The identity you brought back.
And why the gap between them is costing you presence.
Something happens in September that we don't always give time to acknowledge.
You come back from summer, or from your break, or from whatever version of "off" you managed. And within a week, you feel it. You're not exactly the same person who left.
Not because you learned something new. Because you slipped back into a version of yourself the office was expecting.
The summer version of you laughed easier. Spoke with ease. Slept better. Took longer to answer.
That version got left at the door of the return-to-office meeting.
The version that clocks in isn't necessarily you.
Leaders spend seasons off recovering from a version of themselves they're not sure they want to keep being. Then they come back and put that version right back on, because that's what the calendar expects.
Then they wonder why their presence isn't landing the way it did in July.
It's because presence doesn't come from the work version. Presence comes from the you version. And every time you show up as the role instead of as yourself, you leak a little of it.
Conviction is the source. Identity is who it comes from.
Conviction doesn't need the room's approval to stay steady. That's true. But conviction has to come from somewhere. It doesn't float. It roots into who you actually are.
That's identity work. It's the reason leaders with strong ideas still waver. Not because they don't believe what they're saying. Because they're saying it as the role instead of as themselves.
The gap between who you are and who the role has trained you to be? That's the exact size of your presence gap.
Next Live is Monday at 6:00 PM CT. Come sit in and join the conversation.
RSVP for the next Live → HERE
The version of this you just read is the LinkedIn cut. The full one, with the reflection prompts and the parts I don't post publicly, goes to my list.