How Do You Introduce Yourself?

When you meet a new person, beyond the initial “hi”, “hello”, pretty soon most of us will get to the question, “what do you do ?” It's incredible, how important this question has become to most of us; so much so that it's a ‘default question’ to ask. One could easily speak for hours, about what’s around in that environment, about what’s been happening in the news, what collective society is impacted by, the Webb telescope’s phenomenal new discoveries, favourite poems, what they did that day, what’s been on their minds, interesting TV shows or a thousand other things, and yet; most often very soon, it comes down to “so, what do you do?”

Has ‘what one does’ become so fundamental a part of a person’s identity that one must ask that question (so soon) ? Worse still, have the associations with, biases towards, and judgments of what one does (both positive and negative) become so powerful a ‘shortcut of mental profiling’ that one is being summarily ‘judged’ and ‘categorised’ by just this one aspect of one’s life ?

And If this is true, then is the ‘image’ of the person being built on what one actually does or is it being built off ‘what it is called’ (i.e. the ‘title’ that has been conferred upon them in the workplace structure) ?

Is the the traditional banker a disciplined, by the book, rational person ?

Is the investment banker a suave, slick, master sales person ?

Is the interior designer a free spirt with a sense of structure and a knowledge of style?

Is the fashion designer an individualist with a strong sense of self confidence?

Is the poet a soul too empathetic in a world that is not so ?

And then if you add in the title to these, how do those perceptions change ? Is the ‘director’ traditional banker someone with a greater degree of the same attributes as the non-director ? Is the ‘junior associate’ designer merely someone couldn’t become ‘senior grand majestic director ninja’ of fashion design? or do those hierarchical qualifiers catapult the associations with that person into another set of parameters altogether?

Ofcourse, there will be some common themes of associations with professions and titles (as advertising, television and cinema portray) that we all feel and some subjective ones based on each perceiver; but that is not the point.

The point I’m wondering about is just how (dis-proportionately) important this one aspect of a person’s life seems to have become, in how we see each other. In how a human being, thinks of and judges, another fellow human being, and more importantly, judges oneself.

An interesting article on BBC talks about how for most of history, one’s job or occupation was not really something that one ‘chose’. It was almost assigned, or pre-decided, based on region, family heritage, contextual social structures (and their limitations), various other socio-cultural factors, and indeed, the existence of fewer types of occupations in general. Only more recently, and that too, more so among the well-educated, is what one does (and it’s ‘title’) seen as a choice or as as representative of one’s ability, aptitude, and ‘worth’.?

Another super-charger that may have made deeper, the associations of identity & worth with what one does & what it's called is our ever present social media. There is a LinkedIn, an alma mater site, a Facebook (and countless other professional networking sites, events, fora) where the occupation and title is a person’s ‘marker’ or ‘headline’. I suspect, this was not so ever-present an aspect, pre-social media, where such an ‘identity’ tag was not virtually ‘always on’ nor ‘always accessible’ (how many times have you looked up a new person you met, on linkedIn, to see what they do? And to see whether they seem proletariat or bourgeoise based on what they are called ?)

But ultimately; what happens if one is no longer doing that thing (or is no longer in possession of that conferred tittle) that created that identity (whether by choice or otherwise)? Is it even fair to oneself to reduce one’s identity to any one aspect of life??

It is clear that one cannot (or perhaps, should not) allow any one aspect of life to have such a dis-proportionate impact on how one sees others, sees oneself (or how one lets others see oneself). It is also equally clear, that this is much easier said than done; not only because of one’s own conditioning related to associations of what dictates ‘self worth’ but also because larger society isn’t just going to stop seeing someone in this manner, over night (side thought: it’s paradoxical that ‘self’ worth should stem from someone else’s lens)?

Perhaps a starting point to that, is simply, not asking so soon, ‘what do you do?’ when meeting someone and not resorting to one’s own occupation or title when introducing oneself.

So, how would you introduce yourself ?

Some interesting articles that I came across:

1. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210409-why-we-define-ourselves-by-our-jobs
2. https://hbr.org/2019/12/what-happens-when-your-career-becomes-your-whole-identity

#identity #introduction #culture #judgement #selfdevelopment #selfawareness

The views and ideas expressed here are solely my own, not associated with or on behalf of any other organisations, people or institutions.