As you advance in your company, you will find that people will want to relate to you by some definition they are familiar with. You could be the ‘techie’ or the ‘guru’. You could be the ‘wise one’ or you could be the one ‘not to mess with / the boardroom scrapper’. This is how people will refer to you as your name gets bandied about in conversations.
This may be an unsettling notion and it’s not an entirely positive statement about the working world but it is a fact of human nature and group dynamics. Colleagues and managers have little time to get to know the real you and will want to relate to you according to your public image. The question is how will you manage your identity? Are you aware of how people relate to you? Do you know how people define you? If you don’t have a clue, how will you find out?
Michael Dawisha 