Improving the foundational skills underlying performance is the fastest way to create better results.
Enhanced skills allow team members to perform tasks faster, better, and at a higher level. No wonder skill development is the most popular catalyst for producing greater results in every organization.
But sustaining improvements in performance requires team members to internalize what they are capable of doing.
The self-identity of team members shapes motivation, consistency, and resilience. How team members see themselves helps to determine how they act and engage when tasks are hard, boring, or unrewarding.
In other words, who team members believe they are influences whether they stay focused on improvement or not.
Improved skills alone don’t guarantee long-term success because they don’t force consistency, motivate people to show up, or help team members overcome failure.
Identity plays that role.
When team members think, “I am the kind of person who does this,” quitting feels like violating the self, not just stopping an activity.
While skills shape how far a team member can go, identity influences how long they stay in the game. A leader can train someone to perform well, but if they don’t see their skill and behavior as part of who they are, the improved performance won’t last.
Good leaders don’t install identity like some software update. They imprint identity indirectly by shaping the meaning people attach to their actions and to themselves. They make performance identities feel normal, valued, and inevitable.
The best leaders continually turn behaviors into labels, adjectives, and descriptions of personal identity: “You’re the teammate who never gives up,” “You’re the team expert on AI,” “Owners like you stay to fix the problem,” “Only a courageous person would speak up in that meeting,” “People can always rely on you,” “I depend on your insight and maturity to help us make great decisions.”
Once accepted, identities help sustain performance because people naturally act in ways that preserve their identity in whatever they do.
When leaders name behaviors as identity, they introduce how people should see themselves or reinforce their existing self-perceptions.
Good leaders are generous with their descriptions, always trying to paint others with a label, title, or adjective that expands the way team members see themselves.
The best leaders even go one step further. They name who team members are becoming as well: “You’re becoming a leader who others turn to for advice,” “Your judgment has been superb lately,” “You are increasingly steady under pressure.”
Becoming labels turn effort into identity and identity into persistence.
Think about the way you describe, label, and characterize team member behaviors. What adjectives and descriptions do you purposely paint people with?
Remember, if skills are the mechanics of great performance, then personal identity is the engine that sustains it.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
