Who Are You Without the Title

A few yrs after I retired from skating, I was at a dinner in New York w/ a group of people I didn't know well. Successful people, interesting people, the kind of room where everyone has a story. And someone asked me the simplest question in the world.

"So what do you do?"

I froze. Not visibly, not in a way anyone would notice, but internally everything just stopped for a second. Bc the honest answer was I didn't know.

I was figuring it out. I was in the messy middle of building something new & I didn't have a clean sentence for it yet. But that's not what came out of my mouth. What came out was "I'm a former Olympic athlete" bc that was the only identity I had that felt solid enough to stand on in a room full of strangers.

I leaned on a title I no longer held bc I didn't trust the person underneath to be enough.

There's a version of retirement they prepare you for & a version they don't. The version they prepare you for is logistical — financial planning, career transition, what to do w/ your time. I had advisors & agents & well-meaning people helping me think through all of that.

The version they don't prepare you for is existential. It's the morning you wake up & realize the thing that organized your entire sense of self for two decades is gone. Not competition, not training — the identity, the structure, the daily answer to "who am I & why does it matter?"

For 20 yrs I knew exactly who I was. I was the kid from Federal Way who became the most decorated Winter Olympian in American history. I was the guy who got up at 4am, who trained when he was sick, who lived & breathed & bled short track speed skating. Every decision I made, every relationship I formed, every room I walked into — I had a clear identity that preceded me & I could lean on it.

And then it was over. And I had to figure out who I was without any of that scaffolding.

What happens when you strip the credentials away?

I participated in a leadership exercise during a program at Wharton that cracked something open for me. Simple format — you pair up w/ someone & they ask you "who are you?" over & over for two min. Then you switch partners & do it again. Then a third time.

First round is easy. You give the resume. Name, title, accomplishments, highlights reel.

But by the second round you've used up all the surface-level stuff & you start reaching deeper. By the third round people were saying things like "I'm someone who's scared he peaked at 35" & "I'm a dad who doesn't know if he's doing it right" & "I'm tired of pretending I have it figured out."

Six min. That's all it took to get past the armor. And what came out underneath wasn't weakness — it was the person. The one who'd been hiding behind credentials & titles & carefully curated professional identities.

I've sat in three-week executive offsites that never got to the depth that exercise reached in six min. Bc titles give us a place to hide & most of us will hide there as long as we're allowed to.

What I've learned watching leaders operate over the last decade: titles don't just describe what you do. They limit how deeply you connect, how honestly you communicate, & how much of yourself you bring to the work.

I've seen teams where the CEO's title creates so much distance that nobody tells them the truth. Where "VP of Whatever" becomes the ceiling of someone's identity & they stop growing bc they've fused w/ the role instead of the person beneath it. Where everyone in the room is performing their title instead of contributing their actual thinking.

Worst version of me as a leader was when I was most attached to being "the Olympic champion." Bc that identity demands you be confident all the time, have answers all the time, project invincibility all the time. And real leadership doesn't work that way. Real leadership requires you to say "I don't know" & "I was wrong" & "help me think through this" — things that feel impossible when your entire sense of self is built on a title that implies you've already figured it out.

The question "who are you without the title?" isn't about titles at all. It's about whether you've done the work of knowing yourself beyond the external labels. Whether you have a sense of identity that doesn't depend on other people's recognition of it.

I didn't for a long time. I'm still working on it (some days better than others). But the shift that mattered most was realizing the most interesting, most effective people I've met are the ones who lead w/ who they are rather than what they've done. They don't need the title to fill the room bc they bring something titles can't manufacture — the real version of themselves, including the parts that are uncertain & unfinished.

That's not a weakness in leadership. It's the thing that makes other people trust you enough to bring their real selves too. And you can't build anything meaningful — a team, a company, a relationship — w/ a room full of people hiding behind titles.

I go deeper on this in Hard Pivot — the messy, honest version of what reinvention looks like.

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--AAO