Dynamics of Identity at Work

This is the first in a series of articles to explore what you may be navigating at work, what to do about it and how to own your agency in the process. 
by Bari Katz and Tanya O. Williams

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Special Note: We believe in reflection.  Reflection is both an invaluable skill and meaningful practice.  We believe in time to let words and thoughts settle in, be processed, and continue to be worked with over time.  None of this work is surface work.  Our offerings to you will be content, questions and ideas that invite you into deeper reflection so you can make meaning of the experiences you’re currently having in your own life, specifically related to identity, power and privilege. 

We talk to people all day, every day in workshops, in coaching sessions, in mediations, and in meetings.  There is a strong pattern across positional roles, industry and organization that people are feeling unhappy at work, and it’s not just about us being in a global pandemic.  There’s a lack of value being placed on relationships, both with other people and with ourselves.  This article is the first in a series to explore what might be underneath the surface of the frustrations and disagreements that are happening in workplaces.

These three areas of exploration are just the tip of the iceberg.  We invite you to reflect on how you see yourself in what’s named here, where you feel defense and/or resistance showing up, and what you might add based on your own wisdom. 

Follow the experiences of our hypothetical client through our suggestions and their reflections on each other the points below: 

Banya is frustrated by their work and finishes the work day feeling exhausted, demoralized and uninspired.  They spend their days watching the clock, holding back on what they really want to say to their colleagues in meetings, and often feel invisible with their organization and unvalued for their contributions.  They feel unmotivated and defeated, and are resigned to just “doing their job and leaving” rather than being fully invested in the work they’re doing. 

Getting clear about your sense of purpose

• It’s possible that the work you’re doing in the world right now (and getting paid to do) aligns with your sense of purpose.  Congratulations!  That’s a profound expression of who you are in the world. 
• It may also be possible that you don’t feel your “day job” is aligned with your authentic sense of purpose.  Maybe you want to get paid for your purpose.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  One immediate action is to get clear about what the purpose is in the job you’re currently doing.  

Banya reflects and acknowledges that they took the current job that they are in out of fear.  They’re in the job now and it doesn’t actually light them up.  The job involves working with communities they were told they should be working with and doing a job that matches up with their degree.  While all of that is misaligned with Banya’s authentic sense of purpose, it is possible for Banya to find a sense of purpose in their work at this organization.  Some questions to consider: 

• How does your current role relate to the kind of impact you want to have in the world? 
• How does your current role align with your values?  
• What values can you bring to your current role that would support you feeling more connected to the work and the organization? 
  • Some examples:
    • If I value connection and believe we are all connected, how can I show up living through the value of connection with every colleague that I interact with each day? 
    • If I value trustworthiness, how can I show up in every conversation, interaction, and meeting being as trustworthy as possible?
• Your focus can be placed anywhere.  Right now, many people are placing their focus outside of themselves at work, which often elicits judgement. 

Identity matters and the ways that identity has been constructed matters, too

• Identity is always present and active.  Getting clear about the complexity of how identity is always at play can involve noticing: 
  • Your social identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.) 
  • The ways that you learned these social identities
  • The ways that others learned about their social identities
  • The ways others have learned about your social identities, if different (or the same), and 
  • The ways in which all of our identities interact with each other
• All of this can cause a massive traffic jam of identity.  It can cause gridlock in our relationships and have all of us feeling stuck, frustrated, anxious and confused, particularly if we have no consciousness of all of the identities we each hold all the time.

Banya notices race, but doesn't really understand race’s impact on the experiences that they are having at work.  Because Banya doesn’t have a deeper and broader understanding of oppression, they often think that they are the problem or that a member of their team is the problem, therefore they often stay in an individual place and understanding of identity and its impacts in systems of oppression.  Banya often is in judgement, blame and shame in interactions with their colleagues and as a result experiences very superficial relationships with their co-workers making the workplace an unhealthy place.  It is possible for Banya to deepen their understanding of their own identities and their location within systems of oppression.  Doing work on identity is a constant practice and questions that support that practice might be:

• What identities are present (or salient) for me at this moment?
• What are the identities of others that might be involved?
• What are patterns that can be noticed across systems of oppression?  What are ways that oppression keeps itself alive and functioning through behaviors, practices, and policies?
• What patterns of oppressive systems might be playing out right now?

Understand what power means to you and how that might impact the way you experience your work, colleagues, and supervisor/ees

• In systems of oppression (which is the nature of all of our lived experiences), power is always present.  We’ve learned an experience of power that is “power over”** or one of domination.  Our “power over” socialization will still show up in our actions, speech, assumptions/story creation and we have to be ready to see and work with the dynamics of power that we’ve learned - and decide how to shift them if we want to create cultures of work that are useful and enjoyable.
• “Power over” takes agency away from each of us. 
• A few examples of how “power over” can look and sound like include:
  • Banya’s colleague decides that they need to take a day off because the colleague has observed Banya emailing late at night and appearing “tired” during meetings. 
  • A member of the program team at Banay’s organization unilaterally decides what is best for the community the organization is serving without ever asking community members what they might want and need. 

As a result of these actions, Banya often feels like their voice is silenced or their perspective is not valued, though no one has said anything that is “racist” or “sexist”.  The culture of Banya’s organization is one where power is coveted, and individual members of the organization are in constant competition with others for more power and/or to utilize the power they do have in ways that support this way of being rooted in domination.  

Starting to notice how power is held by you, by others, and by the organization in which you work can support a clearer understanding of the dynamics at play.  Some questions and resources to guide you in this exploration could be: 

• What is the nature of power at this organization?  How is power held here?
• What is my own relationship to power?  
• What power do I have from my place of identity (race, gender, class, etc.)?  In what ways has oppression tried to marginalize me from my power? 
• What are the impacts of the way power is negotiated at this organization on the people who work there?  
• These resources are excellent: 
  • ** We originally were exposed to this work through Just Associates’ report, “Making Change Happen: Power, Concepts for Revisioning Power for Justice, Equality and Peace” which is linked below.  Brene Brown has also taken this work and condensed it to a very accessible resource.
  • Link to Just Associates: https://www.justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/mch3_2011_final_0.pdf