Time to read: 5 minutes
In this newsletter, you will find two topics:
- The Badge Was On Loan
- Paste This Prompt, Be Honest
What AI is taking from you first...
Hi {{first_name | default: 'there'}},
A few months ago, in our first session, Daria (name changed) said this:
"I don't know who I am without this company."
You have read about her several stories on my LinkedIn profile.
Twenty years at the same firm. Same badge across three different countries. Restructuring was coming, and her world was cracking.
She is not the only one saying it. She is one of the few saying it out loud.
I hear a version of this sentence almost every week. From senior leaders. From experts at the top of their field. From people who, on paper, are doing very well.
They do not say it in meetings. They say it after the meeting, when the door closes.
1. The Badge Was On Loan
A long time ago, I was the one standing outside that office.
It was my first job in Switzerland. I had done everything by the book. Top of my class in Hungary, the right schools, the right first move abroad. Then a reorganisation happened, and I was on the list. I was fired.
What I lost that day was not just a salary. It was the story I had been telling myself about who I was.
I had confused the role for myself.
The role was on loan. I just had not noticed.
This is the part nobody warns you about. Especially not now, when AI is quietly reshaping which tasks justify a senior salary and which ones do not. We talk a lot about AI taking jobs. We talk much less about what happens to your sense of self when the title that defined you for fifteen or twenty years becomes optional.
AI is not coming for your job first. It is testing how much of "you" was actually the role.
That is a different conversation. And it is the one most people are quietly having with themselves at 11pm, and not with anyone else.
2. Paste This Prompt, Be Honest
If any of that landed somewhere familiar, here is a small exercise. It takes about ten minutes. It is uncomfortable in the right way.
Open your AI tool. The one that already knows you, the one you have been using for real work, not the one you opened once and forgot about. Paste the prompt below. Be honest in your answers. The quality of the mirror depends on the quality of what you put in.
It is not a strategy session. It is a mirror.
---------- START OF PROMPT ----------
Based on everything you know about me from our prior conversations, run this exercise with me.
Style rules for your answer:
-
Be concise.
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Do not hallucinate. If you do not have enough context to answer a step, say so plainly instead of inventing.
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Do not use AI-sounding wording or generic coaching language.
-
Write in simple, friendly, professional language, the way a trusted, secure-base coach would speak to me: warm and direct at the same time. Care enough to be honest. Dare enough to name what is hard.
Step 1. List 5 to 7 things I currently use to describe myself professionally. Include the obvious ones: role, employer, industry, tenure, team size, credentials, scope, responsibilities. Be specific to me.
Step 2. Strip every one of those away. Describe who I am professionally in a way that would still be true if I left my current role tomorrow with no title, no employer and no badge. Three to five sentences. Concrete. Specific to me. Not "you are resilient and curious."
Step 3. Compare Step 1 and Step 2. Which parts of my current professional identity are actually portable, and which parts are borrowed from where I currently sit and would disappear with the role?
Step 4. Name one thing I keep claiming as "who I am" that is really just where I currently sit. Be direct.
Step 5. Name one thing I underplay or take for granted that is actually load-bearing in what makes me valuable. Something a new chapter could be built around.
Step 6. If my current role ended in 90 days, what is the first thing I would lose access to that I am quietly relying on more than I admit, and what is one small thing I could start practicing now so I am not dependent on it?
---------- END OF PROMPT ----------
What people tend to find
People usually come out of this exercise with one of three things. After the initital shock I meant.
1. A version of themselves that has nothing to do with the title. The instincts they bring to a hard conversation. The way colleagues end up in their office when something is going wrong. The pattern they keep solving without anyone asking. These do not disappear when the badge does.
2. A version that almost vanishes once the title is removed. No clear answer to what they do well outside this company. That is uncomfortable to read. It is also useful, and fixable, but only once it is named on paper.
3. A sentence they were not expecting to write. Something like "I have been performing this role for the last two years, not living it," or "I do not actually want my boss's job. I want a completely different one." The kind of sentence that sits with you for a few days, even after you close the laptop.
None of the three require you to change jobs tomorrow. They just give you back a clearer picture of what is actually yours, and what was the company's all along.
If something opened up
I keep a small number of 1:1 coaching slots for senior leaders going through this exact kind of moment. The "I have done everything right and I am not sure what is left of me" moment.
It is not a webinar. Not a course. One real conversation first, then we decide together if it makes sense to keep going
Sign up for a one-time complimentary coaching session
And if you are seeing this in your team, not just feeling it yourself, this is also one of the talks I bring into companies and events. It tends to open up the conversation people have been holding back.
Learn about events I speak at and inquire availability
Did you miss our last newsletters?
Inboxes can get a little crazy, right? Just in case you missed them, here are the links to our previous newsletters:
- Newsletter #32: I’m sharing what leaders really fear about AI, why many feel powerless in shaping it, and how one simple prompt can sharpen your judgment and self-awareness. → LINK HERE
- Newsletter #31: I’m sharing how to tell if you’re on the right flight in the AI era, why most leaders sit in a hidden “judgment gap,” and the one prompt that forces real clarity. → LINK HERE
- Newsletter #30: I’m sharing how bad coaching isn’t about you—it’s about connection, why context beats technique, and what real leadership looks like in the AI age. → LINK HERE
Thanks for reading. If something in this one landed, hit reply and tell me. I read every response, and these are the conversations I find most worth having.
Wishing you a calm weekend.
P.S. The exercise also works on a piece of paper, without AI. The AI version is faster and slightly more honest, because it does not love you. That is the point.
Until next time,
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