#9 Loner - Student - Leader
Fred describes his identity as a loner, a student, and leader. He speaks with confidence, and an analytic streak. Almost as an engineer, which becomes less surprising when you hear him speak about his motorbikes.
Behind that confidence in his words, you find some vulnerability and reflection. A sense of reflection about himself, and how he impacts the system around him.
Fred’s Identity Story
I love to be alone: taking long motorbike trips, solo travel, even just walking by myself. That loner tendency helps me to process the world around me, and it crosses over into my work: i am good at administering, at moderating teams, but when something is essential, i need to pause.
I think of loner not as misanthropic, negative definition, but more as a whole person fully formed but independent. I do not need an echo chamber to understand who i am. I can relate to myself and my context in real time and do not need reassurance i am doing the right thing.
It comes out feeling, and sounding in behaviours, like a loner. And that’s really the only way i can say this: i like to be alone. I don’t need to interact with people.
I work on motorbikes: that’s my thing and i like to do this alone! I don’t want people making noise - i just need to focus - something i think about often is if you are just by yourself, a loner, people wonder if you are crazy - but if you are on video by yourself, you are teaching! Which is interesting.
I talk to myself a lot as i noodle things out: sometimes in my minds eye, sometimes verbally.
Would you describe it as meditative? I think for me it’s restorative, inward focussed. Its’ very reflective. Processing time.
It helps me get right with what is in the world - and around my family. I can classify things, it helps me to create my understanding of the world around me.
What is the cost if I lack this time? If i lack it there are two costs - physical - if i don’t have this time exercising, using my body, i don’t sleep well, and the mental cost is that i equate it to the bilge pump in the boat - when you run the boat, the bilges get full of dirty water - and you have to run the pump to clean it out - it’s my mental bilge pump!
It’s something i discovered about myself that i needed this time in personal and professional settings as early as 21, 22 years old. I discovered it as part of that high school college transition - where you lose the old friends who are always there - the people who you grew up with - but you are not really sure who your friends are going forward.
You are not sure what a friend is maybe.
Part of that is outward discovery, other is inward. Who you are and what you need.
This is a habit i got into which has become a built in element of my life in all capacities. Even when i travel for business i do an hour or two of walking. NOT podcast time - this is FRED FM!
My second identity is as a student - this is interesting - i don’t think of it in a linear fashion - you have to understand i live in a country that i did not grow up in - so every moment of the day i am practicing the language, sharpening the sword - i work in an environment that is not my original professional environment - i cut my teeth in another discipline - what i do now is different. A completely different side of the universe.
I am always learning how to apply what i have known in the past to a new situation. To reach that. To learn from everyone else around me. To figure out how to assimilate that into what i do.
Most people at work would say i am not really a student because i do not do much formal learning - but the way i try to leverage the relationship with my environment is learning for me.
I am a self taught mechanic - i learn by doing.
I have the focus and complete control to bring something through to a successful conclusion. So much of what we deal with is having a small piece of the puzzle, but you do not get to bring the whole puzzle together. I find this frustrating. To just do my piece, especially if the whole thing does not work out perfectly.
When it comes right back to it, to the diagnostic behaviour, the engineer in me, the technician behaviour - as the loner working on bikes, and the leader working at work - finding what is broken - i have control over all the steps as a person when working in my garage at home. I wield considerable influence at work, but influence does not guarantee a correct result.
I have had to develop a level of comfort with ‘best effort’ e.g. it’s not right but it is functional, but is serviceable. That was learning for me.
That’s something that is not harmonious with how i relate to the world. If it’s not going to be right, then don’t bother.
Few things make me more aggravated that watching someone half ass something.
I get my demons out by working on stuff, my mental ones come out by thinking.
It makes me better able to function.
Working on the bike, the weight and feel, you can touch something, you are physically changing the world around you. There are situations where we can change things for better at work - ESG, planning for what we do - i work hard at this - but there is a level of disconnectedness there.
It’s not entirely tangible.
You are not touching the thing. When you work on something in the garage, you have to figure out what is not working, the satisfaction of diagnostics - and further satisfaction of cleaning or repairing it.
Making it the best condition you can make it. You’ve touched it and left it different.
Five months ago i bought a 2011 harley: it had not been well loved, so i took it back to the bare frame, then put it back together. I put it on the road a week ago and had this feeling of elation.
Knowing that this thing that was not loved is now in good condition.
I feel the same way when i save a project - i was known as a rescue Project Manager in the past. When a project delivers value it’s the same feeling of success.
The leadership aspect, my third identity, well whilst i can be successful leading teams, it’s not an intentional role. It’s a role that is incidental to my human relational characteristics. People see authenticity in me that marks me out as trustworthy.
They know i will support them. I will take the mistake. These are values i personally hold.
The right way to live - i am not talking about religious values - the right way to live, to give respect and to get respect.
This set of behaviours or characteristics that i have position me as a leader - very often in informal terms.
People look to me as a leader because i want to support them - not because of position alone. People seek me out to support them to get things done. Leadership is not something that i do consciously.
It’s something that is forced upon me by people around me.
It’s incongruent - to have someone powerful and effective who is also a recluse in part of their lives.
I can tell you i do not have a taste for social media - i am not thumbs upping and me too-ing. I find it to be noisy and inconsequential in many cases.
These identities do cross over into each other.
My wife knows them all i think.
I swore i was never going to get married again. We were very different people in my first marriage, but it was never going to work - i said i will not do this again. My current wife, well we waited ten years, but finally we got there!
I have seven or eight good friends. They each know about 70%. Maybe it’s 30-40% for family members. My wife is the chosen one. She knows the whole of me.
Not many people from work would know about the Harley!
Identities does change, yes. I mean i think to contextualise something - my father was a psychologist, he said as you go through life you make decisions, and the azimuth gets narrower and narrower - you are on this path. All my life i have pressed back against that azimuth. To hold the door open
In 2011 i quit the first industry that i had worked in. I cut my thumb off and put it back on! I moved to San Francisco, then back to Europe. I have often been in motion.
I’ve have tended to make a dramatic change every six to ten years, i tend to do something abrupt, to change the game. I’m like a Phoenix!
But it breaks my heart if i have to sell a bike!
Geographically, i’ve moved constantly, every couple of years. It used to be required of me, but i’ve found it suits me well.
My identity has been challenged before: i think that i can say historically i have been at times a bit more forceful in my approach to things - not tactless, and not tone deaf, but not maybe making enough space for open challenge or dissent in my approach.
This was a personal challenge for me when i was younger - not wanting to keep people out of the conversation but accidentally doing this as i was not proactive in inviting them in.
That is something i do consciously work now on on a daily basis - it’s something i have taken over into communication - i now really have embedded the behaviour in all the teams that i work in.
The communication theme is one reason why people are able to identity with me and trust me.
So i have changed.
Who owns my identity?
Who else but me! I am a person who makes my own decisions and takes responsibility for my actions.
I’ve never really felt trapped in an identity. It’s one of the reasons that i do not work in an office. I have an incredible network through the organisation that i work for, i know a lot of things and can get things done at speed. But if i am in the office, ten times a day people will ask for something - but i want to do it in the right context and reason. I leverage the organisation, for the organisation!
Am i the same person I used to be?
I would say i am 85-90% the same person i was when i was 14 years old.
Who i am, the things that bother me and give me pleasure. I think certainly there are things that have changed because of exposure to the world.
In the majority of cases they have changed me for the good.
I have become a better version of myself.
I feel that the more adversity i face it makes me a better person. I know that sounds like hubris. I am extremely resilient - not because i try to be - i just wake up at 5 every day and i’m ready to go. I need to go out and experience the world.
Seeking to experience things has only been enhanced by time.
I’m not sure how closely my identity is linked to my gender. I don’t know. I can tell you that i think my closest personal friends are male, but my strongest and most productive work relationships, and the people who i mentor, are mainly women. I have very few what i could call highly productive male to male relationships. I find that men en mass are much more political and defensive and social climbing than women are.
I don’t think that my identity is fragile: I can’t think how. The only way i could say is a generalisation - if a part of my identity was tied to a thing, a person, an activity, and that thing broke, i am sure it would have an impact on that part of my identity, but i cannot think of an instance.
Even though my wife knows everything about me, i do not anchor my identity as a husband.
I think identity is valuable, but not precious. Precious is something you guard jealously , valuable is something that you are proud of.
Although identity is yours, it has elements of all the other things in your life and network. I value that people see me as a leader. There is personal satisfaction in being able to help people because they seek me out.
Is my identity defined by a physical feature of my body?
To a degree, yes. I had a very bad car accident in 2007 - someone T boned me into an 18 wheeler, destroyed a couple of the discs in my back. It took several years before i could get the back surgery i needed.
I think my personality changed from the medication, but my identity did not. Personality and identity are different, but people confuse them. Personality is how you behave - identity is the core. They can be related.
In recent years i’ve come to see my role as a leader more in the sense of a coach. Everyone talks about leadership as a thing you do, but it’s more than that. It’s about translating ideas into activity and activity into ideas, but in a way that resonates for the audience you are trying to reach in the instant. It made me think about the leadership attribute that people see in me.
I read article recently about the innate strength that people have - sometimes they don’t recognise that these are unique strengths. Because they are naturally good at it they don’t recognise it, or that others don’t have it.
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