Being distracted at dinner. Having a short fuse at home. Or lying awake at 3am rehearsing conversations that haven't happened yet.

Neither version is fake. But I’d say that only one of them is fully honest.

The home straight of a career asks something that the earlier chapters rarely do.

It’s a time of truthful reckoning that asks you to close the gap. Not so much letting the private version catch up with the public one… but something more like this:

Dropping the performance and connecting with who you are really being.

You do that, not because the world or life demands it, but because that disconnect between public and private self becomes untenable and intolerable.

When you connect with who you really want to be at this stage of your life, the two have to converge. Otherwise the energy to sustain separate identities leads to burnout or depression.

To forge genuinely meaningful closing chapters in your career, you have to dig deep into self-honesty. What do you really want? How do you want live life right now? What do you want to leave behind?

So a closing question for you, today that can open up the first step into this reflection. Who are you when nobody's watching?

Photo by SHIKEE - on Unsplash