ThemeReputation & Presence
CardCard 41 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Position & Title

Your role within the organization & industry

Your position and title shape how others relate to you, and it is worth understanding both what they open and what they obscure.

Titles carry weight even when you think they should not. They set initial expectations, open or close doors, and affect how people listen to you in a meeting before you have said anything substantive. Understanding the signal your title sends in your particular context is useful, because that signal is operating whether or not you are paying attention to it.

There can be a real gap between your formal position and the role you actually play. Some people have senior titles and limited influence. Others have junior titles and outsized impact. Knowing where you sit in that real landscape, not just the org chart, helps you understand both your actual authority and the politics of how credit and visibility flow.

Titles also have meaning relative to a context. Being a director at a small startup and a director at a large institution are quite different things. Moving between organizations, sectors, or countries can change how your position reads in ways that are not always obvious until you are in the new situation.

How to work on it

Practical ways to reflect on and develop this dimension of your working life. How it tends to look at different stages of a career, and where to put your attention.

Early career

Focus more on what you are learning and the actual responsibilities you are being given than on the title. Early titles are often more about internal hierarchy than external signal.

Mid career

At this stage, title and position can start to matter more for access and credibility, especially in more hierarchical sectors. Think about whether your title accurately reflects your level.

Negotiating your role

If your title does not match your responsibilities or your market value, it is a legitimate thing to address. Research what is typical for your scope in comparable organizations.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Does your current title accurately reflect what you actually do and the level at which you operate?
How does your position affect how people treat you, and is that alignment with how you want to be perceived?
Are you in a situation where your informal influence is quite different from your formal position, and how do you navigate that?
Have you ever moved into a context where your previous title carried a different meaning, and what did that feel like?
Is title or position something you actively think about in your career planning, and should it be?

Things to notice

Over-indexing on title as a measure of career progress can lead to optimizing for the wrong things, especially in organizations where titles are distributed loosely or inflated.
A mismatch between title and actual authority or responsibility can create confusion and undermine your ability to do the job: it is worth naming and addressing rather than absorbing.
In some sectors and cultures, title matters enormously to how you are treated by clients or partners. Understanding these norms in your context is part of knowing how to operate effectively.