Be careful how you allow yourself to be labelled

I was a bank official with about two years’ experience when my manager called me into his office and asked me if I would be interested in attending an interview in our lending department head office, which was in Galway city.?I knew this was a unique opportunity because normally this department recruited straight from university. I was already in the bank and with a lesser qualification.

I had been looking for something more exciting than my existing position as a cashier and I had attended a couple of interviews outside the bank for roles I felt offered more opportunity. One was for the role of fund manager – after training in Dublin the successful candidate would oversee the opening of a new office, I recall.?Another was a sales role with a large financial services group based in Dublin.?It was afterwards I realised my manager had become aware of these interviews and decided I was worth keeping.

To make a long story short, I was offered all three jobs and therefore had my pick of career moves. I decided to accept the position within the bank and went to Galway to assume the role in December 2000.

It was a dream move.?I was in the engine room of the bank, where all new lending was approved and the loan book managed. Within a few months I was sent to Dublin on a six-month management leadership course normally reserved for graduates as part of their enrolment package.?It was here it happened.?I don’t remember the day or hour.

We had been listening to an external consultant talking about personalities and how our personality shapes how we view the world. He took us through a personality test and then we all took the test.?As I recall, he ran out of time in the session and to give us something additional to take away from the experience, he offered to tell us the career our personality result suggested.?Fourteen participants lined up in the room and one by one he asked us for our result and then told us our ideal career.

All I could hear as he came down the line was banker, banker, banker. When he came to me, he said, ‘Charity worker.’?Of the fourteen in the room there were thirteen bankers as he called them and one charity worker.?In that moment, my world changed, but I didn’t know it.

I had been fast tracked in my banking career. I had received an opportunity that few others ever received in my position and now I was in a management leadership programme reserved for university graduates.?But I had just learned that I did not have the natural profile of a banker.

I allowed that label to define me for years to come.?When things got hard in my career, I excused myself because I was not a natural banker.?When I didn’t get a promotion, I reconciled myself to it with this same thinking.?When I was presenting a case and somebody else had a view that opposed mine, I often deferred to the other person’s view, thinking to myself, “Well, they are a natural banker and I’m not.”

Why do I tell this story?

Simply because I allowed this thinking to rule my career and define me when the truth is, I possessed particular strengths that propelled me into the positions I found myself in. I chose to ignore this for many years.?That, I know now, is a travesty!

Towards the end of my career, a colleague whom I respected told me in a moment of truth how she admired the way I interacted and dealt with people. I realised there are two views, the view I see through my eyes, and the view others see.?While she was watching the consummate professional at work, I was seeing the petrified non-banker trying to fit in.?To take it a step further, she saw in me what was in her and I admired in her what was already within me. ?To me, up to that point she was a natural banker, and I was not!

Personality tests and profiles are helpful tools to understand yourself better, but that’s all they are.?They do not define who you are unless you allow them.?That guy back during my management development course, perhaps to show off his knowledge, actually hindered a young man in his career ambitions. Somebody else might have paid no heed.?But I was eager to fit in and be somebody and I latched on to everything I could.

I want to say to that twenty-year old me: be your own person!?Do not let anything or anybody define who you are!