YBB Newsletter

Back when I was an Associate Director at Flamingo I remember working really hard on a project. It was one of my first opportunities to lead work at my new agency. I was on top of everything, I re-wrote the deck many times so it sounded ‘just right’ and I practised presenting the slides. I was confident I had done all I could to land it perfectly, only to receive some negative feedback. I remember sitting at my desk afterwards, staring blankly at my screen, feeling like a failure. The project didn’t just miss the mark—it felt like ‘I’ had. If after giving it my absolute all, it wasn’t good enough, then I wasn’t good enough.

This hit me so hard that when I was offered a promotion to Director I turned it down.

It’s easy to blur the lines between who we are and what we do. When our work is praised, we soar; when it’s criticised, we plummet.

So in this month’s edition, I’m talking about why tying our self-worth to our work is a trap and how to beat it.

Tying your self-worth to the work is a losing game

I work with a lot of insight professionals and the two things they don’t lack are intellect and a strong work ethic, but what they often need to re-think is their relationship with work.

Linking our value and our worth to productivity or perfection is not healthy. If we get fewer tasks done, find something hard, or someone criticises our work, we tend to judge that either we didn’t work hard enough or are fundamentally not good enough.

And how do we typically respond? We strive to produce more and be even more perfect.

You can still care, without being attached

‘But I don’t want to stop caring’, I used to say to myself.

‘Better to care and feel shitty if it goes awry, than not care - because then it will definitely go badly and that would feel really unfulfilling, demotivating and un-me.’

This narrative kept me stuck for a long time, until I realised that caring for something and being attached to something, were very different.

Being attached to the work means when we make a mistake or receive a critique we question our worth and value.

Caring deeply about the work means you are still invested in making the work great, but you can hold the work at arms length, you can objectively understand where the work could have been better and you can find ways to have a better crack next time.

3 things to TRY to reset your relationship with your work

1. IDENTIFY YOUR VALUES: Write down qualities you value about yourself - e.g. curiosity, kindness, positivity - that are not tied to work. Keep this list nearby to remind yourself that your value runs deeper than any project or title.

2. DOING THE THING IS ENOUGH: When things are unfamiliar or hard or plagued by factors outside of your control, just surviving the thing deserves recognition. Create an “I-can-do-hard-things-jar” to keep reminding yourself that doing the thing is always more important than how the thing goes.

3. PRACTICE OBJECTIVE REFLECTION: Ask “what can I learn from this? vs. what does this say about me?”

Want to work with me?

This stuff is hard, really hard to work through alone. If you would like more insight and support on separating your worth from the work and other topics that hit successful insight professionals who are gunning for more, then I’d love to hear from you: zoe@youburnbright.

I offer consultancy, workshops, 121 and group programmes for agencies, and individuals working client-side or agency-side.

Topics #Management #Leadership #Confidence #PeopleDevelopment #EffectiveCommunication #RelationshipBuilding #Resilience

Prices for group programmes start at £595pp.

Thank you for reading

If you’ve enjoyed it, let me know. And please share it with a friend or colleague who might need the reminder that they are more than the work the produce.